Praxis II Exam - Education of Young Child: Diversity and Early Childhood Education

Effect of Racial/Ethnic, Economic, Educational, and Mental Health Factors on the Emotional, Mental Health, and Social Outcomes
Proportionately more mothers in minority and low-income groups—up to 40 percent—suffer maternal depression than in other parts of the population. Maternal depression is associated with poor mother-child bonding; lower child scores in language and reading; and higher prevalence of depression and other mental health problems later in children. Low-income and minority families are at higher risk for developmental difficulties and mental health issues. According to U.S. surveys, about one-third or over 3 million of young children have two or more health and developmental risk factors. These risk factors include maternal mental health, maternal education, family poverty, and race/ethnicity. Each added risk factor increases the probability of either greater developmental risk or worse health status. Risk increases exponentially with multiple factors. One risk factor doubles risk; two factors more than triple it; three causes almost five times the risk; and four risk factors represent 14 times the risk of developmental delay or poor health.

Effects of Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Disparities Upon Parenting, Home Safety, and School Readiness
According to the National Survey on Early Childhood Health, significant differences are reported in Latino and African-Americans’ parenting practices, home routines, and home safety measures. These differences are associated with differing degrees of positive early childhood development. Research studies have also revealed that American children in minority groups, on the average, demonstrate lower school readiness levels when they begin formal education than white American children do. The research furthermore shows that most of these differences in school readiness levels are associated with differences in family income. Researchers also comment that disparities among racial and ethnic groups in their school readiness and subsequent academic achievement in school may be additional contributors to discrimination against minority racial and ethnic groups by teachers and other educational personnel.

Effects of Income and Race/Ethnicity Upon Health Care Aspects
Although the disparity in childhood immunizations between white and minority infants and toddlers has decreased, still, fewer minority children are receiving standard immunizations than white children in America. For example, the preschool rates for receiving each major vaccination from 2003–2004 in America were the lowest among non-Latino black, Native American, and Alaskan Native children. One sign of health service quality and continuity is having a regular health care provider. Recent national surveys have found that while more than 80 percent of children under the age of 5 in economically affluent families are seen at physicians’ offices or HMOs for care when sick, not much more than 54 percent of children under age 5 in economically poor families are seen for sick care. The National Survey of Early Childhood Health has found African-American and Latino parents report more dissatisfaction with pediatricians and more unmet needs for early childhood development services than white parents. Twice as many Latino as white parents felt providers never or only occasionally understood their individual child’s needs.

Socioeconomic and Racial Effects on Mental, Emotional, and Social Health
According to the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, in recent years over 40 percent of toddlers and over 68 percent of preschoolers who were in contact with the child welfare system had high levels of need, developmentally and behaviorally. But overall, fewer than 23 percent of these children were getting services to address these needs. Thus, young children of socioeconomically disadvantaged families were found to have more developmental and behavioral problems than children in other socioeconomic groups, yet were also less likely to receive help with such problems. Another social and emotional difference related to racial group membership has been reflected by levels of violence in the family. 2003 data found that over 15 percent of African-American families experienced violent conflicts, compared to below 9 percent of white families and over 11 percent of Latino families. Racial groups classified as “other” constituted over 12 percent. Experts concede that styles of disagreeing can be influenced by cultural and demographic variables. However, they find the strongest influence on conflicts becoming violent to be parental stress.

Inequity in Health Insurance Coverage for Children of Minority Groups
Research has demonstrated that after taking health insurance status into account, there are no significant socioeconomic differences in how family organization and doctor/health care practitioner visits are related. Furthermore, research has shown that having health insurance coverage decreases differences in developmental and health outcomes for young children. However, despite these findings, children of minority groups are less likely than their nonminority peers to have either private or public health care coverage. Regarding access to health care services, it has been found that parents whose first language was not English were only half as likely to get preventive health care for their infants as native English-speaking families. This inequity in service delivery was found to be constant across white, African-American, and Latino families that had infants, but not in Asian-American families having infants.

According to data collected by the National Survey of Early Childhood Health, minority families have less communication and guidance from pediatric health care providers than white families. For example, African-American parents were found to make significantly fewer phone calls than white parents to pediatric health care practices. Latino parents made fewer than half the calls that white parents did; African-American parents made fewer than three-fourths of the calls white parents did. This survey also found that pediatricians and other pediatric health care service providers were more likely to emphasize topics of household alcohol and drug use and community violence when they talked with minority patient families than they did in discussions with white patient families. African-American children are found far more likely to have special health care needs than white children; yet researchers find that even after controlling for health status, insurance, and other pertinent variables, health care providers are still nearly twice as likely not to refer minority children to specialists and consultants.

Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems
Decreasing Socioeconomically and Racially Influenced Health Care Inequities
According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) initiatives in each U.S. state have the ability to further methods that can decrease socioeconomically related health care inequities in early childhood, which generates positive impacts for the rest of children’s lives. To raise and shape consciousness of health care issues affected by income and race, experts recommend that ECCS establish connections between projects/programs designed to eradicate poverty and racism and efforts in developing early childhood systems. Another consciousness-raising strategy recommended for ECCS is to work at increasing the general public’s awareness of racial, ethnic, and economic disparities in early childhood health care and to work at increasing such awareness in health professionals, educators, early care providers, and other significant stakeholders who regularly provide services to young children. ECCS can also include racial/ethnic data in performance monitoring; encourage state SCHIP and Medicaid agencies to do the same; analyze state data for disparities in risk, access, and outcomes, including small-area analyses, geocoding, etc.; and identify and measure unequal treatment through data analysis.

Improving and Equalizing Health Care for All American Demographic Groups
Enhancing Community Support
Experts in early childhood development find that state ECCS should target their support toward communities with larger populations of minority and low-income families. Inasmuch as local systems have limited resources, some state ECCS might need to allocate more of these resources to communities having higher risks of adverse outcomes for children. ECCS can also provide assistance to communities by helping them assess their local assets, strengths, needs, and risk factors. Early childhood development experts emphasize that state ECCS should focus their efforts on improving the quality of health care services that are available within communities where all or the majority of residents are members of minority groups and/or have low socioeconomic status. Another way in which state ECCS can strengthen the supports available in communities for citizens who are subject to unequal health care treatment according to their demographic groups is to offer and provide incentives for community development projects that are designed to decrease health care treatment disparities based on racial/ethnic and economic differences.

Reducing Unequal Treatment of Cultural/Linguistic Minorities
Early childhood experts advise that each U.S. state’s ECCS should implement strategies designed to monitor health care providers and services for cultural and linguistic competency, and to improve these competencies. One example of such improvement is ensuring that specific training in cultural and linguistic competency and cross-cultural competency is integrated into the training of both health care providers and early childhood educators. ECCS can also be responsible for seeing that parent education materials and resources in health care are translated into the native languages of local families who are not native English speakers, and supporting interpreter and translator services for communities having families needing these. Experts find that ECCS can additionally improve child and family health services by supporting various early childhood service settings in employing nonprofessional/community health workers. Moreover, ECCS can help further equality and consistency of health care across varied demographic groups by applying research evidence-based guidelines regarding health care, family support, early learning, and related services and programs.

Benefits of Leveling Inequalities in Care, Health, and Education
Eliminating unequal treatment in early childhood has significant benefits, including lowering overall national rates of poverty; improving overall health and education measures; saving long-term health care costs; decreasing disabilities; and lengthening lives by decreasing mortality rates. The effects of low income and racism on young children and their families are complex, and these influences interact with one another. Therefore, it is impossible or extremely difficult to solve problems generated by one of these social factors without including the other associated influencing factors. Because of the interrelationships of variables, strategies on a system level have the most potential for effectiveness. For example, job training and placement programs that could help parents economically are limited in effectiveness if quality child care is not also available to those parents. Enhancing educational programs could improve academic performance, but not if young students are too hungry to benefit from instruction. And the measurement and monitoring of developmental, health, and educational outcomes will not change their disparity unless treatment inequities are resolved.

Involving Families in Their Children’s Education
Flexibility and variety are key elements for involving diverse families, with changing situations and needs, in ECE. Adaptable approaches include these: Educators include families in designing children’s Individual Family Service Plans (IFSPs) for preschoolers. They ask families to develop their own goals for educational participation. They create volunteer calendars, encouraging parents to collaborate when able. They communicate with families regularly, using speech if written/printed language presents barriers. They establish media libraries for parents/families to browse and check out resources. They facilitate parental meeting attendance and school visits by providing transportation and child care. They adapt to parental work schedules by convening meetings at alternative times of day. They often send families communications about both their children and class content, including information regarding important developmental milestones and methods for nurturing growth and development. They offer families individualized, specific strategies for home use. They recruit interested family members to help in preschool. They also function as clearinghouses to facilitate family access to community supports like local health care agencies, businesses, and universities.