3/4 of kids failing Kindergarten?!

[La Condessa]

In my local public school, sixteen of the 22 students from the normal Kindergarten classroom are being retained. Next year there will be two Kindergarten classrooms, but they are renaming one of them "pre-first grade" so as not to make the kids feel bad. In a newspaper article on the school board meeting, they were talking about the kids coming in to school woefully unprepared. What I want to know is, what the heck are they requiring of 5 or 6-year-olds to pass Kindergarten?!

[clarkacademy]

They require a lot in my opinion! I cannot believe this many children and they are blaming the kids being unprepared. You got this many kids failing I think there is an issue with the system!

[OneStepAtATime]

I have a friend who was told that her 4k son and kinder daughter were really behind within 2 weeks of starting school.  They both knew colors and letters, etc. and are bright, very verbal, good vocabularies, and the kinder child was already able to read a few words but had never been in formal schooling and the parent had not been working with them a lot since that isn't done much down here.  The kids WERE picking things up though, even without formal schooling.  The school told her she should have had them in programs from 3 years old on.  The pressure was enormous and the kids were coming home being told they needed to work super hard or they would fail 4k/kinder.  It was a nightmare.  The expectations were not developmentally appropriate for an average 4k/kinder child.  They had both been looking forward to school, they both enjoyed learning and that got killed off right away.  Half way through she pulled them.  Her kinder was starting to wet the bed and have nightmares. 

[73349]

You are not supposed to have to prepare for kindergarten! Kindergarten is supposed to prepare you for real school (first grade), where you learn to read, write, and do math.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

My mom volunteers in a K classroom in CA.  She says the kids are expected to know their alphabet and some basic number skills coming in, but many do not.  Since the teacher has to teach according to "the program", it is hard to find time to "catch up" the kids who don't come in with that knowledge.  I remember her telling me around Christmas time that the kids were supposed to have their addition facts to 10 down, and I was completely surprised because in Singapore math, that is a grade 1 skill. 

 

So yeah, I think they are asking too much, and I think calling a child "unprepared" for K is ridiculous!!!  K should not have prerequisites!!! 

[mmasc]

That is sad to me. Way too young to be 'behind' or failing at anything, IMO. I have a very good friend who is a K teacher (has been for 20 years) and she told me one time that most kids coming into her K class have been in the pre-k class at the PS. In the pre-k class they learn sight words on the pre-primer Dolch list, how to write letters and their names, etc. So, she said if a parent chooses to just send their child to school at age 5, Kindergarten, they are already 'behind'! Crazy. In her class, they learn the next Dolch list of sight words and will even move on to the first grade list if she has time. They also learn to count and write all numbers to 100. Those are the only things I remember specifically, and that was three years ago.

[Laura Corin]

It's not being handled well, for sure, but when people in the UK talk about children being unprepared for school, it's more like - children who have been parked in front of screens, so don't have the spoken language or fine motor skills; have not had regular large motor practice (playground, swimming, etc.) and therefore don't have the muscle tone to support their torsos at a table; have not learned ordinary sharing/turn-taking; have not had stories read to them, so have no connection with books and printed/drawn documents, as well as not having developed moral structures and empathy through stories.

 

L

[La Condessa]

In the presentation the teachers gave to the school board, they spoke about the majority of the kids being on free or reduced lunch, the lack of an Early Head Start program in our area, and cited a statistic that 58% of pregnant women in our area do not have prenatal care. Though I have to wonder, if we're talking about families that can't be bothered to access the free prenatal care available, how likely are they to take advantage of a program like Early Head Start? I do know that the majority of the kids in our area attend free head start preschool starting at 3, so they have had some exposure to academic subjects before entering school.

[Butter]

This should be their clue that what they expect in kindergarten is far from developmentally appropriate.  I could see if one or two weren't ready for first by the end of kindergarten, but 16/22?  No.  They are expecting kindergarteners to do what used to be first grade and for most kids that is not going to equal success at all (obviously... since 3/4 are being retained).

[OneStepAtATime]

It's not being handled well, for sure, but when people in the UK talk about children being unprepared for school, it's more like - children who have been parked in front of screens, so don't have the spoken language or fine motor skills; have not had regular large motor practice (playground, swimming, etc.) and therefore don't have the muscle tone to support their torsos at a table; have not learned ordinary sharing/turn-taking; have not had stories read to them, so have no connection with books and printed/drawn documents, as well as not having developed moral structures and empathy through stories.

 

L

 

I agree, what Laura mentioned above is also becoming an issue.  Kids aren't running around physically playing with other kids in their neighborhood much anymore.  In fact, I almost never see kids running around playing here.  As for stories being read to them, well down here that isn't the norm any way and never has been apparently, according to DH (he grew up here).  But I started reading early and read a lot of books.  There was only one TV in the household and I didn't have access except at certain times of the day.  I played with friends or read books.  I don't see much of that now.  And it is definitely worrisome.

