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Cambio Center Strategic Initiatives Program AwardPrint VersionBy Philip G. Peters Jr. On July 12, 2007, Domingo Martínez, Coordinator of the MU Cambio Center, announced the latest MU project to be funded with a Cambio Center Strategic Initiatives Program Award. The project, “Improving Latino School Readiness with Summer English Instruction,” will create a pilot summer program of free English instruction for five-year-old children during the summer prior to kindergarten. Its goal is to determine whether the kindergarten success of immigrant Latinos who do not speak English can be improved by beginning the process of English language acquisition before the children arrive at the schoolhouse and to determine whether a program of this kind can be accomplished on a modest budget. The principal investigators are Philip G. Peters, Jr. from the School of Law and Monica Marcos-Llinas, from Romance Languages. They are partnering with two teachers in the Columbia Public Schools, Centro Latino, the Department of Health (through its WIC program) and First Chance for Children, a community-based organization whose mission is to help disadvantaged children arrive at school ready to succeed. Their goal is not only to improve the school success of immigrant children, but also to speed their integration into their new country and culture. The program will also help guide the parents through their initial contacts with the school system. Because the best way to teach English to preschool Latinos is to pair them with a fluent English speaker in a setting with either individual interaction or a very low student to faculty ratio, the pilot summer school program will have a 4-to-1 teacher-student ratio. To make this ratio financially feasible, the project will employ older students as the tutors. They will work under the supervision of an experienced teacher. During the five week pilot program, sixteen preschoolers will be taught by four tutors and a supervising teacher. If the outcomes are favorable, then the pilot project will serve as the springboard for external grant funding to test the model on a larger scale. Because the costs are modest (about $500 per child), the investigators also believe that favorable outcomes will provide a strong basis for seeking continuation funding from the school district and local businesses.
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