<p>^ ^</p>
<p>Sorry for not being clear. Meant to say I ended attending another Catholic school that was the polar opposite of the stereotypical strict Catholic school in popular culture of the '80s and before.</p>
<p>Upper midwest mom here. Son has early June birthday. With no redshirting, and assuming an even birthday distribution across the year, one quarter of the boys should be younger than he. Well, in a class with over 400 boys, he is the second youngest boy. Sports are a problem. Getting teased for lack of facial hair and a pubescent voice is a problem. This child is a 99th percentile academic student and socially mature. Pre-school teacher said to send him to kindergarden on time. In our district, a kid needs to have a school district test to age up. I wish it was the same requirement for redshirting. I am totally okay with holding back for true reasons, but not to give one’s kids an advantage - and have it determined by a professional! Your kid’s advantage is my kid’s disadvantage. My friend, a kindergarten teacher, agrees. It’s impossible to teach the 18 - 20 month age differential in her class.</p>
<p>Many cities offer full day kindergarten. When I was in kindergarten it was only half day. I went in the morning.
For many kids a full day is too much.
Our city schools had been offering full day kindergarten & partially subsidizing the cost. ( the state only covers half day). </p>
<p>Next fall, families will be charged $2,700 for full day kindergarten.</p>
<p>Half day programs aren’t available, however families are welcome to have their child only attend mornings if they don’t want to/can’t afford the fees.
Unfortunately, the way the classrooms are set up, academics are in the afternoon, so a child who only attends mornings may be at a disadvantage when it is time to enter 1st grade.
I recognize that children who have had a good preschool experience/have adult mentors in their home & community will likely not suffer any setback.
But for the kids who don’t, it likely will make a difference.</p>
<p>My older son has an August birthday. The kindergarten cutoff was July 1 so he was 6 when he started. He was reading at 4 so I wondered how bored he would be. The teacher was wonderful in offering him higher level work and was always commenting on how he was a class leader. He was pretty immature at 5 so I’m glad he started at 6 but I was even more glad that the decision was made for me by the school district timeline.</p>
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<p>That’s really wonderful to hear. There was a big change in the mid-to-late 1990’s in how they train teachers to teach reading. If your school district offers Guided Reading, basically invented by Fountas and Pinnell, teachers will be putting “leveled books” into the hands of children starting in K and up into around Grade 2 or 3. That means they’ll read at their level (with gradations by a matter of one month, not years). They’ll sit in the company of a small group of other children at same level.</p>
<p>So instead of “bluebird and robin” ghettos all year, imagine perhaps 6 types of bird nests with kids flying among all the nests as they can handle that level. Nobody’s tied to any group.</p>
<p>If the teacher assesses them individually with a 2-minute “Running Record” as s/he should daily for one child or another all throughout the school year, the child will shift groups dynamically and continue to progress at their own pace. (Sometimes teachers just know when to shift upwards by listening to the child read in the small groups, but others use these mini-tests.) </p>
<p>This means, if a child today can already read upon entry to K, they might start reading books intended for First, Second or even Third Graders. On that: reading at those levels really means that: fluent reading of brand new material followed by demonstrated comprehension of content. That’s not the same as rote reading of favorite memorized books at home. </p>
<p>If I had a K-entering child today (oooh, where are those grandchildren already?) I’d want to know whether the classroom was a “print-rich environment” with words all over the place on charts; whether they practiced “Guided Reading” with “Leveled Books”; and whether the K teacher in conversation sounded inspired or insipid. All things being met to my satisfaction, I wouldn’t hesitate to put a reading child into a modern K, because I don’t think they’d be bored – just because they entered reading.</p>
<p>If a child doesn’t enter K reading, that should also be fine because they’ll be given Level A or B books, basically 6-8 pages long, with pictures and a single-word caption. That gets them ready to read at Level C, which classically is the starter level for First Grade. It’s no problem if the student spends all of K reading Level A and B books, either as long as the school has a decent supply of different ones. </p>
<p>I think the real love of reading within school (not counting what happens at home) is developed when the K and early grade teachers read to the assembled children from a picture book of wonderful children’s literature. There, she’s reading something written at around 5th grade level (small print, too). It has complexity, and s/he asks some great questions during and following the book to model what good readers do when they read a book. I think that’s magical. These are not the “how to read” lessons but the books taken from the school library (or teacher’s personal library).</p>
