I’ve been offline the past few days, going back and forth with C’s new school. It hasn’t been very encouraging. It seems like whenever I push for him to get higher level work, they respond by talking about putting him back in kindergarten due to social, physical, or whatever reasons. The latest is that they’re saying he’s been poking and pinching other kids. This is so totally out of character that I simply could not believe it. I almost got in a panic this morning thinking about what if it were possibly true and therefore something about his experience could make him suddenly act so differently. I’m wondering whether or not it is a healthy environment for him there, or whether it would even be any better anywhere else.
Meanwhile they’re doing their own assessments on C and stated that he’s not at the top of his class, whatever that may imply. I tried to point out that he really needs to be pre-tested on their curriculum and given the chance to display mastery. A score of 80% or higher is generally accepted to show mastery and if he could achieve an 80% or higher on their year end curriculum then why in the world would they want him to spend an entire year doing it? If he gets 80% or higher then they should follow with a pre-test for the next level until they find an appropriate placement. I’m doubtful whether their standard classroom assessments do anything more than measure kindergarten or early first grade skills. Even if his classmates score higher on these, it doesn’t indicate anything about his needs or even his true ranking among them. I’m not particularly concerned about his classmates or their skills. If half of them are really more advanced than him in reading and math then they should be getting second grade curriculum too.
Now the school is giving him more assessments outside of the classroom. They said they were willing to give him an end of year math assessment beyond what was done in class. C is a bit rusty with his math facts, but I doubt that will be enough to hold him back. I still can’t wrap my mind around how they can take a child who successfully completed first grade math and have him repeat.
His school also asked that I contact our district and try to have the rest of his testing moved up so that we don’t have to wait until October to move forward with getting a GIEP. I was able to get that moved to this Friday, so maybe things will start to fall into place sooner rather than later. We may end up depending on the district to fill in any gap left by the private school. If in the end his school insists on moving him down to kindergarten, we will have to make some very difficult decisions.
