The neighbor kid just flunked Kindergarten

[bleedingheart]

I just want to choke his parents.

First they start him in Kindergarten when it was clearly apparent that he was not mature enough to handle school.

Second he barely made the cutoff to be allowed in Kindergarten...but hell the parents have 5 kids so they figured they would use the public school as a daycare center.

Third they did shit to help him out as he struggled horribly in Kindergarten.

and to top it all off....The father, who voted for *, is pushing to have him placed in First grade even though he can't even recite the alphabet or even form all his letters.

and to really add whipped cream and a cherry on this mess...this poor little mite hangs out at my house as much as he can when he knows I am home so he can get some attention....meanwhile I have two kids and one of them has Asperger's....so it isn't like I don't already have my hands full....but in spite of it all I end up having him recite his alphabet...coloring and trying to correct his speech....

GRrrrrrrrrr this summer is going to really test all my patience...

I also want to add that my daughter was in his class and they had two teachers for 16 children...two of the best Kindergarten teachers you could ever want for children...kind caring and sweet and my little one is actually reading at a First grade level and doing addition and subtraction....she absolutely aced the Metropolitans along with most of her other classmates... so in this case the parents are the problem...not the teachers.

[lenidog]

1. You can actually flunk out of kindergarten?

[bleedingheart]

2. Oh yes you can...

if you do not know your alphabet, your numbers and you do not pass the Metropolitan tests...you will flunk Kindergarten.

[KaliTracy]

15. Yep. And they are trying to make it so Head Start has "goals" for

Preschool kids -- you know -- 3 and 4 year olds -- who all started to roll over, walk and talk, and comprehend the world at different times -- well, now they want them all to be at the same page at the same time by the time they are 4....

http://www.susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.html?id=317

Feds Are Going to Test Preschoolers

The tests will be simple: preschoolers will probably be asked to identify letters, squares and triangles and count to 10.

The exam, to be instituted this year for about 500,000 children enrolled in Head Start programs throughout the country, represents the first time children as young as 4 years old will be tested on such a grand scale, education researchers said. But it is not being welcomed everywhere.

The Bush administration, in advocating the test, said the pre-kindergarten Head Start program should join the movement in K-12 grades to test youngsters' academic skills as a way to assess schools' competency. Head Start, a national child-care program that serves 850,000 low-income children up to 5 years of age, receives $6.7 billion in federal money and should not be exempt from such scrutiny, federal officials say.

"There's no reason to panic about this," said Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. "Let's be clear. This is not going to be used as an entrance exam for kindergarten."

However, the plan has been met with skepticism by some Head Start officials and early childhood experts who say 4- and 5-year-olds are developmentally too erratic to provide meaningful test results. Those educators say the test is being created too quickly and they fear being possibly penalized based on assessment practices they don't endorse.

more...

****

Susan Ohanian Wrote What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten?: (highly recommend it for anyone with children in school)

McGraw-Hill, 2002


American School Board Journal's Noteable Books for 2002


This has certainly been a good year for books bemoaning the effects of standardized tests. Our favorite bemoaner is Susan Ohanian, the teacher-writer who coined the term Standardistas for the politicians and media types who have supported the widespread use of standardized tests.

<snip>
The stress of tests is getting to parents, too. While some are organizing parties with games designed to raise guests' scores on standardized tests, others are yanking their kids out of school or at least boycotting school on test days. Several parents warn that their protests have moved beyond a backlash against testing into a genuine political movement. ("They want 'world class'?" one mother fumes. "We'll give them a 'world-class' fight!")

<snip>



See http://www.susanohanian.org

[Maddy McCall]

3. Bush voter and probably against Head Start...

which, it sounds like, would have immensely benefited this kid. :(

[bleedingheart]

4. my son's therapist met him today and she feels he needs

intensive therapy...which is saying a lot.

[Lindsey]

8. I used to teach Kindergarten and it was almost impossible for

anyone to fail (Los Angeles Unified - South Central). Even if they didn't know what they were "supposed" to know. In L.A., Kindergarten isn't mandatory so the administrators figured that the kids would pick up in 1st grade what they didn't understand in Kindergarten.

[bleedingheart]

11. I recall a bunch of kids that were held back when I was a kid

and that was back in '74.

If they felt the kid wasn't ready for 1st grade there was no way they would pass them on through. I think this kid will end up in 1st and then I have a feeling that he will end up needing specialized instructions or perhaps even more intensive therapy.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. In the old days, when my mom was teaching kindergarten

(1940s-1960s) they didn't even do any reading or writing the whole year.

The idea was that kindergarten was for teaching children how to get along outiside their family and play cooperatively, to create a desire to read through exposure to stories and picture books, and to develop eye-to-hand coordination through crafts.

When I was in kindergarten in the 1950s, we had workbooks, but they were totally non-verbal, with instructions from the teacher like "put the pictures in the correct order," "how do these two pictures differ," "match the shapes," "draw this shape as it would look upside down," "draw three apples and two oranges," etc.

Standard procedure was to teach the alphabet and how to write one's name in the last week of school.

I remember the teacher in first grade teaching us how to print our letters. "A capital "Q" is like a fat pig with a curly tail."

And you know what? We learned to read just fine.

