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[quote=Anonymous]I had my October birthday DD at a very low-scoring school for three years PK3-K. It was one of the lowest-scoring-- the ones that got the one-star rating with the extra funding. I know that preschool is usually pretty good everywhere, and indeed it was.  I was very pleased with her progress-- in PK3, the teacher gave her the phonics curriculum 1:1 and had her reading by the end of the year. In PK4, they met with us in September and discussed options for having her read with the K class. Ultimately that didn't work out because of the class schedules not meshing well and because DD still really needed her nap, so she had 1:1 time daily with the reading specialist to work on her writing, which lagged behind her reading, and to really close in on certain things in reading (like how "ph" can make the "f" sound). In K, she walked down the hall to 2nd grade for reading time.

I will say, however, that while she was waaaay ahead of the other kids in PK3, the gap between her and the other bright kids in the class was beginning to close. It really is common for kids who read a little later to end up just as well as the super-duper-freaky-PK3 readers. Others, of course, fell more and more behind grade level.

Now, retention of high-performing kids wasn't good, and we left too, for that and other reasons. But it was definitely the case that the school was willing and able to differentiate despite having awful test scores overall, and I was always 100% satisfied with the attention DD got, and the process by which we and the school agreed on an approach. Because early elementary upwards differentiation isn't that complicated! You work with them 1:1 or in a small group, or you send them to another classroom if logistics are suitable. It simply isn't that hard to do. [/quote]

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