ELL School Readiness and Pre-Kindergarten Care

The increased utilization of non-parental pre-kindergarten care has spurred interest by both researchers and policy makers as to what types of care might be effective at boosting school readiness. Under-developed in the research has been an assessment of the influence of pre-kindergarten care on school readiness for English Language Learners (ELLs). This research gap is critical to fill, as ELL students are not only a growing segment of the U.S. schooling population but also enter school at a disadvantage compared with other students. This study fills this gap by using nationally representative data (i.e., Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten [ECLS-K]) to examine the influence of pre-kindergarten care in the year before kindergarten entry on a range of socio-behavioral school readiness indicators measured at kindergarten entry. The findings indicate that ELL students in center-based care or non-center/non-parental care have lower problem behaviors and higher social skills compared with ELL students exclusively in parental care. Implications are discussed.