Debate Grows Over Best Age for Starting Kindergarten

Of all the big moments during childhood, there may be none more pivotal than the day a youngster marches off to school. To begin kindergarten, after all, is to venture into a world of learning that will largely shape who he or she becomes.

But what if a child seems not quite prepared for that journey? As the nation has shifted to a more academic emphasis in kindergarten, more and more parents are deciding to delay their children’s school start for a year, to protect them from failure and give them a scholastic edge.

The trend is often called “redshirting,” after the practice of keeping athletes off the varsity team for a year so they will be eligible later, when they are bigger and stronger.

Experts are divided over the practice. Some research shows that any advantage of being an older child fades by third grade. But many teachers and parents insist that some children need an extra year to mature, develop motor skills and learn to pay attention in class.

Assemblyman George Runner Jr. (R-Lancaster) subscribes to that view. To advance his philosophy, Runner has introduced a bill that would raise the age for youngsters starting kindergarten in California.

Legislative Hearing

Under the bill, which gets its first legislative hearing today, kindergarten pupils would have to turn 5 by Sept. 1 of the year they start school. The current birthday cutoff date is three months later, Dec. 2.

If adopted--and today’s committee vote promises to be close--the new date would bring California in line with most other states. Only three have a date later than California’s, and at least one state--Indiana--sets the birthday cutoff as early as June 1.

“Children with autumn birthdays often are not prepared developmentally to cope with the demands of kindergarten,” said Runner, who was executive director of a Christian school before his election to the Assembly in November. “By starting them before they’re ready, we increase the chances that they’ll fail.”

Some education experts agree and say that moving the date could have dramatic benefits, including an improvement in the performance of California children on standardized tests.

James Uphoff, a professor of education at Wright State University in Ohio, said the decline in California test scores in recent years might be partly attributable to the state’s comparatively younger kindergarten classes.

“I would contend that one of the factors for the decline is that a portion of the student body has not had the physiological development to do what the educational system has been demanding of them,” said Uphoff, who has studied kindergarten readiness. “It’s not that they’re less bright, it’s that their eye muscles, their fine motor skills, their coordination aren’t developed sufficiently for the tasks they face.”

Moving the date, Uphoff added, “is a common-sense way to give the youngest kids a bit more time.”

Opponents, however, dispute that assessment. Some argue that age is largely irrelevant and that the kindergarten curriculum--and teachers--ought to be flexible enough for children’s varied developmental stages.

The National Assn. for the Education of Young Children believes that “messing with the age a child starts kindergarten is the wrong approach,” said Barbara Willer, a spokeswoman. “The appropriate strategy is making sure the school can meet the needs of kids, whenever they enter.”

Other foes of the bill--including state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin--argue that changing the eligibility date would create hardships for low-income families.

While wealthy parents can afford to send their children to another year of preschool, poor children might spend the extra year in inadequate child-care situations that offer little preparation for school, Eastin wrote in a letter opposing the bill. While there are subsidized preschool programs such as Head Start, California serves only 25% of the low-income children eligible for such slots.

“We view this bill as an elimination of educational opportunity,” said Santiago Jackson, an assistant superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where about 15,000 children would be affected. “If you take away kindergarten for these kids [with birthdays after Sept. 1], what’s left?”

Runner’s bill (AB 85) would affect one-quarter of the state’s 476,000 kindergartners. By keeping that number out of classrooms, it would free up about $600 million a year for 13 years. Runner wants that money returned to the school districts for use on class-size reduction, school construction or other projects.

Debate over the merits of starting formal school at an older age has been percolating since the 1980s, when concerns surfaced over children’s ability to cope with a more academic kindergarten experience.

One response was the creation in some school districts of “developmental kindergarten,” a class for children judged unprepared for kindergarten’s rigors. Other districts created transitional first-grade classes for pupils who had not mastered kindergarten basics.

Many parents, meanwhile, began voluntarily holding their children out of school for an extra year, fearful that a struggle in kindergarten might taint their scholastic career.

“There has been an uprising among parents who resent this hurrying and pressuring and stressing of kids with too much academics,” said Jim Grant, the executive director of the New Hampshire-based Society for Developmental Education. “Schools are set up to treat kids all the same. But developmentally, a 4-year-old is often not ready for a 5-year-old kindergarten.”

Previous Efforts

Josette Hajeian of Palos Verdes held both her sons back for a year after concluding that “they just weren’t ready.” One boy was shy socially and not particularly coordinated; the other wasn’t ready to learn to read.

“I haven’t regretted it for a second,” said Hajeian, who is a third-grade teacher. “Do you want your kids to feel confident, like a leader, or do you want them to not know any of the answers and get a very different message from that?”

Donna Siegel, a kindergarten teacher in Burbank, confirms that 4-year-olds not ready for school grow frustrated as they fall behind--and risk being misread as not bright. “Writing letters, coloring, paying attention for 3 1/2 hours--they just can’t do it, and it’s rough,” Siegel said.

Marjorie Bohn, the director of Palos Verdes Hills Nursery School, agreed, noting that “kids with late fall birthdays are often the ones who are white-knuckled about kindergarten. Give them an extra year and they’ll have a success-oriented experience.”

There are instances, however, when parents hold their children back purely out of the desire to make their child “king of the hill--either academically, intellectually or even athletically,” Bohn said.

This form of redshirting is abhorrent, Bohn said. “It’s just not fair.”

Runner is not the first legislator to attempt to alter the kindergarten enrollment age. In 1985, then-Assemblyman Jack O’Connell, now a state senator, carried a bill that was killed in the Assembly. And in 1992, Gov. Pete Wilson proposed a similar change as part of his budget proposal, which failed.

If Runner’s bill is adopted, the date change would be phased in over three years. That means the cutoff date would be moved to Nov. 1 in 1998, to Oct. 1 in 1999 and to Sept. 1 in 2000 and beyond.