How old should a kindergartner be? Parents and districts clash over cutoff dates

Education Week quotes Chris Brown in an article about contention surrounding cut-off dates for kindergarten students. Brown said these conversations aren’t new, what is new, he said, are elevated expectations of children in the early school years. “There’s a lot more pressure in early grades for kids to be performing at higher academic levels than were historically expected,” he said. As for determining school readiness, Brown said: “I think that, when we make a policy [regarding start dates], we don’t know individual children, and every child is different.”