 

But what I am seeing a lot of that really concerns me in the U.S. school system is this rather aggressive tactic of forcing info onto children at earlier and earlier ages.  It is this believing that the early we force feed info into kids the sooner they can regurgitate that forcefed info for testing that seems terribly damaging. How is that actually helping kids truly learn anything?  Joy of learning is being crushed.  Desire to learn is being crushed.  Ability to think organically is not developed.  Drilling facts earlier and earlier is NOT how humans learn best.  It is damaging.  It is unhealthy.  It is frequently developmentally inappropriate.  It is emotionally undercutting.  Our brains are not being manufactured in a factory.  They need to be able to grow, develop and learn organically.  Telling a child they are "behind" when they hit kinder is unconscionable.  It is wrong.

[wendyroo]

My mom was a preschool teacher for most of the '70s.  She says she considered a child ready for kindergarten if they were completely independent in the bathroom, could put on and take off their winter outerwear on their own, could sit listening to stories and finger plays for 15 minutes, and were mostly beyond impulsive hitting and toy grabbing.  

 

It should be noted that "kindergarten age" was quite a bit younger then.  The cutoff was at the end of December and red-shirting was very rare, so about a third of kindergartners started school before they turned 5.

 

My mom did say that by the time they went to kindergarten, many of her students could count to 10, do very simple addition like 3+2, sing the alphabet song, identify most of the letters, spell and crudely write something that represented their name, and read a couple words like mom and stop.  Those skills, however, were not prerequisites, but rather just things the kids naturally picked up.

 

Wendy

[RoundAbout]

Wow. Unbelievable.

 

I have such fond and vivid memories of my Kindergarten year (in 1979) with a kindly old lady names Mrs. Dodsworth. It was half a day and we had play stations including one with wooden blocks, and another for playing house. We grew plants in milk cartons, had big tables for art in the back of the room, had outside time, and a class pet. Lots of coloring and crafts. I remember the distinct thrill of making Halloween witches out of construction paper in class and then seeing them hung up in the local drugstore because the teacher had arranged for it. Yet I still managed to become a great student, take several APs in high school, attend a top 10 college, and go on to graduate school.

[NicAnn]

I have a profile on a tutoring site, and I get 2-4 inquiries a week about "kindergarten readiness" or kindergarten reading and math tutors. It's insane.

[Murmer]

Kindergarteners are expect to be reading basically and the common core increased that level and counting up to 100.  The local free public school Pre-k program expects children to know all the letters and sounds and count up to 20.  It's developmentally inappropriately and it doesn't take into account the fact that the kids coming in have a full 12+ month difference in ages (with the oldest being up to or more than 12 months older than the youngest child in the class).  The system is patently set up to make kids fail...and when you have children who are already at risk IE english language learners or special need then they are really screwed because there is no differentiated instruction or individualized program (IEP only have about 5 goals in each area when the years curriculum has 15 to 20 yeah that will get the kid up to the rest of the class)

[Sahamamama]

In my local public school, sixteen of the 22 students from the normal Kindergarten classroom are being retained. Next year there will be two Kindergarten classrooms, but they are renaming one of them "pre-first grade" so as not to make the kids feel bad. In a newspaper article on the school board meeting, they were talking about the kids coming in to school woefully unprepared. What I want to know is, what the heck are they requiring of 5 or 6-year-olds to pass Kindergarten?!

 

That's the million-dollar question! Whatever happened to the bottom rung of the ladder, the one every child could reach, no matter what the home life was like?

 

You know, as in, "Kindergarten is entry-level." How did we come to expect preparation for the first level of something? That's like saying, "Teach your child to swim in the bath tub before you bring him to Polliwogs Swim Class."

 

My Purely Anecdotal Contribution: A friend of mine was a PS Kindergarten teacher for 25 years. She told me she decided to retire earlier than she expected, because she could not stand what she saw being done in the name of NCLB to little five year olds. She said, "We had to do reading groups, reading groups, reading groups, all day, every day. No more time for picture books, show-and-tell, play time with the sand table and water table, no more naps, no more art, no more music. They took the piano out of my classroom first, then the rugs for story time, then the water table and sand table (to put in more tables and chairs for reading groups), then the class pets had to go (kids with allergies), and then it was no longer Kindergarten. Then it was First Grade. It broke my heart to see five year old boys in tears on a daily basis. So I quit."

 

I didn't understand her when she tearfully shared this five years ago, but after watching the scenery since then, I get it. Sad.

[wapiti]

A little bit of common sense would go a long way in these types of situations. I would be asking the board about developmentally-inappropriate standards. Most of what I would say next boils down to "how stupid" such standards are and how unprofessional are the people who wrote them.

