Starting K in APS next year or waiting
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Anonymous
I’m very glad you were successful. My younger sibling with an August birthday had significant maturity challenges and through social promotion ended up in 2nd grade basically unable to read. My parents, 30 years later, regret their decision. |
Anonymous
But do you think all of that would have been solved by starting a year later. I mean it sounds like there were other significant issues (i.e.) the problem with social promotion. I mean I don't know like there are significant issues. One of the issues is kids not getting the help they need. But they likely still need that extra help whether starting in at almost 5 or almost 6. I guess what I am saying is the issues is NOT your sibling started with an August birthday, it is because the system failed. |
Anonymous
My daughter with a late August birthday started K on time at an APS elementary. She started K and went from being a happy kid to sobbing every night that she "just wanted to play" and refusing to attend school. She was a ball of stress with tantrums and OCD like behaviors. She started wetting the bed. Her teacher sent her to the principal almost daily for some "violation" or another--things that I really think were age appropriate. She ended up on a 15 minute behavior chart where she got a star for every 15 minutes she behaved. She started chewing her fingers until they bled, stopped sleeping through the night, and started sleep walking. The year finally ended and she started summer camp. My happy, calm kid was back almost immediately. Not a single complaint from camp about her behavior. No more stress behaviors. It was like a light switch flipped. |
Anonymous
I meant to reflect before posting. In short, people always talk in the abstract about emotional maturity, but I don't think they recognize what life looks like when it's missing. I watched my daughter melt down for an entire school year and nothing I did to support her helped. I heard from her teacher frequently how unhappy she was to have my daughter in her class. It's been a few years now and things are better, but not perfect. She's matured somewhat. She's had teachers who are better at classroom management. But it was not a good way to kick off her educational journey, not for her or us as parents, and there are lingering feelings from that experience. (And no, no special needs. If anything she may get tagged as GT.) |
Anonymous
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All of these anecdotal stories are irrelevant. Most Jul/Aug/Sep -birthday kids would be fine to go on-time *or* wait a year.
The big disadvantage to this fall's K class is that this grade is going to be HUGE - an issue when it gets to be time to apply to colleges. That is the only pause I'd have to send her on time. Otherwise, I'd just send on time. If you want to buy time, you could do private K (if you can find a spot) and then decide next year to go to public K vs. switch to 1st. - experience with both a 4.11yo and 6.0yo starting K |
Anonymous
| Just do K twice if you're that worried. It's free and if your kid is fine, move on. If they need more time, just repeat. It's a lot easier to do in K than when they are older. |
Anonymous
That's not usually allowed |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
I’m sorry to hear this. What a sad experience. How did she do in first grade? And the other years that followed? |
Anonymous
| Every kid is different when it comes to starting K. I did it at age 4 (late Nov. birthday) no problems, never affected me, academically and socially. However, K now is not the K of the 1980s and we can't compare our experiences to what kids confront at most public schools now. I went 1/2 day in the 1980s and there was little academic pressure. Mostly playing, outdoor time. My DS also has a Nov. birthday and he will be almost 6 this fall and I know it will be a struggle for him even then because of his particular disposition. He 100% would not have succeeded this year if we lived in a place that used calendar year birthdays like NYC for example. For people saying that kids will do fine, they adjust, etc you may not have one of the kids for whom starting K too young is a disaster. See the PP about the affect it had on her daughter. While red shirting as a whole is overdone, there are definitely kids and circumstances where it makes sense. |
Anonymous
Your kid isn’t being red shirted though. There are still some places that cut off in December but most are sept/October. I think your experience even highlights why redshirting doesn’t work. A child’s personality and disposition may have more to do with it than age. Also, to the PP who’s brother couldn’t read in 2nd grade, he obviously needed more support and in the 80s he wouldn’t have received that regardless of if he started school on time or not. |
Anonymous
The way around this is usually to send your child to a private K, and then decide whether or not to repeat in public (or, I suppose, private again). This is what we did with our problematic summer birthday kid. In his case, things went much better than expected and we'll be sending him to a public 1st grade. |
Anonymous
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The answer to this question every single time is "it depends on the kid." I have young kids, but my oldest is in first. He is a mid-July birthday. He went on time -- so he had half of K and most of 1st virtual. He is on the taller side for his age, very outgoing, and precocious. However, he was not reading. I never considered holding him back. However, I have a friend who did the opposite and it was definitely the right thing for her kid. You know your kid best.