<p>What would bore a reading child in K is the time spent with Big Books that are designed to teach most children “how to read.” Although those were written for First Grade, I’m sure they’re used now in K’s in many upscale districts. It might be 30 minutes daily, but would feel like an eternity to a reading child. The issue might be is the child “never bored” or “sometimes bored” or has one boring 30-minute episode each day of K.</p>
<p>I agree with the guest on 60 minutes who said that red shirting is educational quackery. I believe that there are very few children who are so immature that they can’t start K. The problem is that K is filled with 7 year olds so the five year olds appear immature when they’re just normal 5 year olds. Then the red shirt kids parents want a curriculum that’s appropriate to the older kids. It’s a vicious cycle. </p>
<p>Our area has a Sep 1 cutoff. If a kid is born Sep 2 - Dec 31 they all start K. Jun-aug redshirting is almost universal. Mar- May redshirting is pretty common. So, it’s pretty common to have kids starting K at 6 1/2. </p>
<p>I think we all have stories of how redshirting or not worked out for the best or didn’t. I think parents have a pahologic fear of having their kid being the youngest. Most parents I know who redshirted have done it only to give the kid an advantage or for sports. Not for academic or social issues. One did it so the kid would be the biggest and the smartest and had kid do K twice at different schools. So far, it hasn’t worked out academically. However, it was clear from a young age that kid would be very tall. </p>
<p>In our case, boy with late summer birthday and Sep 1 cutoff. I was young and naive mother who was from state with Dec 31 cutoff, so summer didn’t seem like late birthday to me. Never heard of anyone holding kid back, so sent him at normal time and ending up skipping K. No regrets and no academic or social issues. However, other parents thought I was crazy. Second kid also summer birthday and no redshirting. No regrets either.</p>
<p>Sounds so much different than the 60’s with the controlled vocabulary books ( & those SRA cards in 6th grade).
Both my oldest & I read everything we could get our hands on, but while I was stuck with reading Highlights magazines over & over, ( or Coffee,Tea, or Me & The Tin Drum at inappropriate ages), she had a ton of books to choose from, although it was a challenge to find books that suited her vocabulary level, but were still appropriate for her age in theme. I think reading Island of the Blue Dolphins when she was almost 7 was probably pushing it a little. ( she got it from her classroom) Her class seemed to us Drop Everything & Read as their method of teaching.</p>
<p>( youngest didn’t learn till 3rd grade, but now she reads as much as anyone)</p>
<p>ek, was that Goodnight Moon I heard Morrison singing?:)</p>
<p>Not only was our son young but he was really small-5% small .We never considered holding him back .He was so ready -why hold back and bore him to death?</p>
<p>Older son had very late July birthday but we did not hold him back. He was always one of the youngest boys in his class. Younger son has early November birthday so was always one of the oldest boys in his class. Didn’t really notice much difference in how it impacted them academically, socially,or with sports.</p>
<p>The private schools around here tend to use 6/1 as a cutoff, even when the public schools had a 12/31 cutoff. We looked at a couple of schools when S1 was younger, and they would have had him repeat 2nd grade. We were not going there!</p>
<p>S1’s preschool tended to have classes grouped by months rather than years, so his classes were pretty much all fall birthdays. (In fact, they had a 4 yo pre-school class in addition to pre-K, intended for those kids who were going to wait the extra year. The normal sequence for a fall bday was 4 yo preschool, pre-K, K.) S1 was the only one who graduated in 2008 instead of 2009 with the rest of the fall bday cohort.</p>
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<p>That’s the exact opposite of the prevailing mentality in my old NYC neighborhood parents. Here, the prevailing fear was of being the oldest kid as that would often be interpreted by other classmates, parents, and even teachers that the kid was left back or has some severe developmental/maturity issues. </p>
<p>The most miserable kid in third-fifth grade who was slow and had serious anger management issues was 2+ years older than the rest of us for not only being redshirted once…but also left back due to academic/behavioral deficiencies. Was booted out by the middle of fifth grade for one too many violations of fighting or getting caught at stealing stuff from other classmates…not sure which. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the exact opposite is inferred from kids who are the youngest in a given grade. They tend to be singled out for a lot of praise from teachers, admins, neighbors, and even some fellow classmates for being “smart” and “quick to learn”. That compensated quite a bit for being picked on for being the among the youngest/shortest in the class.</p>
