by Brigid Schulte, The
Washington Post, August 18, 2003
Kate Van Slyck was set to send her 4-year-old to kindergarten in the fall.
Sam's birthday is one day before Virginia's Sept. 30 cutoff, but she was
sure he would be fine - a little awkward socially, perhaps, because he'd
be younger than everyone else, but all right.
Then she went to a seminar on kindergarten readiness put on by the
influential, and controversial, Gesell Institute for Human Development.
The presenter said children born in the fall, especially boys, are at
higher risk of failing in school if they begin kindergarten before they
turn 5.
"She told me she'd adopt my son if I dared send him on to kindergarten,"
Van Slyck said. "She was dead set against sending kids to kindergarten
with any birthdays in the summer."
Van Slyck was advised to give Sam the "gift of time." By holding him out
of kindergarten for a year, his attention span would be that much longer,
his ability to follow directions and get along with peers much stronger,
and his tiny hand muscles that much more ready to hold a pencil or cut
with scissors.
So come fall, Sam and a handful of other soon-to-be 5-year-olds will
attend a new junior kindergarten at their suburban Washington preschool,
joining in a growing tendency among middle- and upper-income families
nationwide to keep children with late birthdays, especially boys, out of
kindergarten for another year.
Susan Stein, on the other hand, has decided to send son Benjamin on to
kindergarten, though he won't turn 5 until December - and despite constant
comments from friends that she should keep him back.
"We thought we'd take a chance," she said of the question that has worried
her since Benjamin was born. Stein, of Washington, consulted her son's
preschool teacher and pediatrician and had the boy evaluated by a child
development specialist. All said he was ready. "At some point," she said,
"you have to take a leap of faith."
The decision about whether to send a young child to kindergarten, never an
easy one, has become wrenching as parents find themselves in the cross-
hairs of a political fight. The school standards movement and the push to
have children test well by third grade has
meant that kindergarten, once a haven for blocks and nap time, has become
far more academic.
"Kindergarten has become this kind of crucible," said Charmaine Ciardi, a
Bethesda, Md.-based child-development specialist. "And that's where
parents get squeezed."
Studies have found that up to 10 percent of parents nationally are
delaying their children's entry into kindergarten. The ones being held
back tend to be boys, at a ratio of 2 to 1. Many states are moving up
cutoff dates to keep younger children out of kindergarten. Indiana has
moved its cutoff to June 1, a date used by many private schools
nationally. (Delaware's cutoff is Aug. 31.)
But a careful look at the research indicates that there is no magic date
at which children are more or less ready for kindergarten. More
importantly, no study has definitely proved, long-term, a downside to
sending younger children to kindergarten, nor a benefit in holding them
back.
"It seems like a decision that's going to make or break your child's
future, and it probably isn't," said Deborah Stipek, dean of Stanford
University's School of Education. "The quality of the program, the child,
the teacher [are] so much more important than the age at which he enters
school."
In reviewing hundreds of studies, Stipek found that older children have an
edge over younger ones academically in the first few years of school. But
by third grade, any differences have evaporated.
Jacqueline Haines, director of training and clinical services at the
Gesell Institute in New Haven, Conn., said some parents hold back their
children for the wrong reasons. "We get very nervous when people say,
'We'll wait a year so our child can be captain of the football team,' "
she said.
The institute has been a big player in the trend to hold children out of
school. The Gesell theory holds that children develop at certain rates,
unfolding like flowers, and that younger flowers might need more time to
bloom before they're ready for kindergarten.
But Stipek and others say the institute's philosophies are outdated. More
recent studies, including brain research, have shown that what children
are exposed to, what they experience, is far more important in their
development than simply giving them more time.
Many say the trend to wait is serving to further disadvantage low-income
children.
"There's already at least a year's difference in academic skills between
middle-class and low-income preschoolers when they enter school," Stipek
said. The gap is wider if the middle-class student is a full year older.
Plus, the low-income child born in the fall might not be raised in a
stimulating academic environment, Stipek said. "That child is going to
learn more, on average, by being in kindergarten."
The real question is not whether children are ready for school but whether
schools are ready for children, said Marilou Hyson, associate executive
director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children,
a leading advocate for early-childhood curricula that teach through play.
"Every child is ready for school if they've met the legal age
requirements," she said. "They have a right to have a kindergarten program
that takes them where they are and moves them along."
Parents argue that that isn't always the case. "The reality is, the
program in kindergarten is not what the NAEYC says it should be. It's
first grade," Van Slyck said. "So I'm giving my guy another year of play,
with a little bit of academia."
In the end, there are no guarantees. Ruth Kincaid of Bethesda, Md.,
decided to wait a year before sending her eldest son to kindergarten. He's
about to enter 10th grade and has done well.
"But I can't say you don't, every once in a while, stop and question
yourself, and wonder whether that was the right thing to do," she said.
