Readers React: Mandatory kindergarten: Not all kids are ready at age 5

To the editor: I couldn’t agree more with your editorial opposed to a state bill requiring kindergarten. Not everyone is ready for kindergarten at age 5, nor should they be forced into it at that age before they are developmentally ready. (“Compulsory kindergarten: Still a bad idea,” editorial, Aug. 31)

I first started kindergarten when I was 5 years old. Even though I was academically ready, emotionally and socially, I was not. I only lasted there for two weeks before I was (wisely) pulled out.

I was placed back in kindergarten a year later when I was 6. By then I was socially and emotionally ready, and I loved kindergarten. Even though I was always at least a year older than the rest of my class, I always did well in school, even making the honor roll in high school.

Had I been forced to start kindergarten when I was 5, especially with the Common Core requirements, the outcome could have been (sadly) different.

Cheryl Hamilton Long, Arcadia

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To the editor: The problem with mandatory kindergarten isn’t that it’s mandatory or too expensive. The problem is that it’s too late.

By the time children are age 2 or 3, there are vast differences in vocabulary and understanding depending on whether one is the child of an upper- or middle-class white family or a middle- or lower-class minority family. Interventions must be done long before then for children in need.

Kindergarten, whether mandatory or not, doesn’t help because it’s too late.

Daniel Fink, Beverly Hills

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