This longitudinal study examined growth in the English productive vocabularies of bilingual and monolingual children between ages 24 and 36 months and explored the utility and validity of supplementing parent reports with teacher reports to improve the estimation of children's vocabulary. Low-income, English-speaking and English/Spanish-speaking parents and Early Head Start and Head Start program teachers completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, Words and Sentences for 85 children. Results indicate faster growth rates for monolingual than for bilingual children and larger vocabularies for bilingual children who spoke mostly English than mostly Spanish at home. Parent-teacher composite reports, like parent reports, significantly related to children's directly assessed productive vocabulary at ages 30 and 36 months, but parent reports fit the model better. Implications for vocabulary assessment are discussed.

The general consensus in the field is that when the home language is different from the language of instruction in school then children's literacy attainments could slow down. In this 26‐year review of the literature on children's literacy attainments in low‐ to middle‐income countries, 40 correlational, ethnographic and intervention studies provide the data. We test the ‘home language advantage’ hypothesis where we expect children who speak the same language at home and school to show better literacy learning. We also examine other attributes in the home language and literacy environment (HLLE). Among the multivariate studies, trends differ across countries, age and grade levels, and child measures. Rather than a universal home language advantage, the evidence shows that home language advantage is context‐sensitive. The correlational and ethnographic evidence point to a multiple risk factors model of home and school language disconnection; and the ethnographic and intervention studies provide complementary evidence of both feelings of unease, disempowerment and wish to help among family members, and increased confidence following guided support. Possible underlying mechanisms are examined through parallel synthesis of evidence from multiple research methods on three HLLE dimensions—books‐at‐home, home tutoring and adult literacy practices. The data partially corroborate findings from high‐income countries (e.g. home environments impact literacy development, responsive parenting is present across families) but also bring focus on context‐specific realities. Neither low‐income nor low‐print environments are uniform constraints because communities differ and some homes use available resources more efficiently than others.

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This study investigates the utility and validity of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for use with low-income parents and their 24-to 36-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children (n = 79). Issues in the interpretation of the integrated CDI/Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (IDHC) score to index bilingual children's overall conceptual knowledge are also considered. Results indicate that the CDI/IDHC can be used with this population through at least age 36 months and parents are accurate reporters of their children's Spanish and English vocabulary. The value of the integrated score was confirmed. However, given the lack of norms associated with the integrated score, the complexity of determining how best to interpret this score was underscored.Converging evidence indicates that language minority learners in the United States are at greater risk for school failure than monolingual English speakers, with a

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