[La Condessa]

I'm also curious what they're going to do with their first graders. Besides the normal K room and 1st room, they normally have one combined K/1st class so they can have smaller class sizes for the earlier grades. There were 6 Kers in the combo class, so they are only going to have 12 kids in that grade. I wonder if they are going to be pushing grade skips to equal out their numbers. (A couple of years ago they grade skipped their 1/3 oldest/best grades 3rd graders to 5th grade to get one 4th and two 5th classes, because they couldn't afford 4 teachers for 4th & 5th grade.)

[Sahamamama]

I have a friend who was told that her 4k son and kinder daughter were really behind within 2 weeks of starting school.  They both knew colors and letters, etc. and are bright, very verbal, good vocabularies, and the kinder child was already able to read a few words but had never been in formal schooling and the parent had not been working with them a lot since that isn't done much down here.  The kids WERE picking things up though, even without formal schooling.  The school told her she should have had them in programs from 3 years old on.  The pressure was enormous and the kids were coming home being told they needed to work super hard or they would fail 4k/kinder.  It was a nightmare.  The expectations were not developmentally appropriate for an average 4k/kinder child.  They had both been looking forward to school, they both enjoyed learning and that got killed off right away.  Half way through she pulled them.  Her kinder was starting to wet the bed and have nightmares. 

 

Incredible!

 

Just a thought about this "early on" pressure -- it's a farce, really. It's all about competition, whose K'ers are reading at a higher level. But what's the rush? Why rush three and four year olds, only to slack off so woefully in middle school? Sixth, seventh, and eighth grades are one "Drug Awareness" or "Self Esteem" assembly after another, while our toddlers and youngest children are intentionally pressured to perform?

 

We have this idea that 11, 12, 13 year olds are so hormonal and emotional that they can't handle the pressure of rigorous academics, so we move 5th grade into 4th, 4th into 3rd, 3rd into 2nd, and so on down the line -- until 1st is in K, and K is in Pre-K, and babies need to be "ready for school?"

 

Fight back any way you can. Reclaim the sacred space of early childhood for any little ones in your world.

 

So thankful to be homeschooling.

[chiguirre]

I'm also curious what they're going to do with their first graders. Besides the normal K room and 1st room, they normally have one combined K/1st class so they can have smaller class sizes for the earlier grades. There were 6 Kers in the combo class, so they are only going to have 12 kids in that grade. I wonder if they are going to be pushing grade skips to equal out their numbers. (A couple of years ago they grade skipped their 1/3 oldest/best grades 3rd graders to 5th grade to get one 4th and two 5th classes, because they couldn't afford 4 teachers for 4th & 5th grade.)

 

Is that legal? Seriously, they grade skipped a bunch of kids whose parents didn't push for it because they didn't want to hire another teacher? That's insane!

 

[La Condessa]

Is that legal? Seriously, they grade skipped a bunch of kids whose parents didn't push for it because they didn't want to hire another teacher? That's insane!

 

Yes, they did. They had enough teachers the year before that, but they had to lay off five employees that year.

[OneStepAtATime]

Look up Sir Ken Robinson and his TED talks...I would link them but computer is wiggy.  Very interesting and somewhat pertinent to this thread.

[Wildiris]

This is a sample from the Common Core for English Language Arts. Scroll down to find the kindergarten sample. Wow! I do not think many K'ers can do this kind of assignment, especially boys. To me, this sample is more appropriate to first grade. When my oldest was young, kindergarten was optional. When I was young, kindergarten was a time to learn how to play well with others, listen to stories, and paint. It was only a half day. I think Waldorf education has a better handle on how to teach kindergarten. A Day in the Life of a Waldorf Kindergarten.

[TechWife]

The system is patently set up to make kids fail

This.

[wendyroo]

Middle class parents flee districts that dont offer appropriate academics...what is left are the developmentally delayed populations...the neglected, abused, and special needs.

 

In my opinion, herein lies the catch 22.  Whenever you are in charge of educating 20+ kids of any age you have to have at least a general plan for what learning activities you will present to the group.  And, inevitably, those activities will be too hard for some and too easy for others.

 

I am completely on the "kindergarten shouldn't have prerequisites" bandwagon.  If a five year old enters kindergarten not yet knowing his letters, that is developmentally appropriate.  However, Peter is a youngish 5 year old and would be entering public school kindergarten in the fall if we were not homeschooling, and he is reading and doing math at a second grade level and that is developmentally appropriate too.

 

My MIL was recently telling me that my views of the the public school kindergarten program were contradictory because I was saying that it was both too much and too little.  But for Peter, it is.  Getting on the bus at 8:30am five mornings a week and not getting home until 4pm is way, way too much for Peter.  Spending the year learning to blend CVC words and count to 100 is way, way too little for him.

