\n<\/p>\n
Jennifer Lilintahl began to hear rumors last year that her local public school in the District of Columbia had begun to enforce the district\u2019s age cutoff dates for kindergarten, putting her in a difficult position: Lilintahl\u2019s daughter will turn 6 on Sept. 19, and the district requires incoming kindergartners to be no older than 5 on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n
The rumors were true. Lilintahl said the school system told her that her daughter must bypass kindergarten and go straight to 1st grade. The news was a shock: \u201cWe never in a million years would have thought \u2026 that a public school would deny public kindergarten to her based on an 11-day difference,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Her family had previously lived in Maryland, which requires incoming kindergartners to be 5 by Sept. 1. Their daughter\u2019s birthday fell smack between the neighboring areas\u2019 cutoffs\u2014an example of just how complicated and emotional kindergarten cutoff rules can be for families.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, it was never a matter of quote-un-quote redshirting,\u201d said Lilintahl, referring to the practice of parents delaying their children\u2019s entry into the grade that coincides with their age. \u201cOur plan was always for our daughter to go to kindergarten in what we thought was the appropriate time.\u201d<\/p>\n
But by the time the family moved to D.C., Lilintahl\u2019s daughter was in preschool, on track to enroll in kindergarten in the 2025-26 year. Lilintahl had consulted the director at her daughter\u2019s private preschool in D.C., asking if she recommended they skip pre-K and enroll her in kindergarten for the 2024-25 school year to comply with the public school district\u2019s age cutoff rules. \u201cThe decision was, \u2018No, pre-K is an important year,\u2019\u201d Lilintahl recounted.<\/p>\n
That decision backfired. In January 2025, Lilintahl began one of what she said were several attempts to meet with the principal of their zoned public school and plead her case. The principal declined, according to Lilintahl, instead referring her to the policy. <\/p>\n
At least a dozen other D.C.-area families found themselves in the same situation this year. A spokesperson for D.C. public schools said the district needed to enforce the law systemwide instead of making exceptions for individual families.<\/p>\n
More than 1,000 miles away, in Lafayette, La., Corrie R. Gallien felt a similar sting last spring when her daughter got shut out of kindergarten\u2014but in reverse. Her daughter will turn 5 on Nov. 3, about a month after the Sept. 30 kindergarten cutoff in the state. Children must have turned 5 on or before that date to enroll in kindergarten.<\/p>\n
Too young to start kindergarten, according to state law, the little girl returned to preschool this fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came to my attention when she came home sad because her day care classmates had a graduation in May and she did not,\u201d said Gallien, who first shared the incident in her city\u2019s parenting blog, Lafayette Mom. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe learned she would not be graduating because she wasn\u2019t eligible to go to \u2018big kid school\u2019 next year,\u201d added Gallien, who felt that her daughter, who knew her ABCs, could color \u201cwithin the lines,\u201d and exhibited strong social skills, was ready for kindergarten.<\/p>\n
This type of strict enforcement of kindergarten cutoff dates comes at a pivotal time in early education. In recent years, the academic expectations for kindergarten\u2014which is mandated in only 17 states and the District of Columbia, and required to be offered for at least a half day in 44 states plus D.C.\u2014have evolved and become more rigorous. Once commonly associated with developing social and motor skills, kindergarten has become, in many districts, focused on learning foundational reading and math skills. <\/p>\n
Also in recent years, parents in general have begun to demand a greater say in their children\u2019s education, starting in the early grades. About 4% of families each year choose to \u201credshirt\u201d their children, delaying their entry into kindergarten by one year and enrolling them at age 6. <\/p>\n
Taken together, these factors raise the question: Who or what should decide if a child is ready for kindergarten?<\/p>\n
Districts that enforce a strict age cutoff point to a child\u2019s age as the singular determining factor for when they should begin kindergarten. <\/p>\n
In Washington, \u201cthis requirement has been in place since 1990 and reflects our city\u2019s belief that all children should benefit from the programming and services that schools provide. \u2026 DCPS\u2019s enrollment policies are aligned with local laws and regulations to ensure fairness and consistency for all families,\u201d wrote Lewis D. Ferebee, chancellor of the city\u2019s public schools, in a July letter to D.C. Council members. <\/p>\n
The letter came in response to the council members\u2019 efforts in support of the group of at least a dozen local parents requesting an exception to the cutoff date this year for their children, who hadn\u2019t yet attended kindergarten but had received notification from the school system that their birth dates made them eligible for 1st grade only.<\/p>\n
Chris Brown, associate dean for teacher education at the University of Buffalo-SUNY and a former kindergarten teacher, notes that conversations around school readiness aren\u2019t new. His former academic adviser, now in his 80s and retired, wrote his dissertation on the topic many decades ago.<\/p>\n
What is new, Brown said, are elevated expectations of children in the early school years. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more pressure in early grades for kids to be performing at higher academic levels than were historically expected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for determining school readiness, Brown said: \u201cI think that, when we make a policy [regarding start dates], we don\u2019t know individual children, and every child is different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gallien, the Louisiana parent whose daughter has to wait a year to start kindergarten because she narrowly missed the cutoff date, agrees. \u201cAge is an arbitrary factor. I think schools should look at the kids individually to assess whether they\u2019re ready for kindergarten,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Not all districts are prepared to open the age cutoff conversation for debate. But some district officials, like Ferebee in the District of Columbia, have recently acknowledged a need for better communication between districts and parents. <\/p>\n
In his letter to D.C. Council members, Ferebee acknowledged \u201cthat some families have received mixed messages from different parts of our system. That should not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, Lilintahl\u2019s daughter is attending a private preschool. Lilintahl remains uncertain what her daughter\u2019s school plans for next year will be.<\/p>\n
In Louisiana, Gallien said she never received any direct notification that her daughter missed the cutoff for kindergarten and didn\u2019t realize she could have made the case to school officials that her child was ready for school. \u201cI know now that under exceptional circumstances, a child missing the cutoff may qualify by testing as gifted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Tracy Wirtz, spokesperson for the Lafayette Parish school system, said the district actively publicizes registration information \u201cvia website, social media, and a digital and radio campaign for 12 weeks from the time registration for the following year opens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, after her experience, Gallien has a message for both parents and school systems: \u201cParents, ask questions. Look at state laws,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cI feel the school system should be more proactive about informing parents about their options.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jennifer Lilintahl began to hear rumors last year that her local public school in the District of Columbia had begun to enforce the district\u2019s age cutoff dates for kindergarten, putting her in a difficult position: Lilintahl\u2019s daughter will turn 6 on Sept. 19, and the district requires incoming kindergartners to be no older than 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1535,12818,2948,6868,12817,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-20888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-clash","9":"tag-cutoff","10":"tag-dates","11":"tag-districts","12":"tag-kindergartner","13":"tag-parents"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}