I wonder if your neighborkid would have done fine in an old-style kindergarten.

[bleedingheart]

6. This is old style Kindergarten....however

it was an all day Kindergarten....but all the worksheets and all the stuff they did was pretty much visual...they reinforced the alphabet and the numbers and then during the last two months they started on sounding out the letters and simple words like "it" or "on" nothing too complicated...

[KaliTracy]

21. see post #15 -- it's a whole different ball game now.... for some reason

the "powers that be" think that ALL children are capable of doing things that are developmental when they say it's time -- not when the child is ready. It's a scary thing, and while a lot of kids can handle the acceleration, it's wrong to judge children on learning skills that are developmental. I quit teaching because I vehemently disagree with children being pushed ahead before they are ready, because tests are being treated as the "expert" and not the teacher.

http://stophighstakestests.org

[MissB]

7. Hopefully the child will be held back

It shouldn't really matter to the parents, right? After all, they'll still get the free daycare from the school.

Social promotions suck.

[Ellen Forradalom]

9. Join the club

Ours got invited to leave his school. He has had trouble pottying and, as the year progressed, with tantrums. Intellectually, he is doing fine. The whole business is extremely frustrating.

[MissB]

10. Hopefully a different school will work for him

(and for you). A good school would be able to work with both issues, as they are pretty normal issues for this age group.

[bleedingheart]

12. in this case I just feel so bad, some kids just aren't ready

there is no specific formula for every child. So what if they are six when they start Kindergarten? I know that my son was six when he started and to be honest it was the best thing for him given the other issues I have had to deal with in his education.

[cmd]

13. The question is what is best for the child

and the answer is that he is not ready for first grade. Why would anyone want a child to experience another year of failure attempting to do work that is over his head? This child needs the remediation of another year in kindergarten if he is to have any chance of success in school. He is not a failure. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[all.of.me]

16. when i was in kindergarten, i was bored bored bored

so they put me into first grade. i did not want to go. i was the youngest and smallest. i was shy and stayed inside during recess and colored instead of socializing. i didn't fit in for years.

when i hit junior high, i was developing at a different rate and was poked fun at all the time. i hated being alive.

after 8th grade, i went to a very tough private school, so i had to repeat 8th. it was a bummer that it would take me another year to get out of school, but for the first time, i was comfortable with my peers.

then..... this is the kicker.... 40 years later, my father admitted that moving me to first grade was a huge mistake! thanks, dad, but the damage was done a long time ago. and it's taken a lot of work to get it undone. my self-esteem was shattered, i was always out of place, out of synch. i hated school, i hated myself.

yup, put those kids where they belong, not where parents THINK they belong.

[Lisa]

14. sounds like his dad is projecting!

The guy is probably taking this as a personal slight and blaming everybody -- the school, his wife -- heck, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he shows up at your place and blames you as well.

And to think he probably sat there listening to *'s speeches, applauding madly as * derided schools for "shuffling kids through the system who don't know the basics". (Plenty more where that came from ...)
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/education.phtml

It would almost be funny, if it weren't for the fact that his son is stressed out and miserable. Even though it's burdensome to have him over so much, the kid evidently likes your family better than his own -- he will probably always remember how kind you were to him.

[KaliTracy]

17. is there any school in your district that has a transition class -- not

quite kindergarten, and not quite the demands of 1st grade?

If the child is as deficient in skills as you say, and the parent/s get their way, the school will fully document that they retained the child (and why), but the parents chose to put him in the next grade.

However, I was a Title I reading teacher for several years -- and ALL of the children in my program were there because they didn't have certain skills (alphabet recognition, sound recognition, story elements, numbers) -- and all but a handful (less than 10) turned out to have other problems (and I dealt with over 50 students a year, most of which were 1st graders (I had to have a 50 student case load, and we had some transient students)).

If you had to do "one thing" just READ out loud to all of the kids -- don't worry about the alphabet and other things -- get him hooked on words/sounds/story. Sing songs, especially silly rhyming ones. If you don't have time to sing, just put a CD in of kids songs that are diverse. It's not your place to do sit down activities, and frankly, that's not always the best way -- if he's had that much problem in Kindergarten he probably has shut down in many ways to direct teaching.

PM me if you have any questions.

[Deja Q]

18. Repub values: Push 'em out, shove 'em out, way out.

Doesn't matter if they can read or count or anything. (that also explains how Diebold could make crooked counting machines.)

[BikeWriter]

19. I've seen those type parents. You poor thing! :-(

[Blue Diadem]

20. Poor little guy.

I hate to see parents push kids that aren't ready. Imo, it tends to make the kids dislike the entire education experience if they are having problems and are put ahead to only experience more frustration.

[Kire]

22. Salon.com: When toddlers get fired

When toddlers get fired

My 2-year-old son was booted out of his preschool for biting -- and now my wife and I are facing a summer of hell.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/05/28/expulsion/index.html

[tinfoilinfor2005]

23. I would have no problem telling the parents what you just told us

in maybe a slightly more tactful way. The best scenario is that the parents listen to your advice. The worst is that you offend neighbors who sound rather boorish anyway since they expect the neighbors to raise their kids. Your attention is nice for the kid, but can't take the place of the attention he needs from his parents.