 

I don't think the two populations are 1) middle class who want high standards and 2) developmentally delayed.  I think it is a much more nuanced spectrum than that, which includes perfectly normal kids who just aren't ready to read in kindergarten, and 2E kids who can easily read but struggle with the social expectations, and red-shirted kids who can be a full year older than many of their peers and for whom "developmentally appropriate" is a whole different level, etc.

 

I don't think there are any easy, right answers, though clearly the "flunk 3/4 of the kindergartners" plan is far from ideal.

 

Wendy

[wapiti]

I took a quick look at the samples and FWIW the length really jumped out at me as being inappropriate.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Ditto. I went to half-day kindergarten in 1977. I have distinct memories of learning the alphabet that year, one letter each week. (Anyone else remember The Letter People?) As far as I remember, I didn't read at all prior to first grade. Yet I went on to graduate at the top of my class, having taken college-prep classes all through high school, went on to college earning my STEM degree, etc.

 

The push for early academics is disturbing to me.

 

This is what my rising 7th grader's K was like!  Her sister, who was in K at the same school 4 years later, basically did in K what the older had done in 1st grade.  The year after Morgan finished 1st grade, the long-time K teacher retired and the 5th grade teacher (a new-ish, young teacher) moved down to K, because she complained that her 5th graders were coming to her unprepared and they needed to get started on academics earlier.  The stories I heard about that year's K were like those in this post - pushing earlier everything, homework worksheets every night, kids crying.

 

My point being, not only is what is happening totally ridiculous, it's happening *fast* - and these kids are guinea pigs.  I'm really concerned about what is going to happen to them down the line. 

[Tidbits of Learning]

A lot of this began with redshirting.  They wanted me to hold back ds11 when he was in kindergarten due to maturity.  He should have been an older k'er due to a December b-day.  He wasn't by far.  He was one of the youngest in the class b/c he was 5 for 4 months before turning 6.  Most of the boys in his k class were 6 turning 7 in kindergarten.   Most of the kids in my kids classes were 2 years older than them by the time the school year was over.  My kids met the birthday cutoff and started on time.  I also learned the only way they could hold the kids back in k for non-academic reasons was if you let them.  They were over the top with us.  They sent me daily notes on how terrible ds was doing on end of year testing and kindergarten exit exam.  I quit writing them back.  He tested fine and they had just been winding me up hoping I would say stop testing he isn't ready.

He had been to day school for 2 years prior to public kindergarten.  He knew how to act in class for age appropriate time periods and lessons.  However, they no longer had time for naps or even 15 min. of quiet time.  They only got 1-15 min. recess a day.  They had a 20 min. no talking lunch.  They switched teachers 3 times during the day.  They had a different teacher for reading resource, regular kindergarten subjects, and art.  He was done by the afternoon and the teacher knew it.  She told me so.  She was forced to take away his 15 min. recess every day b/c he was done by then and had to turn a behavior card.  He was compared to 7 yr old boys who were more mature and the girls in the class were almost all 6 turning 7 as well.  That is a crazy unfair scenario.  It is the scenario we would go back into if we went back to school now.  He would be younger than his class mates and it would show.  The expectations of kindergarten are unrealistic of a 5 yr old child, but as I learned there are almost no 5 year old children in kindergarten here.  And if they do go at 5, the teacher starts on day 1 talking to you about how they may need to be held back and mature.  

ds7 went to day school as well even though I was homeschooling the other children by then.  He was 3 turning 4 and his 3 yr old pre-k was comparable to the girls kindergarten years just 5 years prior.  It is very unrealistic to the children and their actual age development.  

[Chrysalis Academy]

Incredible!

 

Just a thought about this "early on" pressure -- it's a farce, really. It's all about competition, whose K'ers are reading at a higher level. But what's the rush? Why rush three and four year olds, only to slack off so woefully in middle school? Sixth, seventh, and eighth grades are one "Drug Awareness" or "Self Esteem" assembly after another, while our toddlers and youngest children are intentionally pressured to perform?

 

We have this idea that 11, 12, 13 year olds are so hormonal and emotional that they can't handle the pressure of rigorous academics, so we move 5th grade into 4th, 4th into 3rd, 3rd into 2nd, and so on down the line -- until 1st is in K, and K is in Pre-K, and babies need to be "ready for school?"

 

Fight back any way you can. Reclaim the sacred space of early childhood for any little ones in your world.

 

So thankful to be homeschooling.

