Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Age grouping

I took in DS right after he turned 3, and he did fine on all the cognitive/language tests, but not so much for the motor tests. But his overall score was average so they didn't do any follow-up testing or anything. The assessor told me to take him to a neurologist. Ok, so she could obviously see something wasn't quite right but they weren't going to do anything anyway to determine if there were any services he qualified for. All they cared about was one number. Waste of time. He is 2e and he slipped thru the cracks because of it.

I know you've had a particularly aggravating experience with the PSs, blackcat.

Every time I hear about another bad experience someone here has had with child find, it just frustrates me, because that's -not- the way it's supposed to be. And it's also often not the way the professionals involved want to do it, either. Of course, there are unskilled or otherwise-motivated educators out there, but quite often, they are doing the best they can within the limits of their positions. Sometimes, they would actually like you to make some noise, so other decision-makers in the system will be forced to respond. It sounds like the evaluator who recommended a neuro eval may have been trying to do something like that, since if you came back with a medical Dx, the district would be forced to write an IFSP or IEP.

And screening is not supposed to consist of one number. A deficit in any one of the big five areas of early childhood educational function is sufficient. That's why most of the preschool and kinder screeners have the same five domains. If there was only one number, then he was given the short screening version, but not the slightly longer eval version, which does not constitute a comprehensive eval.

Anyway, didn't mean to hijack the thread, just to say that the reason for age cut-offs is actually to insure that delayed kids are caught earlier, and have an equal opportunity to be schooled. That it has become a rationale for withholding access to schooling is unfortunate. Probably reflects the lack of flexible developmental programming in our current kindergarten climate.

We live in Europe and all sports are organized by age, not grade. While kids still have to share PE class with the kids in their grade regardless of age, wherever there are standardized norms (swimming, athletics) kids are graded against age norms - so, being accelerated, I'd learn shot putting with everyone else in my class, then was the only one to still have to throw a ball for my grade, and for sports day I was always grouped with the kids from the grade below due to my year of birth.

However, there is still red shirting, and it's getting worse. Recently, there was a ridiculous class at our local elementary where a whopping 11 out of 20 kids were redshirted, boys and girls, and none of them had actual delays, it was all for the "gift of another year" (a year in which, oddly, most of them had learned to read regardless, and were way ahead to the kids who started on time). A friends daughter with a June birthday, more than a year younger than most, struggled badly. Finally, she had to hold her daughter back a year in fifth grade, too.

It skews the system, badly. I wish they'd ask for evaluations of kids who are held back and unless a child has an actual delay which can be expected to be remediate by the sheer passing of time rather than special ed services (preemies come to mind) either have them enter on time or put them in the higher grade where they ought to be.

Most youth sports that I know are organized by age not grade. All of the youth sports my child was in were organized by age. 8U with a cutoff around the beginning of the season or something like that. This was why my daughter was often in sports with kids who were a grade younger than her. She was on the youngish side and all these other kids were held back. Even in H.S. sports are only separated by grade in that you HAVE to be in H.S. to be on the teams are are mostly separated by ability. And the fact that often there is a freshman team. But if you are really young freshman maybe you wouldn't even get on the team, discouraging you from trying again next year because there are piles of 18 year olds on the team. And if you are a older senior you might be more likely to make the varsity team and be the star player?

There was a discussion thread about 2 years ago, when the TV show 60 minutes discussed redshirting.

NAEYC came out against red-shirting: http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200309/DelayingKEntry.pdf