The city school district is considering limiting early kindergarten admission to children who turn 5 between Sept. 2 and Sept. 30.
Pittsburgh Public Schools allows children whose birthdays are between Sept. 2 and Dec. 31 to enroll, provided they pass a test assessing their knowledge of kindergarten-level skills such as letters and counting. The board expects to consider the change before year's end.
"It's ensuring we're not putting children into a situation that they're not going to be successful in, but at the same time honoring those students who are born a couple of days late," said Carol Barone-Martin, executive director of early childhood education. "A lot of it has to do with things we don't really test that we need to think about: maturation and the ability to be in a kindergarten, which has certain expectations."
Barone-Martin based her analysis on five years of data, which included academic proficiency and whether students were promoted to first grade.
"Children born in September had the highest proficiency levels across the board, which makes sense because we screened them to come in and they were almost as old as children who come in otherwise," she said.
About 85 percent of Allegheny County school districts use Sept. 1 as the cutoff for kindergarten, Baron-Martin said. Fifty percent allow early admittance, she said.
Based on her own kids' experiences, board President Theresa Colaizzi said she agrees with the recommendation. One of her children was born in December and she didn't send him to school until the next year, but her daughter, born Aug. 30, went to kindergarten a few days after her 5th birthday.
"Looking back now, it was the best way to do it," she said.