<p>^That reminds me of the boy in my eighth grade with a beard!</p>
<p>“those SRA cards in 6th grade”
I remember SRA in sixth grade!</p>
<p>ek, was that Goodnight Moon I heard Morrison singing?</p>
<p>Oh you mean the Reading Rainbow theme? My kids loved that, especially the TNG episode. ;)</p>
<p>Is everyone talking about full day K? I wasn’t sure if it was the standard 20 years ago nationally. I also think that our district, at 28-30kids per classroom is on the humungous side considering the varied readiness & energy levels.</p>
<p>My youngest started public school in third grade, but for K-2, she attended a private school with four teachers & 20 kids. ( the children moved rooms depending on subject) I knew that there was no way she could have gone into a classroom of 28 kids. It was hard enough for her at her private school. Keeping her out a year might have helped, but we both needed the structure of a school day.</p>
<p>“Sounds so much different than the 60’s with the controlled vocabulary books ( & those SRA cards in 6th grade)”</p>
<p>I loved SRA! But we started that in 4th grade. </p>
<p>“youngest didn’t learn till 3rd grade, but now she reads as much as anyone.”</p>
<p>My mom was a reading specialist and always told me it doesn’t matter if a kid can’t read until 3rd grade. </p>
<p>What I disliked when my son was in elementary was making reading x amount of minutes homework from K on, increasing the # of minutes every year. My son always did his reading but as soon as the time was up, that was it for him. I think it hindered any love for reading he might have acquired. He’s still not a reader. :(</p>
<p>“Is everyone talking about full day K? I wasn’t sure if it was the standard 20 years ago nationally. I also think that our district, at 28-30kids per classroom is on the humungous side considering the varied readiness & energy levels.”</p>
<p>Our district only went to full day kindergarten in 2010. The board voted on it way back when my son was just entering and it was defeated. Their reason was that being an upper middle class suburb our kids didn’t “need” all day K. </p>
<p>My son’s nursery school even had a longer day (4 hours) than his K class.</p>
<p>I disliked SRA. i learned it was a waste of time to read the card then go back & answer the question. I found it was much faster just to read the question then skim the text for the answer. I really don’t remember how any of my classes taught reading before that except 1st grade- with the Dick & Jane books</p>
<p>I actually was getting nervous with my youngest & reading, which is why I transferred her to public school for 3rd. Although she liked her private school & they assured me she was making progress, I was still frustrated that she rebelled against any of my own attempts to teach her. She would let me read to her, but if I slid my finger along the words as I read she would throw the book across the room. :(</p>
<p>“i learned it was a waste of time to read the card then go back & answer the question. I found it was much faster just to read the question then skim the text for the answer.”</p>
<p>I liked it because I am a very fast reader and was always several color levels above everyone else. :)</p>
<p>But didn’t you get bored with the lack of detail? It may have made a difference if I had used it in 3rd grade instead of 6th, but I wanted to read * books* and periodicals, not snippets of Readers Digest. ( & I was ready for them- I also was way beyond what* other students were reading, but i hated that- because I didn’t have anyone to discuss my interests with)</p>
<p>I wasn’t “the smartest guy in the room” by any means, one girl had a tutor who was teaching her Russian- she already knew German ( I didn’t have any interest in other languages). But classrooms in my suburbia were not meant for independent study. The SAR cards at least did allow me to zip through my requirement for the day after which I then would read the book hidden in my desk.</p>
<p>This redshirtting is ridiculous. Make Kindergarten half a day again that’s about readiness, not panic if they aren’t reading. There is no data to support reading in K gives any advantage later in life. </p>
<p>Make K appropriate for 5 year olds. Period. 7 yo’s in K? Seriously? Then you’ve 19-20 yo’s in high school, and way beyond the time frame you want adolescents in secondary school. I had a hard enough time with the foreign exchange students coming to my kids school at 19-20 and asking out my daughter and her friends in 9th grade. </p>
<p>What is with the prolonged childhood? Make school appropriate for the age not the other way around. </p>
<p>Moral of the story, have your kids in January - May.</p>
<p>I hated SRA. Everyone knew the ranking of the colors, and the people in the middle unmercifully teased the people at the top (for being uncool) and the people at the bottom (for being stupid). </p>
<p>I have no memory of the content of the SRA cards, just of the awkwardness of trying to hide their color from my classmates.</p>
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<p>As far as I know, there are also no data to support that reading in K or earlier gives any disadvantage – although the teachers terrified my mother by telling her that my academic life would be ruined because I entered K already knowing how to read.</p>