The kindergarten class of 2010-11 is less white, less black, more Asian and much more Hispanic than in 2000, reflecting the nation’s rapid racial and ethnic transformation. The profile of the 4 million children starting kindergarten reveals the startling changes the USA has undergone the past decade and offers a glimpse of its future. In this year’s class, for example, about one out of four 5-year-olds will be Hispanic. Most of today’s kindergartners will graduate from high school in 2024. More Hispanic children are likely in the next generation because the number of Hispanic girls entering childbearing years is up more than 30% this decade, says Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire ‘s Carsey Institute. “It’s only the beginning.” U.S. MAP: County-by-county look at diversity DIVERSITY: Minority births drive growth in U.S. CENSUS 2010: Full coverage A USA TODAY analysis of the most recent government surveys shows: •About 25% of 5-year-olds are Hispanic, a big jump from 19% in 2000. Hispanics of that age outnumber blacks almost 2 to 1. •The percentage of white 5-year-olds fell from 59% in 2000 to about 53% today and the share of blacks from 15% to 13%. “This is not just a big-city phenomenon,” Johnson says. “The percentage of minority children is growing faster in the suburbs and in rural areas.” In Lake County, Ind., a Chicago suburb, the under-20 population went from 51.8% white in 2000 to 47.1% in 2008, Johnson’s research shows. In rural Nebraska’s Colfax and Dakota counties, the share of Hispanic youths is rising while young whites are down from 60% to about 45% in the same period. •Schools face linguistic challenges. The share of 5-year-olds who speak English at home slipped from 81% in 2000 to about 78%. The share of Spanish speakers grew from 14% to 16%. “That makes issues of language development and how to teach them even more important than 10 years ago,” says W. Steven Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. “In some districts, 40% of their kids are Latino, and 4% of their teachers are. It’s a huge gap.” Educators are grappling with the challenge, and “we really have a long way to go before we understand what the best methods are,” says Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the non-profit New America Foundation . Today’s kindergartners are tomorrow’s high schoolers, and “we need to know what their needs are.” •Kindergarten enrollment is up, from 3.8 million in 2000 to about 4 million.

ATLANTA (AP) — States are cutting hundreds of millions from their prekindergarten budgets, undermining years of working to help young children — particularly poor kids — get ready for school. States are slashing nearly $350 million from their pre-K programs by next year and more cuts are likely on the horizon once federal stimulus money dries up, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The reductions mean fewer slots for children, teacher layoffs and even fewer services for needy families who can’t afford high-quality private preschool programs. HEAD START: Some workers commit fraud so kids qualify RECESSION: Fuels shift from private to public schools One state — Arizona — has proposed eliminating its 5,500-child program entirely. Illinois cut $32 million from last fiscal year’s pre-k budget and plans to slash another $48 million this year. “The overall impact is less access to a quality education in the early years at a time when parents have reduced capability to purchase that on their own,” said Steve Barnett, co-director of the Rutgers institute. “Families are getting hit from both sides.” Wealthier parents can afford to send their kids to private preschools, but children from poorer families will likely languish in lower-quality childcare that doesn’t prepare them for kindergarten, experts said. On a recent morning at Walden Early Childhood Center in Atlanta, a pre-K class worked on shape and color identification by making flowers out of glue and construction paper. Afterward, the 4-year-olds broke into stations where they put on puppet shows, read books by themselves and played at a basin filled with water and toys. “It is important to really give kids that foundation before they go to school,” said Michael Morrier, project director for the center’s grant with the state. “It really closes the gap between the middle class kids and the lower-income kids.” Thirty-eight states had pre-k programs serving more than 1.2 million 3- and 4-year-olds as of last year, the latest data available. Barnett said just four states had made cuts by last year, but that number jumped to 14 this year and likely will be another 14 next year. The cuts come at a time when the demand for quality prekindergarten is at an all-time high as states struggle to improve test scores in early grades and give more students a better chance of getting a high school diploma. In Washington state, for example, lawmakers passed a bill that would expand the state’s pre-k program for needy children from 8,000 to more than 45,000 by 2018. At the same time, the legislature cut $1.6 million from the program last fiscal year and $10.4 million this year. Arizona voters will decide in November whether to eliminate the state’s fledgling First Things First prekindergarten program — created by voters in 2006 and paid for with tobacco tax money — and use the money to balance the state’s bleeding budget. Ohio cut its $23 million program to $11 million last fiscal year, which ended June 30, meaning 12,000 poor children no longer had access to prekindergarten. Massachusetts cut $9 million last fiscal year, and New York cut more than $36 million. For Georgia’s program — among the largest in the country — a $9 million budget cut this year meant eliminating half of the 500 workers who help the poorest families navigate speech therapy, kindergarten applications and dental appointments so that the number of classrooms could grow from 82,000 to 84,000 children. Marci Young, director of the Pew Center on the States’ Pre-K Now program, said prekindergarten is the key to helping the Obama administration achieve one of its main goals — improving persistently failing schools. “When you’re thinking about turning around low performing schools or making sure you’re helping close the achievement gap … you’ve got to start in the early years,” said Young. She pointed to studies that show states see a $7 return for every $1 they invest in early education because children who attend prekindergarten are more likely to not need remedial education, to graduate from high school, to go to college and to have higher-paying jobs that produce more taxes. The key, said Jacqueline Jones with the U.S. Department of Education ‘s early learning office, is making states believe that pre-k is part of the education package rather than something they do only during flush times. “If you see preschool as a warm and fuzzy thing you do for children or as baby-sitting, then it’s easy to cut,” she said. “But if we can meet the educational needs before kindergarten, we can save a tremendous amount of money in special education and remediation.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.