 

Exactly was I was thinking as I read this thread.  I talked to a math teacher at the local high school at a party yesterday, picking his brain about how they are dealing with cc and about algebra readiness.  I asked him what the best thing he thought you could do to prepare your kids for higher math, and he said games - games in childhood, games in the early years.  Yahtzee, parcheesi, basic games of strategy, multi-step thinking, etc.  Seems like time for anything like that is getting increasingly squeezed out in the lower grades.

 

When I asked him what specific math skill was the biggest stumbling block for his Algebra students, I was expecting him to say something like ratios or fractions, but I was shocked when he said nope, when most kids got lost was after 2nd grade.  They basically didn't understand 3rd grade math and hadn't learned much of anything since then.  he gets students in his "slow" 9th grade algebra class who struggle with multiplication.  And  - his words - they've been passed through elementary and middle school without learning anything, and then when they get to 9th grade and there is finally a class where there is content they have to master, they are woefully unprepared and fail.

 

I realize this whole math thing is probably a different thread topic, but what I'm wondering is: what the heck is going on in elementary & middle school???  And if kids are already failing to learn and be prepared for high school work at the current pace, how is starting it all a year earlier supposed to help? 

[Momling]

Not everywhere are kindergarteners set with unreasonable expectations. In our district, kindergarten is half- day and academics are not taught until first grade. It's purely play-based with no desks, lots of art and recess and music and story times and learning letters and counting. It was great for 3 out of 4 of the kindergarteners I've had.

[Chrysalis Academy]

A lot of this began with redshirting.  They wanted me to hold back ds11 when he was in kindergarten due to maturity.  He should have been an older k'er due to a December b-day.  He wasn't by far.  He was one of the youngest in the class b/c he was 5 for 4 months before turning 6.  Most of the boys in his k class were 6 turning 7 in kindergarten.   Most of the kids in my kids classes were 2 years older than them by the time the school year was over.  My kids met the birthday cutoff and started on time.  I also learned the only way they could hold the kids back in k for non-academic reasons was if you let them.  They were over the top with us.  They sent me daily notes on how terrible ds was doing on end of year testing and kindergarten exit exam.  I quit writing them back.  He had been to day school for 2 years prior to public kindergarten.  He knew how to act in class.  However, they no longer had time for naps or even 15 min. of quiet time.  They only got 1-15 min. recess a day.  They had a 20 min. no talking lunch.  They switched teachers 3 times during the day.  They had a different teacher for reading resource, regular kindergarten subjects, and art.  He was done by the afternoon and the teacher knew it.  She told me so.  She was forced to take away his 15 min. recess every day b/c he was done by then.  He was compared to 7 yr old boys who were more mature and the girls in the class were almost all 6 turning 7 as well.  That is a crazy unfair scenario.  It is the scenario we would go back into if we went back to school now.  He would be younger than his class mates and it would show.  The expectations of kindergarten are unrealistic of a 5 yr old child, but as I learned there are almost no 5 year old children in kindergarten here.  And if they do go at 5, the teacher starts on day 1 talking to you about how they may need to be held back and mature.  

 

 

But what a catch-22 for parents.  If you know that more academics are being pushed into younger grades, of course you will consider holding back your kids so they are more developmentally ready . . . so then you have a K class of 6-7 year olds, doing first grade work.  Basically K has disappeared.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Not everywhere are kindergarteners set with unreasonable expectations. In our district, kindergarten is half- day and academics are not taught until first grade. It's purely play-based with no desks, lots of art and recess and music and story times and learning letters and counting. It was great for 3 out of 4 of the kindergarteners I've had.

 

You're lucky, but like my anecdote above, that might be changing . . . it's only been 6 years since my oldest was in a class like that, but now it's completely different.

[VeteranMom]

In my local public school, sixteen of the 22 students from the normal Kindergarten classroom are being retained. Next year there will be two Kindergarten classrooms, but they are renaming one of them "pre-first grade" so as not to make the kids feel bad. In a newspaper article on the school board meeting, they were talking about the kids coming in to school woefully unprepared. What I want to know is, what the heck are they requiring of 5 or 6-year-olds to pass Kindergarten?!

 

What state are you in?  Dh went to school in NY and even back in the 70s it was very common for his school to hold kids back and not pass them into the next grade.  Half of the kids he started school with (in K) ended up graduating a year behind him. 

[snowbeltmom]

 

My Purely Anecdotal Contribution: A friend of mine was a PS Kindergarten teacher for 25 years. She told me she decided to retire earlier than she expected, because she could not stand what she saw being done in the name of NCLB to little five year olds. She said, "We had to do reading groups, reading groups, reading groups, all day, every day. No more time for picture books, show-and-tell, play time with the sand table and water table, no more naps, no more art, no more music. They took the piano out of my classroom first, then the rugs for story time, then the water table and sand table (to put in more tables and chairs for reading groups), then the class pets had to go (kids with allergies), and then it was no longer Kindergarten. Then it was First Grade. It broke my heart to see five year old boys in tears on a daily basis. So I quit."

