My kids were enrolled at two of the private schools OP mentioned, and both taught pre-reading skills (letter recognition, some aspects of Handwriting without Tears.) It's just not a huge focus of the day with lots of drills and touch screen alphabet games like in DCPS (which I visited before enrolling them in private).

Anonymous wrote:People! Do some research. Early or late reading does not matter. They all tend to even out by age 8. What is your hurry? Let your child be a kid. Plenty of academic years are ahead. Geeeez!

+1

All that time spent learning to read will polarize the kids whose brains are ready and those who are not (affecting the self esteem of those who don’t pick it up easily). It also takes time away from natural discovery and creativity, story telling, role playing—all that help them with reading and comprehension in the future, but are age appropriate now. They have so many worksheets in elementary school, there’s zero evidence that worksheets and drills benefit the pre-k set.