OLD ENOUGH BUT T O O YOUNG FOR SCHOOL

The use of readiness assessment rather than chronological age for admission to kindergarten is proposed. A r e children in the United States being hurried unnecessarily to grow up? Developmental psychologists such as Elkind (1981) have observed that parents, the media, and schools contribute to chil-dren being pushed beyond their developmental limits. Elkind accused schools of using a factory approach, which emphasizes worker (teacher) productivity and quality control (pupil compe-tency). In such a system, the needs of the individual child can be tossed aside like a chipped bottle on an assembly line. Children traditionally have been placed on this assembly line at age 5, ready or not. However, this trend can be stopped. Admission to kinder-garten (K) should be based on readiness assessment rather than chronological age (CA). According to Senior (1986), readiness assessment (RA) could be used to screen for children who are developmentally young (DY) (p. 161). Senior defined these children as demonstrating pat-terns of behavior "typical of a child who is six months to one-and-one-half years younger " (p. 161). This developmental difference might be evident in only one area or in all areas. The reason for the difference is simple: Developmental rates vary from one child to the next and also within a child across skills (p. 161). Furthermore, Senior concluded that overplacement, or placin