I am pretty sure she falls within the 'normal' range for her grade, she is just closer to the bottom of that range. And the range within her class is skewed toward the higher end.
If your dd's teacher has a concern that she is not keeping up and in over her head re the expectations for K, and is recommending she repeat K, they need to offer some quantitative evidence supporting their concerns. One of the pieces of information you should absolutely have to make sense of whether or not she should repeat K is knowledge of what reading level she is at (both baseline and where that falls relative to classroom peers). It's one thing for a teacher to say she's struggling, but if she's struggling enough she needs to repeat, the teacher needs to show you evidence that is based on data. Quite honestly, they should have some of that evidence for all their students anyway - most K-1 classrooms have some kind of measure in place to determine what reading level children are at.
Next thing to consider - if she's had a year of instruction in reading and its' making progress - why? It could be developmental, but it could also be a red flag that there's a challenge preventing her from making progress with reading. *IF* it's developmental, then let her go to 1st, and at some point in time in the next year she's most likely going to make that leap into being a true reader - on her own. *IF* it's not developmental, but instead an indicator that she has some type of learning challenge impacting reading, then holding her back is *NOT* the solution - she will most likely need an individualized instruction plan. It's been the experience of many of us here with 2e kids that the way to remediate the 2nd e is not retaining a child at a curricular level below their ability, but to instead place them in the educational setting that matches their cognitive ability and provide the appropriate accommodations/remediation and support that is addresses their learning challenge in that setting. That's where your child is going to make the most progress in learning how to deal with a learning challenge.
Sorry to get on a soapbox about it, but personal experience has made me a bit passionate about that subject
*IF* your dd was showing signs of difficulty adjusting to kindergarten due to maturity issues, I might consider having her repeat it - but that's the only situation, other than a situation where she's clearly falling *below* grade level and you're certain it's not due to a learning challenge.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - I have an acquaintance here who was in a similar position - she was told the private school her child was enrolled in would hold her back to repeat kindergarten because her reading was not at grade level. The parent's response was to switch back to public school to avoid having her child repeat K, and she had her child tutored over the summer by a reading specialist in an attempt to be sure her child wasn't behind peers in reading ability in first grade. What happened, in her case, was that the reading specialist found there was truly a learning challenge. But that's just one child in one situation. My experience as the parent of kids with 2e is that recognizing and deciphering reading challenges in young children is difficult due to the wide range of "typical" reading development plus the vary wide range of skills needed to read.
