Postponing Kindergarten Spurs Debate

As a veteran of the kindergarten trenches, teacher Liz Lozano knows how tough it can be to regiment a classroom of antsy kids, particularly very young boys.

So when it came time to put her own two sons in a Los Angeles school, she didn’t hesitate--to hold them back a year, that is.

“We wanted [them] to develop creativity and thinking skills before starting because kindergarten is so academic now,” she said.

Lozano is far from alone in seeking an age-based social and scholastic edge for her offspring. Although parents once pushed to get their children into school as early as possible--and definitely by age 5--it is increasingly the vogue in affluent communities to wait until they are 6 or nearly so.

The trend, which particularly affects boys because of their slower development, is rife in elite private schools where there is stiff competition for seats. Many require that children turn 5 months before the September start of kindergarten--half a year, in some cases, before the cutoff for California public schools.

As incoming kindergartners get older in some communities, more anxious parents are wondering: Do we wait or push ahead? When is a child ready for school anyway, and has that target shifted now that kindergarten--literally, a garden of children--has moved further from the original concept of a time when children could develop freely through play?

“Not wanting your child to get chewed up is very much on the minds of parents,” said Ira Toibin, superintendent of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.

Although the practice of voluntarily holding youngsters back has been around for at least two decades, many educators see it accelerating even in less advantaged public schools. The impetus there, they say, comes from recent education reforms that boost pressure on administrators to improve student achievement and to end the practice of promoting students to the next grade regardless of academic ability.

Another issue for parents is class size reduction, an otherwise popular mandate that has resulted in the hiring of thousands of teachers who lack experience in dealing with the disparate needs of young children.

The pattern of holding children out a year has sharply divided the education community. Many teachers agree with parents that children who have an extra year to settle down and develop motor skills will be better able to grasp the ever more rigorous instruction that makes kindergartens resemble the first and even second grades of yesteryear.

But some early childhood researchers fret that this “graying” of the kindergarten set could escalate, giving rise to the specter of 20-year-old high school seniors. Any academic advantages of being older, they say, tend to vanish by third grade.

Opponents also worry that the trend toward holding back creates headaches for teachers who must cope with a broader range of abilities in each classroom. It also can create resentment among parents who fear that children who start on schedule will somehow be at a disadvantage.

Worse, critics say, the practice expands the already vast divide between the poor and the privileged, as many working-class families hasten to get their children into public school because they can’t find or afford child care.

Over the last dozen years, the two sides have heatedly debated a string of measures in Sacramento that would boost the age for California youngsters starting kindergarten. One such bill, which proposes to make kindergarten mandatory and move the birthday cutoff date to Sept. 1, failed to win enough support this year, but is waiting in the wings for 2000.

As it stands, California has one of the latest birthday cutoffs in the nation, Dec. 2. Moving up the date, many experts say, would put California more in the nation’s mainstream and most likely provide a bonus: improved results on standardized exams as older students are tested.

Indeed, his son’s stellar second-grade test scores last spring helped reassure lawyer Richard Dieffenbach that he was wise to follow the advice of a Long Beach preschool teacher and give the boy “an extra year to be a kid.” His son turned 6 the June before entering kindergarten and now exudes confidence as a prospective third-grader, Dieffenbach said.

Wendy Diamond, a mother in Pacific Palisades, said she understands the attitude of parents wanting to shelter their children from the sense of failure and emotional pain that can come from being the struggling young kid in class.

“Don’t you feel like now it’s so competitive starting in preschool?” she said. “People are keeping kids back rather than have them be the smallest, slowest and last to read. Wouldn’t you rather your kid be six months older and have a phenomenal experience?”

Many parents spend months agonizing over such questions. They talk with neighbors and seek advice from preschool directors. They watch for signs--physical, social and psychological--of kindergarten readiness: Can the child recite his letters? Tie his or her shoes? Hop on one foot? Share toys with friends?

“My friends think I’m crazy,” said Lozano, the teacher who held back both of her sons. Santiago will turn 9 soon after going into third grade in September. Stefan, who turned 5 in May, will attend another year of preschool, meaning that he will be 6 years, 4 months old when he heads off to kindergarten.