His first grade teacher has said he is doing very well, he is now reading well above grade level. He would have been so bored if we waited another year. There are downsides to holding your kid back too -- being bored can lead to bad behavior. If money is no issue and you are really on the fence, I think the idea of sending to a private K as a test is a good one, but probably not necessary! Good luck! |
Anonymous
Send your K’er to school. As much in-person as possible. CORONAVIRUS WSJ.com EDUCATION Remote Kindergarten During Covid-19 ‘Could Impact This Generation of Kids for Their Lifetime’ Kindergartners normally learn skills valuable for the rest of their education; an estimated 450,000 children may miss the grade this year HIGH POINT, N.C.—Of all the students who suffered learning loss during the Covid-19 pandemic and remote schooling, one grade level has educators very concerned: the kindergartners. Kindergarten is where 5- and 6-year-olds learn the building blocks of how to be students, skills such as taking turns and working together that they will need for the next 12 years of formal schooling. It coincides with a critical window for brain development, the time between 5 and 7 years old when neural connections are firing most rapidly for higher-cognitive functions like problem-solving and reasoning. Kindergarten “can’t be replicated even by the very best teachers in the virtual environment,” said Whitney Oakley, chief academic officer for North Carolina’s Guilford County Schools. A missed, delayed or low-quality kindergarten experience “could impact this generation of kids for their lifetime.” The most reliable predictor of positive outcomes in adulthood, from educational attainment to mental health, isn’t academic ability but how well students cooperate with peers, help others, understand feelings and resolve conflicts, according to a 2015 study by Mark Greenberg, a professor of developmental psychology at Penn State University, that tracked 750 people from kindergarten to about 25 years of age. “The skills that we would be teaching in kindergarten? Children have not gotten them this year,” he said. “In the best case, they’ve gotten a small percentage of them.” Many parents didn’t enroll their children in kindergarten this year, with enrollment off by roughly 15% in many states. There are typically three million kindergartners, according to federal data, so a decline of 15% nationwide would mean roughly 450,000 missing students. Most states require that schools offer kindergarten but only 19 require that students enroll, according to the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan research organization. Families aren’t legally required to enroll a child in school until ages 6 or 7 in most of states, according to federal data. Some children will start first grade in the fall and just skip kindergarten, school administrators predict. Others will be starting kindergarten a year late, leaving the fall’s kindergarten class extra large and filled with students with a wide developmental range. Many districts are building supplemental summer programs and pushing parents to sign up students who missed kindergarten or were fully remote this year. School districts have given priority to reopening classrooms for kindergartners because the year is so important, the curriculum so challenging to do online and the growing scientific evidence that small children aren’t spreading the virus. Many districts are teaching kindergartners with hybrid instruction: Students are in school some days a week or partial days and remote the rest of the time. The pace of reopening has increased in recent weeks. As of April 5, 34% of kindergartners attended districts that were fully in-person and 9% attended districts that were fully remote, with the majority of kids attending hybrid school, according to the Return To Learn Tracker, developed by the American Enterprise Institute. It isn’t clear how many of the hybrid districts offer full-time in-person instruction to kindergartners and a mix to other grades. In suburban Washington, D.C., freelance writer Jessica Goodwin’s son spent most of the school year in remote learning. He wasn’t developing close friendships with classmates since they spent much of remote instruction time on mute. She spent most days sitting beside him, supervising logins, printing out worksheets, taking pictures when they are complete and scanning them in. “The most important part of kindergarten is how to make friends, how to solve your own problems and be independent,” said Ms. Goodwin, a former elementary school teacher. “It’s hard to be independent when you’re sitting in a room all day with your mom.” Her son recently started in-person school and is a different child, she said. He comes home chattering about who he saw on the bus or how during a math lesson he was a “10” and his friend was a “2” and together they made “12.” “There’s something about being in the room,” she said. Kindergarten started in Germany in the mid-19th century as a hands-on, play-based program that emphasized social and spiritual development. It was championed by American education reformers in the late 19th century, said Jennifer Lin Russell, a University of Pittsburgh professor who has written about the evolution of kindergarten. The focus on academics has increased with the push