The Washington Post – Valerie Strauss
“The term “word gap” was first coined in the 1995 Hart/Risley study that found low-income children are exposed to 30 million fewer words than their higher-income peers before age 3. This study and others have linked poor early literacy skills to lifelong academic, social and income disparities. Word gap initiatives primarily target low-income parents to help them understand the effect they have on their children’s cognitive development. Unfortunately, this misses another important part of the problem. While parents play a vital role in early literacy skills, so do early childhood educators (day-care teachers and child-care providers). Millions of children today spend a great deal of time in early education (child-care) settings. Low-income children can spend more hours a week in child care than in quality time with their parents. It will come as a surprise to Americans to learn that as many as 1 million state-licensed and nationally credentialed early childhood educators are at-risk for functional illiteracy; their reading and writing skills are inadequate to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level.”(more)