As a recently retired LAUSD teacher who has witnessed the failure of U.S. born children who have been "captured" by the Home Language Survey, labeled as ELLs, and prevented from mainstreaming into the regular academic program, I hate to disagree with this new study which insists in having children learn to read in Spanish. Why is this not the case with children of other home languages, think about it? Because Spanish happens to be a pretty straight forward phonetic language, children from Spanish-speaking homes need to be exposed "early enough" to the intricate phonetic sounds of the English language, which happen to be non existent in Spanish, and need to learn to deal with the phonetic subtleties of the English language until they become second nature. Wouldn't you think that children who are not exposed to these phonetic subtleties at home because their families are not native English speakers would need more and early reading instruction in English? It seems to be a no-brainer to me! Enough of raising linguistically mediocre Latino children, who do not master neither language. These are U.S. born citizens who have unfortunately become second-class citizens because of the language barrier. Our Latino children should speak, read, write, and master the English language just as well as "white" U.S. natives. I'm disappointed with First 5's insistence in perpetuating Latino's lower-class status and keeping children from mastering the English Language by promoting politically correct yet ineffective findings. Respectfully, Cecilia Noboa-Castro noboa-castro@aol.com