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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Aren’t most UMC kids 5-6 grade levels ahead in reading?   [/quote]

Teacher here.  Not even close.[/quote]

NP. Agree! There is a lot of mediocrity in the UMC children. Their parents are raising a fantasy.[/quote]

As opposed to what? Where do you think all the brilliant children are hiding?[/quote]

There just aren’t many brilliant children. Or brilliant people in general. Every other parent in DC thinks their child is “advanced”. By the end of my kids school journey in DC , nearly every one in their social academic cohort was on the same level. Pure fantasy. [/quote]

Academic differences get more pronounced as kids get older. Maybe if your "social academic cohort" was all kids whose parents have graduate degrees and you're defining "same level" extremely broadly, this is the case. But my kids are at a title 1, and it's unfortunately not the case that the kids struggling when they're younger catch up. [/quote]

Sometimes, but this thread is about super-early readers. In my experience, there's a wide range of age when kids learn to read, and the first half of that range doesn't correlate closely with academic results in upper elementary. My DD, who learned to read at 3, is a bright child, but her friends who learned at 5 or 6 are doing equally as well as she is now that they are all 10 years old. What seemed like a big gap has closed. Kids who are still struggling to read at 7 or 8 are a different thing. Super-early fluency just doesn't predict that much compared to early fluency.[/quote]

Sure. But if the kid is actually 5-6 grade levels ahead at, say, 6, they're ahead of most middle schoolers in DC and more than a few high school students. Unless you're in one of a handful of schools, there are not many kids who are closing that gap over time. [/quote]

Right, but most kids who test that high on fluency are not actually fully reading at a grade level 5-6 levels ahead. Even if their parents think they are. They don't have the attention span, comprehension, ability to draw inferences, appreciation of context, etc. Nor do they have the ability to formulate a response, especially a well-organized written response. They may get a high MAP or iReady score on fluency, but they are not meeting the overall ELA grade level standard. And middle schoolers, even if they're below grade level on testing, often do have the ability to interpret a text (even if they need an audio version) that exceeds a bright preschooler's ability, because they are older and more mature and experienced.

Here's an example. A 5-year-old who can read a page of Harry Potter aloud with some mispronunciations is very bright, yes. But they probably understand it on the level of Dumbledore = good and Snape = bad.  An on-grade middle school reader would be thinking about things like how Harry isn't a very good boyfriend to Cho, about how Petunia Dursley is nasty but she's also really afraid and grieving, the socioeconomic differences between the Weasleys and the Malfoys, how profoundly sad what happened to Neville's family is, and things like that. Same book, same words, but different thoughts in the kid's head. And the ability to read the words at a young age doesn't match up that closely with the ability to do a thoughtful and nuanced reading later. My DD1 was a super-super-early reader but I know it doesn't mean that much. My DD2 read at the typical age of 6, but she is a FAR more thoughtful and attentive reader than DD1 ever was. And that's what really matters.[/quote]

Most kids in DCPS are like neither of your kids, so if you chill out and wait for the other kids to catch up, it will not happen. [/quote]

You're missing the point. Some of them will catch up. Enough of them, at most schools, to form a peer group. Some of them won't. But OP's child will not always be as much of an outlier, because early fluency just doesn't mean that much. And OP's child has plenty to learn in DCPS despite early fluency.[/quote]

Look at how many schools have, say, a solid group of third graders getting 5s on the PARCC ELA. It is absolutely not "most schools." They wouldn't have a peer group at any charter or DCPS in my ward. [/quote]

This.  Most schools don’t even have most kids, majority on grade level let alone above.

That is the reality.[/quote]

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