 

Is it any wonder why the practice of "redshirting" is so prevalent? 

[La Condessa]

It is the family life, as Laura mention upthread, as well as the full inclusion. Not much gets done when most of the day is training children to cope with their emotions and their sensory issues without physically harming anyone. Middle class parents flee districts that dont offer appropriate academics...what is left are the developmentally delayed populations...the neglected, abused, and special needs.

It's true, and here I'm a part of it, too. My oldest dearly wants to go to Kindergarten (because every darn person she meets asks her if she's excited to start K when they hear her age!), and I am crazy overwhelmed right now, so I decided to look into the local school as a possibility. But I'm finding this stuff out and thinking, there's no way I can send my child to this school!

 

  

What state are you in?  Dh went to school in NY and even back in the 70s it was very common for his school to hold kids back and not pass them into the next grade.  Half of the kids he started school with (in K) ended up graduating a year behind him.

 

I live in Oregon

[Arcadia]

To meet the grade for K, my local schools only expect

Reading at Level C, Frys first 100 words

Writing a few short sentences

Math - knowing numbers until 100. Simple addition and subtraction.

 

Kids who fail to meet the minimum gets promoted anyway. Kids are tested during Kindergarten registration for 15-20mins so teachers know what level the students are at on the first day of school.

[Kerileanne99]

 

In my opinion, herein lies the catch 22. Whenever you are in charge of educating 20+ kids of any age you have to have at least a general plan for what learning activities you will present to the group. And, inevitably, those activities will be too hard for some and too easy for others.

 

I am completely on the "kindergarten shouldn't have prerequisites" bandwagon. If a five year old enters kindergarten not yet knowing his letters, that is developmentally appropriate. However, Peter is a youngish 5 year old and would be entering public school kindergarten in the fall if we were not homeschooling, and he is reading and doing math at a second grade level and that is developmentally appropriate too.

 

My MIL was recently telling me that my views of the the public school kindergarten program were contradictory because I was saying that it was both too much and too little. But for Peter, it is. Getting on the bus at 8:30am five mornings a week and not getting home until 4pm is way, way too much for Peter. Spending the year learning to blend CVC words and count to 100 is way, way too little for him.

 

I don't think the two populations are 1) middle class who want high standards and 2) developmentally delayed. I think it is a much more nuanced spectrum than that, which includes perfectly normal kids who just aren't ready to read in kindergarten, and 2E kids who can easily read but struggle with the social expectations, and red-shirted kids who can be a full year older than many of their peers and for whom "developmentally appropriate" is a whole different level, etc.

 

I don't think there are any easy, right answers, though clearly the "flunk 3/4 of the kindergartners" plan is far from ideal.

 

Wendy

I feel the same way! I have a very academically advanced dd4 with a Dec bday. We will ultimately be homeschooling but I really spent a lot of time looking at every available school program because I KNOW she would enjoy the traditional fun of Kindy. But she isn't scheduled age-wise to attend until Fall of 2015, and can read anything you put in front of her, writes page narrations, and is working through SM3B/4A concurrently. Yet NO way could she go a whole day of school even if they did nothing but color and play! It really is a question of too little and too much:)

 

One thought: my views are totally skewed. I looked at the sample above and it is so far out of my experience...my child never spelled like that or wrote like that. It is my understanding that most people find that way beyond what Kindy kids should be doing. I absolutely, absolutely agree that NO Kindy child should be REQUIRED to pass that level at that age, but I am thinking this is indicative of what is happening across the standards.

If those that make/set the standards are in areas where this is common, even normal, I can see why expectations are getting higher. Once again a question of those in authority being too far out of touch with those teaching the wider variety of norms.

Really, not being snarky, but can anyone point me in the direction of work that should/could be expected of Kindy? I have, of course, seen lists...but those can be interpreted in so many ways.

[maize]

It's not being handled well, for sure, but when people in the UK talk about children being unprepared for school, it's more like - children who have been parked in front of screens, so don't have the spoken language or fine motor skills; have not had regular large motor practice (playground, swimming, etc.) and therefore don't have the muscle tone to support their torsos at a table; have not learned ordinary sharing/turn-taking; have not had stories read to them, so have no connection with books and printed/drawn documents, as well as not having developed moral structures and empathy through stories.

 

L

If these are the underlying problems, I am afraid an extra year of academically oriented kindergarten will do nothing to remedy them.

[maize]

You're lucky, but like my anecdote above, that might be changing . . . it's only been 6 years since my oldest was in a class like that, but now it's completely different.

