As the first day of school looms, parents are preparing their kids for kindergarten, and apparently some parents started awhile ago.

Today, heading to the first year of formal school involves more than back-to-school shopping and haircuts. This week, MSNBC.com reports on “Tutoring tots? Some kids prep for kindergarten.”

The idea of tutoring ahead of kindergarten raises a bunch of questions for educators and parents. In this era of focus on quality early learning, how hard should parents work to get their children ready for kindergarten? What roles do preschool, pre-kindergarten and child care play in preparing these kids? And do we risk going too far and taking too much creativity and free play from the first years of life?

Apparently, some parents think they need to do a lot of work.

Today, many children go to two or three years of preschool and some stay on for another year of pre-K. Like (Heather) Rubesch, some parents have begun signing their kids up for summer classes or one-on-one tutoring to improve their reading, math, writing and overall "kindergarten readiness." – MSNBC.com, 8/18/09.

I should admit we feel lucky that we can send our kids to a school that doesn’t worry if they read in kindergarten and isn’t constrained by federal testing standards.

But many public kindergartens are under tremendous pressure to meet federal guidelines and test students, a point the MSNBC.com article makes.

Critics of the state of early education say there are problems all around. The pressure, they say, largely starts at the top with efforts such as the NCLB, the federal act that pushes schools to increase performance or face penalties. That puts pressure on superintendents and principals, who put pressure on teachers, who in turn increase their focus on academics for even the youngest children.

(Check out the story, it’s a good read.)

If kindergarten is the new first grade, what does that make pre-kindergarten?