Following a high-quality early care and pre-K experience, the kindergarten-through-third-grade years set the foundation upon which future learning builds; and strengthening this continuum creates opportunities for later success. Key components of a quality experience in K-3 include school readiness and transitions, kindergarten requirements,…

Following a high-quality early care and pre-K experience, the kindergarten-through-third-grade years set the foundation upon which future learning builds; and strengthening this continuum creates opportunities for later success. Key components of a quality experience in K-3 include school readiness and transitions, kindergarten requirements,…

There is a great deal of concern on the part of not only educators, but also politicians, counselors, psychologists, researchers, members of boards of education, and parents, regarding current issues concerning kindergarten education. Central to these issues is the push for academics. With this push has come standardized testing, workbooks, and a…

Research on the relation of age of admission to kindergarten and later school achievement has yielded inconsistent findings. This study examined the school district records of two cohorts of kindergartners who had been enrolled in the same school district during Fall 1989 and Fall 1990. Records for both cohorts were examined at the completion of…

The practice of delaying students' entrance into kindergarten raises several questions. This literature review asks: (1) How does the entrance age of kindergarten children affect academic achievement?; (2) Do age-eligible older students perform better academically than younger students?; (3) Do year-older or "red-shirted" students have…

The Centennial School District in Warminster, Pennsylvania, implemented its Two-Year Developmental Kindergarten Program in order to provide education for children identified as "developmentally not ready" for traditional school placement. This document describes the kindergarten program and the process of identifying children for…

Academic redshirting, the practice of postponing a child's entry into kindergarten, is intended to give a child an extra year to become ready for school, an especially important goal given the increasing academic demands of early elementary years. This digest presents information about the incidence of redshirting, and summarizes some of the…

This study examined the relationship between age at school entry and reading readiness in kindergarten. Subjects included 30 kindergarten students selected randomly from a population of 56 students at a parochial school in a predominantly low socioeconomic status neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. All students were African American and ranged in…

This study investigated the relationship of kindergarten entrance age to academic achievement at the end of grades one through five, and the influence of gender, race, and family income on student achievement. A total of 185 students who attended a Cooperative Demonstrative Kindergarten during 1979-82 and remained in the Starkville (Mississippi)…

The National Education Association prepared this booklet on school entrance age because the association feels that the issue of a national cutoff date for entrance to kindergarten is perhaps the least controversial, most popular, and easiest educational reform issue to promote. The first part of the booklet: (1) provides information that supports…

Studies were conducted locally to augment findings from the literature regarding the effect of school entrance age, and to examine several other issues related to the St. Louis Public School's kindergarten screening program. Studies reported address a number of questions related to program planning and policy development: (1) Is there evidence to…

Reviewed are foreign and American studies on the relationship between school entrance age and reading readiness; and presented is the author's contention that children should be automatically admitted to kindergarten and first grade, with the school responsible for appropriate individualized instruction. (CL)

This discussion of kindergarten education is intended to provide information that educators can use in their efforts to provide equal access to an excellent education for all children. Current and past approaches to kindergarten are delineated in discussions of changes in the nature of schooling, in society, and in the understanding of how…

This paper (1) reviews the literature on the relationship between entrance age into kindergarten and academic achievement and (2) reports a study of the effect of entrance age on school success. Some experts say that age alone is the best indicator of success. Others say that chronological age, mental age, intelligence quotient, readiness,…

Used hypothetical student profiles to investigate factors other than achievement that influence kindergarten teachers' retention decisions. Found that teachers were not more likely to recommend retention for boys, nor for children born in August, although the trend was to retain younger students. Teachers were more likely to retain children…