for national reading and math standards, Ms. Russell said. Guilford County Schools, a district of 69,000 students in central North Carolina, began offering half-day in-person kindergarten in October and full-day in November, earlier than most peer districts in the state. At Southwest, the district’s largest elementary school, there are 115 children in six kindergarten classes. Five classes are in person; one is remote. Kindergarten teacher Lynda Reich began the first lesson of a recent in-person school day by switching her cloth mask for one with a clear plastic panel. She said the mask tends to fog up, so she saves it for language-arts lessons when it is important for students to watch her mouth make sounds. NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP Education Select coverage from the WSJ's education bureau on the state of schools and learning, curated by bureau chief Chastity Pratt and sent to you via email. She stood at the front of the classroom and spoke loudly, over-enunciating, to counteract the mask’s muffling. “We’ve been learning how to use our digraphs,” Ms. Reich said. “What are digraphs?” “Two letters!” a student responded. “Awesome,” Ms. Reich said. “Yes, that’s two letters, two letters that come together to make a single sound.” The students sounded out of “ch” and “sh” in unison, then worked independently to build words using magnets on boards at their desks. Typically they would be seated at tables of four, Ms. Reich said, sharing materials to practice cooperative learning skills. Now they work alone, though Ms. Reich said she tries to find opportunities to work with a “shoulder partner,” a classmate seated several feet away. At lunchtime, cafeteria staff members bring individual bags to the classroom. Students pull their masks down over their chins and eat at their desks. They watch an educational video on a screen in the front of the room, in part to discourage talking. Recess, which research shows boosts social skills overall and concentration during the school day, is abbreviated, to ensure only a few classes are on the playground at a time. Each class keeps to a designated section. Southwest kindergarten teacher Carmen Longest said that in the past, small trips within the school, such as to visit the library or cafeteria, taught valuable lessons. They provided a break from the classroom, trained students how to line up and move in a group and helped them take direction from someone other than their classroom teacher. “Our students don’t leave our classrooms except for recess,” she said. If a student offers to share scissors with a classmate, Ms. Longest said she tries to compliment the instinct but explains sharing isn’t safe right now. “We say ‘thank you for offering,’ then we give them one of ours,” she said. Down the hall from the in-person kindergarten classrooms is teacher Kristi Ingram’s all-but-empty one. Ms. Ingram volunteered to teach virtual kindergarten for 14 students whose families kept them home due to health concerns. She toggles between two laptops, one with a screen she could share and one with a grid of four students working in a small group. She showed a list of numbers on her screen, with one number missing. “How am I going to find that missing number?” she asked the group. The students were quiet, then called out responses in a rush. She asked them to count to 10 with her to find the answer, but they counted at different paces, over background noise, including a baby’s cries. The bottom half of one child’s face was off-screen, as was the left side of another’s. “Am I supposed to be here?” one girl asked. After months of remote work, Ms. Ingram said she can recognize each student’s voice and make corrections even if they talk over one another. She also meets virtually one-on-one with each student during the week. “Building those relationships and connections is very important to me,” she said. Harvard University education professor Stephanie Jones said she hopes that once all kindergartners are back in the classroom, the emphasis isn’t just on getting them caught up academically to prepare for required testing but also on the intangible habits of thinking and behavior. “They need to focus attention, be aware of their emotions and interactions, just to understand the words being spoken by the teacher,” she said. “It’s all wound up in the process of learning.” Dr. Oakley, Guilford’s chief academic officer, is a former kindergarten teacher who has a son in kindergarten. She said she saw firsthand that the remote-learning routine of rotating live instruction with independent work was particularly difficult for young children. Most kindergartners can’t yet read, navigate links or sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, she said. Dr. Oakley said she sees this year’s youngest learners, including her son, having much ground to cover next year. But she said they have learned skills pre-pandemic kindergartners might not have, like being responsible for a laptop or tablet computer, wearing masks to keep others safe and navigating change. “This is going to be one of the most resilient groups of students we’ve ever seen,” she said. Write to Valerie Bauerlein at valerie.bauerlein@wsj.com Move Forward With Trusted Facts |
Anonymous
It’s extremely hard to hold a kid back. The schools will fight you on this. |