I talked with a local kindergarten teacher last year because I thought kindergarten might be a good option for my then five year old who was clearly needing something she was not getting at the time. The teacher told me that in the twelve years she has been teaching kindergarten has changed drastically, and that the current standards and expectations make it very difficult in half day kindergarten (which is what we have) to do anything but focused academics. She said the teachers still try to make it fun, but she sounded kind of sad about the changes. I knew after talking with her that this was not the environment I was looking for fir my DD.

[wendyroo]

I talked with a local kindergarten teacher last year because I thought kindergarten might be a good option for my then five year old who was clearly needing something she was not getting at the time. The teacher told me that in the twelve years she has been teaching kindergarten has changed drastically, and that the current standards and expectations make it very difficult in half day kindergarten (which is what we have) to do anything but focused academics. She said the teachers still try to make it fun, but she sounded kind of sad about the changes. I knew after talking with her that this was not the environment I was looking for fir my DD.

 

The kindergarten teachers I have talked to around here also say they have little time for anything but academics, but here we have full day kindergarten!!  So they have the kids for over 6 hours and don't have time for any play time?!?!

 

Wendy

[Laura Corin]

If these are the underlying problems, I am afraid an extra year of academically oriented kindergarten will do nothing to remedy them.

 

The headmistress that I heard talking about the issue here talked described spending a lot of time (alongside academics) working on these specific issues.  The school borders the biggest park in East London, and all the children came from the area, but a proportion had never set foot in the park.

 

L

[My3girls]

The "balanced classroom" is a lot of the reason for failure in our area. When ability ranges from special needs all the way up to gifted in one classroom, the teacher cannot possibly reach every child. To get the children that are slower learners help, you have to qualify for an IEP. To get children who learn more quickly academics that challenge them, they have to qualify as gifted. The reality, however, is that they are just average... On the lower side and upper side but average. If they went back to grouping children ability, they would ALL learn more. I think this would apply to Kindergarten as well.

 

As for the original post, yes, kindergarten requirements are not appropriate. The "balanced classroom" just exacerbates it.

[Tanikit]

When we were in kindergarten (I had a twin brother) we painted mostly on newspaper on the floor in small groups), had a project day where the teacher spoke about a topic such as sugar and then we looked at it and tasted it, but we certainly never wrote anything) and we listened to lots of stories and played on equipment on the grass outside (and had mecurachrome (I do not know how to spell that) put on us when we scraped or knees - which we did frequently). I did learn to read in kindergarten but my mother taught me at home and I did start first grade as a 5 year old which is what the standards were.

 

It is crazy that a school can retain 3/4 of its students - that would imply very bad teaching even if the standards are very high and slightly inappropriate. Reciting is easily taught to children - all you have to do is repeat it daily - they do not have to understand anything to do it. Testing a kindergartener however is crazy. What happens in first grade? We hear so much about kindergarten and it implies that even more advanced things should be happening in first grade - if so many kids are behind in kindergarten then it should get worse each year, but I am not convinced that it does. Kindergarten is the beginning so I suppose some adaptation would be necessary, but not enough to cause that amount of retention.

 

My DD had a K assessment here at a private school - she was expected to leave her mother happily enough for the assessment, talk to the teacher relatively clearly, answer a few questions, count as high as she could (they stopped her at 20), identify a few shapes and colours and throw a beanbag into a bucket - that was all. No letters were expected, no interaction with other children was seen and they did not ask them to cut with scissors either. 

 

Why are we stressing out small children and trying to make them competitive? I thought that team work and working with others was supposed to be good? However from a generational point of view it is generation X that is now running things and apparently they are supposed to be the latch key kids who learnt to be highly competitive and to work alone not wanting the team work of the previous baby boomers and those born in the 60s so maybe that is also where this is coming from. If they paid for their parents detachment by doing this to the next generation then what lies in store for the generation when these kids are running the country - who knows? Maybe they will all play in the dirt til they are teenagers :)

[FriedClams]

Well, if the kids are failing then we need mandatory pre-k to get them ready...and mandatory "k3"... and...

 

I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist but the shameless intrusion into parental rights by (no doubt) well meaning people makes me very angry.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Well, if the kids are failing then we need mandatory pre-k to get them ready...and mandatory "k3"... and...

 

I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist but the shameless intrusion into parental rights by (no doubt) well meaning people makes me very angry.

 

I was having the same thoughts reading this thread.  I'm as liberal as they come, and not a conspiracy theorist, but part of me thinks this can't possibly all be happening by accident . . . 

[JubilantNest]

That is so sad.  We had our eldest in an amazing Montessori charter for part of K, but they had to adopt Common Core so I wouldn't be surprised if the baby doll washing has been traded out for test prep.  Our local district schools are definitely academic kindergartens. That bothers me for so many reasons.  Preschool here is not free, so kindergarten should (locally) be considered the beginning of education.  I can only imagine that the beginning of education starts in curiosity and is nurtured by the magical and fun atmosphere that used to be standard and does not result from grueling mounds of worksheets.  Unfortunately, even school time is not enough here.  Our kindergarteners have homework!  Five year olds should not have homework; they should be going out to play and continuing to develop their strength, coordination, and imagination.

