Racial Equity and School Readiness

Equal Opportunity/Racial Equity and School Readiness

In order to have an educated population that can effectively participate in our democracy and in the workforce of tomorrow, children need to start out ready for school, then get the resources they need to succeed in school.  If certain groups of children have less opportunity to succeed than others, it will not be possible to improve school readiness for all our community's children.

Barriers to equal opportunity

Embedded racial inequities produce disparities in children’s opportunities to be school ready. Some of the factors that we know contribute to these inequities are disproportional rates of poverty, segregation of neighborhoods, and disparate access to community resources. One of the key resources that can promote school readiness is quality child care. Because of economic disparities, people of color are less likely to have access to the highest quality programs and the programs they do access may pose cultural barriers to children’s learning and growth in the program.

Unequal access to resources, racial bias and discrimination and embedded inequities in income, education and housing produce dire consequences for the development of children of color.

• Late or no prenatal care rates are higher for women of color than for whites.
• The rate of low-birthweight babies and infant mortality are higher for children of color than for whites. The 2002-2004 infant mortality rate for African Americans(9.0/1000) was more than two times higher than that for whites and the rate for Native Americans(14.7/1,000) was more than three times higher than that of whites.[1]
• The percentage of children of color who are read to every day is lower than that of white children.
• Fewer African-American and Latino children have computers in their homes than do white or Asian children.
• Head Start, which, in national studies has been shown to be highly effective with African American and Latino children, serves only 30% of those eligible in King County.
• Children of color attend kindergartens with larger class sizes, less outreach to parents, and in more dangerous neighborhoods when compared to white kindergarteners.

Results of inequality

Children who do not have the resources to be adequately prepared for school show poor academic outcomes throughout their school years.  African American, Latino, and Native American children have poorer early literacy and math skills as compared with white children. These disparities continue into elementary school.  Nearly half of Hispanic, African-American, Native American children fail to meet 3rd grade reading and math standards.

Source:  Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI)

Strategies to promote equal opportunity for all children

Strategies to address racial inequities in school readiness must address economic, cultural, and environmental barriers. Culturally competent child development programming, promoting effective interventions and community building strategies can have an impact. One way to accomplish this is to work with families and community based organizations that serve specific underserved populations to provide high quality child care and support for family, friend and neighbor care-givers. 

Efforts to improve the environment in low income neighborhoods through community building, environmental advocacy, and housing policy can also address environmental risks to development to which children of color are often exposed.

Increased funding and outreach to serve more eligible children with Head Start and other high quality pre-school programming is a proven effective way of reducing disparities in school readiness. 

While making children of color ready for the school system, embedded inequities in the education system also must be addressed to make schools ready for kids.  Read more about racial equity in the education system.

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Footnotes

[1]Public Health Seattle King County 2005