Lozano likes the idea of letting her small younger son catch up physically during that extra year. Although Santiago’s academic performance is so-so, Lozano views that as a positive sign that he is “more of a leader than a follower.”

A Different Attitude in South-Central

Judy Nygren, director of Highlands Children’s Center, a Los Angeles preschool, often counsels parents to wait.

“I did it with my fall-birthday son,” Nygren said. “You can never make a mistake giving another year. You can often make a mistake putting them in too early.”

Not everyone agrees, especially when it comes to children from homes where books and museum trips are novelties.

At Raymond Avenue Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles, most parents try to get their children in “to benefit as early as possible from formal education,” said Principal Victor Kimbell.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the kindergarten entry question is clouded by year-round schools and broad guidelines. Children might enter kindergarten in early July at the tender age of 4 years, 7 months. In some cases, children as old as 6 years, 8 months could be admitted.

Los Angeles parents with legitimate reasons may request that a 6-year-old go to kindergartenrather than first grade. By contrast, a child who attends a qualified private kindergarten may enter first grade, even if the pupil is younger than a first-grader would usually be.

The National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, a Washington-based organization composed mainly of childhood professionals, advocates getting children into school and counting on the school to be ready for them, not the other way around.

Lorrie A. Shepard, a research methodology professor at the University of Colorado, criticizes the practice of holding back as a “Ladies Home Journal phenomenon,” spread by affluent parents with a “get-your-kid-into-Harvard” mind-set.

She also derides it as academic “redshirting,” a term associated with college athletes who are held off the varsity team for a year so that they can build height or muscle.

There is an increased danger of boredom, some say, that could eventually lead to the student dropping out of school.

Both camps point to universal preschool as a possible solution to the readiness question. The idea has been embraced by Delaine Eastin, California’s superintendent of public instruction. But such a program would be costly, requiring facilities and teachers that are hard to come by in crowded areas such as Los Angeles.

Some schools, public and private, seek to ease the problem of pupils’ uneven development by starting “developmental kindergartens” (DKs) or “transitional, or developmental, first grades” (D-1s), which come before traditional kindergarten or first grade.

The Curtis School, a private campus in Los Angeles, aims its developmental kindergarten at students who are not ready for an academically oriented kindergarten but have outgrown preschool. A third of the school’s kindergartners first pass through DK.

The 6,500-student Monrovia Unified School District started a developmental first grade years ago after realizing that many children, particularly those closer to the December cutoff, struggled in first grade. A few children are able to vault from D-1 into second grade, but most move on to traditional first grade. Teachers and parents see it as an alternative to retention in later grades.

“We don’t look upon this as a slow group,” said Richard S. Hill, assistant superintendent for instructional services. “Some of them are extremely bright but don’t have the skills yet to sit still and develop the reading capacity.”

Late Cutoff Blamed for Dismal Performance

Some educators blame California’s late birthday cutoff for the woeful academic performance in the state’s public schools.

“I feel that California has the highest number of children assigned to the wrong grade of any state in America,” said Jim Grant, a New Hampshire education consultant. He contends that 4-year-olds do not belong in kindergarten and advocates two cutoffs: one for girls that coincides with the start of school and another for boys six months earlier.

Yet even advocates of more maturity in kindergarten are starting to see signs of problems.

“This year we’re almost getting children who are too old,” said Jacqueline Yarbrough, academic dean of Carlthorp School, a private institution in Santa Monica with all-day kindergarten. “We noticed some children almost 7 and were jokingly saying we might have to impose an upper age limit.”

Toibin, the Palos Verdes superintendent, favors the view that holding children back has limited positive effects and could be detrimental. Still, the district offers a developmental kindergarten for children who teachers or parents think are not quite ready.

Yet he urges parents to consider the consequences. Will the child be 19 when he graduates? Will he or she be getting a driver’s license as a ninth-grader? Children who are held back are a year older before going away to college and before entering graduate school and a career.

“I’ve seen kids in middle school--a 15-year-old in eighth grade who’s almost 16 and beginning to feel out of place,” Toibin said. “You have to ask yourself: What’s it going to be like down the road? Parents need to make sure there’s some sort of educational plan for that student.”