[La Condessa]

Well, if the kids are failing then we need mandatory pre-k to get them ready...and mandatory "k3"... and...

 

I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist but the shameless intrusion into parental rights by (no doubt) well meaning people makes me very angry.

 

 

Why stop there?  Make pregnant women take their unborn baby to classes. 

 

LOL

 

Seriously it is getting that silly!

 

I know why more people won't complain about these things though.  Free daycare.  Not that I for one second blame anyone for that.  Daycare is expensive. 

 

It sounds silly, but it is exactly what I see happening!  Next year Kindergarten will be full day.  The large majority of kids attend Head Start from the age of three, and a few attend the only privately run preschool in the area, which is incredibly expensive.  We have been asked many times if our kids are going to Head Start or Ms. So-and-so's for preschool--we are the only family I know who could not use either if we wanted to.  At the school board meeting, the teachers were pushing for the introduction of an Early Head Start program, which actually does start before the babies are born!  Almost all of the students are fed breakfast and lunch at school--only one in twenty has to provide or pay for their own.  They are given bags of snacks to take home to eat over the weekend, and there is a Summer Lunch program, because they do not expect that the children will eat, otherwise.  They have dentists coming to the school, giving checkups and then pulling kids from class to perform dental work in the auditorium.

 

On the one hand, it is good that the community is trying to help kids that need it; but if they don't believe the parents (who qualify for food stamps, wic in many cases, and other assistance) will give their children food, shouldn't they be calling Child Protective Services instead of trying to become the Universal Parenting Organization?

[Farrar]

The "balanced classroom" is a lot of the reason for failure in our area. When ability ranges from special needs all the way up to gifted in one classroom, the teacher cannot possibly reach every child. To get the children that are slower learners help, you have to qualify for an IEP. To get children who learn more quickly academics that challenge them, they have to qualify as gifted. The reality, however, is that they are just average... On the lower side and upper side but average. If they went back to grouping children ability, they would ALL learn more. I think this would apply to Kindergarten as well.

 

As for the original post, yes, kindergarten requirements are not appropriate. The "balanced classroom" just exacerbates it.

 

I don't think 5 yos should be tracked. And doing so would just feed into the idea that the expectations are appropriate.

 

This whole thread and every one like it that comes up routinely just makes me ill. The vast majority of people know this is a mess. Yet there's no political cover for "lowering academics" so we'll just lemming our kids over the cliff.

[chiguirre]

On the one hand, it is good that the community is trying to help kids that need it; but if they don't believe the parents (who qualify for food stamps, wic in many cases, and other assistance) will give their children food, shouldn't they be calling Child Protective Services instead of trying to become the Universal Parenting Organization?

I think WIC only covers kids up to age 5 because they assume they'll qualify for free breakfast and lunch at school.

[Crimson Wife]

I volunteered in a K class one morning per week this past spring. What I saw appalled me. The state standards are that students are supposed to be reading BOB type books by the end of K. What is happening in practice is that the teacher is reading the book aloud first. Then she breaks the kids into small groups and they each take turns reading the book aloud. The most proficient reader always gets asked to read first. So by the time that the kids who aren't actually able to read take their turn, they've heard it multiple times and can recite it from memory. A lot of these kids don't know their letter sounds yet, but because of the way the teacher structures the exercise, it makes it appear that they've met the standard for reading. Who cares that they wouldn't be able to read a similar level but never before seen book?

 

I'd like to see the K standard go back to learning letters and their sounds. Children who are developmentally ready can practice reading, but the big push for learning to read should come in 1st rather than K.

[KrissiK]

Wow. Unbelievable.

 

I have such fond and vivid memories of my Kindergarten year (in 1979) with a kindly old lady names Mrs. Dodsworth. It was half a day and we had play stations including one with wooden blocks, and another for playing house. We grew plants in milk cartons, had big tables for art in the back of the room, had outside time, and a class pet. Lots of coloring and crafts. I remember the distinct thrill of making Halloween witches out of construction paper in class and then seeing them hung up in the local drugstore because the teacher had arranged for it. Yet I still managed to become a great student, take several APs in high school, attend a top 10 college, and go on to graduate school.

I started kinder in 1973 and this was what I experienced, too. The teacher had a "magic hat" to tell who got to bring show-and-tell the next day (but what a great intro to public speaking, do they even have show-and -tell anymore?) we learned our letters and numbers and made lots of crafts. Kindergarten was great.