Written by members of a consulting team engaged to evaluate a school district's kindergarten program and make recommendations for the future, this report chronicles the district's progress in coming to more fully understand goals and problems related to kindergarten education. Specifically, the report presents the evaluation team's examination of conflicting claims, views, and assertions concerning the kindergarten program. Section I provides a brief description of the team's visit to the community, as well as summaries of information obtained from parents, school board members, central district staff, teachers, and principals. Section II addresses questions put to the team to guide the evaluation--questions that concerned developmental readiness, optional and regular kindergarten programs, and needed changes. Section III discusses particular issues the team wished to highlight: (1) the practice of "red-shirting," or parental withholding of 6-year-old children from first grade; (2) community competitiveness and parents' concern with their children "making it"; (3) curriculum issues, particularly the importance of appropriate methods of instruction; and (4) the cycle of blame allocation among the interested groups, which was considered irrelevant, potentially harmful, and capable of undermining efforts to solve the district's problems. Appended are a nearly verbatim record of participants' comments and an extensive ERIC Ready Search of 1985 and 1986 journal articles and documents about kindergarten and kindergarten children. (RH)