Has anyone had success at entering a child younger than 5 into K in California?

It looks like CA regulations do not allow admitting a child to public K before the 5th birthday, although districts may, at their discretion, admit a late birthday to K on or after the 5th birthday, even if it's in the middle of the year. If an early-admit student finishes kindergarten in public or private, the next school year still has to begin in K, for at least a trial period, after which, again at the district's discretion, they may move the child up to first grade. The CDE guidelines suggest social maturity, physical development, and 95th %ile cognition as criteria for local districts to consider.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/em/kinderinfo.asp

In short, it appears that it would be a violation of CA education regs to admit a child younger than 5 to public K. Doing so would endanger apportionment to the district (aka, funding). (TK is a different story, but only applies to birthdays from Sep 2 to Dec 2, and still shunts them into another year of K.)

What's so funny is that up until very recently the cutoff in CA was December 1. And now all of the sudden it's against regulations to admit a 4 year old?

Short-term cost-cutting measure, perhaps? It looks like it was effective this school year, which probably cut the kindergarten budget by 25%, right off the bat. (I'm not in CA, so I'm just assuming that they went from Dec 1 to Sep 1, which would, at one stroke, eliminate three months worth of birthdays from the 2014-2015 kindergarten class.)

The only way I know is to find a PRIVATE school that will take a child early and keep them in the private school through 1st grade. There is a date for the start of 1st and K is optional. I do know of people who have done this, but my experience is most private schools are just as strict about this.

A bit of history the CA cutoff has been changed in recent years from Dec 2nd (very late) to Sept 2nd. Supposedly there is supposed to be a pre-K year available to kids with fall birthdays. This was to make it more in line with most of the rest of the US and improving the standardized test scores.

No.. they adjusted it by a month a year. This started a few years back. And when it was Dec 2nd.. that deadline is FIRM. They supposedly added a state funded "pre-K" for fall kids who used to make the deadline. I'm not sure about the status of the pre-K class because of money issues it was supposed to be temporary for the transition.

It was partially for cost cutting measures, but mostly as a way to increase scores of the state testing. And as I said about to be more in line with most of the rest of the country. I agree with this change, my older DD is a late Sept birthday and should really have been help back. I sent her off to college a month shy of her 18th birthday. Parents who could afford to were red-shirting fall babies and thus most of the young fall birthdays were kids who weren't prepared for school. It's a problem from the standpoint of a parent of a gifted kid, but overall I think it's the right thing for the state to have done.

My daughter did early entrance to first grade at a small private school. This is another way of saying that they tested her when she was 4 years and 9 or 10 months old (the age cutoff for entry to K at the time). She passed the end-of-K tests and a few end-of-1 tests, and they enrolled her as a first grader with subject acceleration at 5 years and 0 months when school started.

IMO, this is probably the best option in California these days. Small private schools tend to be more flexible in that regard. If you're going with public schools, I'd call and ask about their policies.

Our school district gives individual assessment to children who miss the cutoff date and admit them on a case-by-case basis. My child, who missed the cutoff date by just a few days, was allowed early entrance into K this year.

Not all school districts have this flexibility -- we called a few neighboring districts (because at one point we were considering moving), and none of them would make any exception.

At the end though, we decided to go with the private school route.

I don't live in CA so I don't have any direct experience, but fwiw I have a friend with a dd who is now in high school who early-enrolled her dd the same way Val did in private school, and then transferred to public for 2nd grade.

Best wishes,

polarbear