Most States Still Don’t Require Full-Day Kindergarten, Report Finds

Commenting on the report, Karen Schulman, the child care and early learning research director for the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group based in Washington, noted that in many states and school districts, education policies don’t reflect the reality of both parents working in many families. “Education policies also do not reflect that many children already attend a full-day preschool or full-day child-care program before they reach kindergarten, and that half-day kindergarten—rather than being a way to ease children into the school experience, as it was when kindergarten was typically children’s first experience in a setting outside the home—is actually a step backwards in some ways, including in the amount of time available for learning,” Schulman wrote in an email.