Preschool Antecedents of Mathematics Achievement of Latinos

Abstract

Seventy-three Latino middle school students participated in a longitudinal study of the preschool antecedents of their mathematics achievement. Path analysis indicated that family resources (parents' educational level, occupation, and income) predicted home literacy activities, which predicted combined early Spanish literacy and English language proficiencies at kindergarten entry, which predicted elementary mathematics achievement, which in turn predicted middle school mathematics performance. These results and qualitative analyses with a subsample of 30 randomly selected families suggest that literacy and numeracy proficiency go hand in hand, and to close the Latino mathematics achievement gap a combined effort of preschool and early elementary literacy and numeracy interventions programs are needed to supplement efforts in middle and high school.