Understanding and Improving Services to Birth to 5 Multilingual Learners and Their Families in IL Early Care and Education Settings

This collaborative mixed-methods study aims to:

(1)     Describe the Chicago and statewide policy and practice landscape related to the identification and support of multilingual learners in diverse early childhood settings.

(2)     Partner with fourteen community-based organizations (CBO) to explore how identification and early childhood service practices can be improved to better support multilingual learners.   

Data will come from statewide surveys of early childhood program staff and families, interviews and focus groups with families and teachers in partner CBOs, and key informant interviews with individuals working in early childhood programs and policy.

Conducted in collaboration with the Latino Policy Forum, the Illinois Workforce and Education Collaborative (IWERC), and our CBO partners, the goal of this work is to produce evidence that can inform state policies that better support young multilingual learners and their families. We expect to release a full report of the findings by the end of 2025.