Maureen Coleman, a veteran first-grade teacher at Forty-Ninth Street Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles, can spot them, even on the first day of school.
They might cry when their parents leave. Or they hold their books upside down. When the teacher tells them to line up, they don't know what that means. They might look at their pencil quizzically, or wander away from the reading circle in the middle of a story.
In California, 46,000 youngsters--10% of kindergarten-age children--skip kindergarten each year because the law doesn't make education compulsory until age 6.
First-graders who don't go to kindergarten are typically behind their peers in their academic and social development, and are more likely to flunk a grade in elementary school, educators say.
Teachers say that many of the late-starters are the children of new immigrant families who are unfamiliar with the U.S. education system and have trouble navigating school district bureaucracies. Some parents' work schedules don't mesh with their children's class times.
Whatever the reason, the students don't enroll in kindergarten, and "they have trouble adjusting, not just academically, but socially," in first grade, Coleman said. Down the hall from her class, in Gail Lonseth's kindergarten class, you can see what they missed. Lonseth starts drilling her students as soon as they settle into her classroom.
"The name is Y and the sound is yak, yak, yak!" the children call out in unison. "The name is S and the sound is sssss!"
The trouble is, making kindergarten mandatory costs money. Analysts at the state Department of Finance estimated that requiring all 5-year-olds to go could cost state and local agencies an extra $460 million a year.
Some experts say kindergarten is so important that it should be extended from half a day to a full school day. But that, too, would be expensive, as districts would have to double their kindergarten classroom space.
Those financial realities, at a time when the state is staring at a $27-billion budget shortfall, have led state legislators to temper their calls for kindergarten reform.
A bill now before Gov. Gray Davis, AB 634, originally was intended to make kindergarten compulsory for all 5-year-olds. But now the bill, which was introduced by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), would require only that children who have already attended for more than 30 days continue to attend kindergarten.
