Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Grade Skipping

I am sure there are lots of posts on this forum about this topic, but maybe someone can just give me some quick feedback. My child has not yet been tested, but will be next week. IF she tests gifted, I have been given the possible option of putting her in Kindergarten instead of preK4. She misses the Kindergarten cut off date by 6 weeks. PreK 4 is run on a lottery here. (No preference for gifted IEP.) So, she might not get in. If NOT, would you consider putting her in kindergarten at age 4? She would be 4 years old for August, September, October, and part of November. The cutoff in my state is September 30th. Will 6 weeks make a big difference long term? I know she can do the work now because I teach kindergarten. That part doesn't concern me at all. She's also very friendly and outgoing and making friends with any and all kids isn't an issue. Other opinions I have heard question what will happen when she is a teenager and in a grade with older kids making older kid decisions. Then there is the whole going to college at 17 thing. Opinions? Would you use an IQ of a certain number to help the decision? Or no?
Thanks!

Early entry makes sense if you feel like she is ready for the social/emotional aspects; the cutoff will be at best a rounding error by the time high school/college rolls around.

Looking at your past posts, your kid tested very well on the IQ testing. I don't know that I'd use a hard line for this choice but certainly for anything over +2SD (i.e. 130) I would strongly consider early entry for a child close to the line.

My now 5 yo started kindergarten this year at 4 yo with a September birthday. He's got some asynchrony issues (socially/emotionally he's a bit behind combined with being the youngest in the class), but I cannot imagine redshirting him. He's academically so far ahead that I would imagine that him being the oldest would just result in more problems because of boredom.

Two additional thoughts: as I understand it, Louisiana makes acceleration pretty difficult after first entry, so I personally would take the early entry even if I know it would be difficult for a while.

Second, http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/youngest-kid-smartest-kid It's not that there won't be problems, but that part of growing up is learning to overcome challenges through working hard, self understanding, etc. Shades of the growth mindset and all.

Every case is different. The Iowa Acceleration Scale (IAS) is a tool made to help evaluate the appropriateness of full-grade acceleration. As there is good and bad in everything, there are both pros and cons to acceleration. Many old threads discuss the ups and downs of acceleration. Here is a link to one thread which contains links to other threads on acceleration.

Mal, that was a very interesting read. I had never once considered that there would be some positive long term effects. Here's a good time to mention it's for entry into a French immersion school...

I really had no idea parenting was going to be this hard. The decisions I have made for them at 3 and 4 just blow my mind. I don't think it was this hard when I was a kid!

Thanks for the feedback.

If you do early entry now, are you allowed to reverse the skip at a later stage if your dd is not happy with it? Also, does you dd have an opinion about this decision? Even at a young age, some of these kids know exactly what makes them happy/unhappy. My dd skipped kindergarten and started first grade the day she turned 5. She is now in second grade and still under-challenged but doing great academically. Socially, she is challenged but that would be the same skip or no skip. She is emotionally very mature. So the skip has worked well for us. Seems like your daughter is definitely academically ready and is outgoing, so early entry might be a good option. All the best with your decision. I know it is hard to make what seems like life changing decisions but what made me agree to the skip was knowing no decision needs to be final and as things change, so will our decisions and the paths they lead us to.

Lots of kids start K at 4. My older daughter started K at 4. Her birthday is in the end of Sept. and our cutoff at the time was Dec 2nd. Although many parents will fall babies held their kids back. She was on the young end her whole life. Since she went to a 'year-round' school she attended K for at least 6 weeks before turning 5. Six weeks is really not THAT early.

One question I would want to know before making this decision is how common it is for parents hold back fall babies. Ie.. if she would be the youngest by months in your class not because of official cut-offs but because parents choose to hold their kids back. This is usually more common in wealthy districts. And how well she holds her own socially. For most parents posting on this board the K curriculum is really not the issue.

The way you describe your daughter it sounds like early entry is a very good option for her. 6 weeks will not matter one way or the other.

I am a fan of early entry as a form of acceleration because it is so nicely inobtrusive and reduces a lot of the "weirdness" factor that others feel about grade skipping. Somehow going through the normal progression of grades, even if a bit early, appears to be so much more palatable to educators, other parents and other kids alike. And those early "get them in the mood" activities, all that colouring and tracing and counting is so much more palatable to the younger, academically advanced kid, fun, not crazy-making, and hopefully segueing into actual academics as soon as she feels done with it.

DS9, a late fall kid, was born 2 weeks after the cutoff (should have been 8 weeks because he was born somewhat premature, but you're not supposed to correct for prematurity after a certain age, which kind of proves the point - a few weeks here or there will not matter if the child is otherwise clearly ready and academically advanced) and was entered early, with the support of all educators involved. DS9 was NOT socially savvy and had a number of sensory issues, but grade school actually worked better for him than preschool in that respect, more structured, more intellectual stimulation as opposed to social stimulation, calmer kids. Even though by the end of second grade he would have been academically ready for another skip, we did manage to avoid that one - he wanted to stay with his friends and there has been a lot of social growth which we feel has been beneficial to achieve before the transition to middle school. We do hope that the gifted programming in middle school that will start this fall will help with addressing the by now huge academic gap. We might send him a year abroad between sophomore and junior year in high school (he would not get credit for stuff he did abroad so that choice would be the equivalent of a grade correction) or he could do a gap year after graduation at 17, or go to university and be a minor for a few weeks, none of it really is a big concern.

I'do it again in a heartbeat. DD has an august birthday and I kinda wish she'd had a late fall or winter birthday too...

I'll add another perspective; we've chosen not to skip our son, also born in the fall, 10 weeks after the cutoff. At our school, it is common for summer born kids to be held back, so our son has about 5 kids (in his class of 20) older than him. Our son is very far ahead (reading third grade chapter books in preK for example), but he is very, very happy.

The issues to consider are social/maturity and fine motor. Socially, it's about more than a good fit with peers; it's also about classroom expectations for attention and behavior. Is she ready to sit and learn more than play? My son would really miss the playing at his current age.

For fine motor, this was a big concern for us because his preK class is expected to write sentences (not copy but spell and write). K expectations here are a full page of writing on the lines. Our boy was just not ready for that.

I just want to encourage you that the decision you make now doesn't determine her entire future. My DH was grade-skipped as a child and then moved to a school where he didn't speak the language at age 7. They moved him down two grades to K for three months then moved him back up one grade to 1st with his age mates when he spoke the language. He went to a new school two years later and was skipped back to a year ahead. He went on to graduate as valedictorian a month after turning 17. No need to feel that the decision you make now can't be changed or undone in the future!

It seems you are in a particularly good spot to make this call, given you are a K teacher. Six weeks is not long after the cutoff at all. I wouldn't make the decision based on college entry age. There are 13 years between K and that time! Much can change in society and in her options. Gap years may even be the norm by then...

I do have some personal bias, having started at 4 with a Nov. birthday. Starting college at 17 was absolutely fine. I turned 18 a few months later. Waiting a little longer than most of my friends to drive at 16 was sort of irritating, but frankly, I'm not sure 16 year olds are fully ready to drive!

Can your child visit the kindergarten classroom for a day? My DS visited his kindergarten when he was only 3.5 and then started at 4.5. He left the visit excited and with the kindergarten teacher fully on board for early entry.

We knew very early on that DS was "out there" in terms of development and could not fathom him doing kindergarten work at the usual age, so I saw early enrollment as a sort of preventive measure. I wanted to build in a skip while he was still happy and engaged in school rather than waiting for things to go sour before doing something radical.

Early entry worked really well for us, but it still took another skip later on to make a really good fit. We're vaguely planning to do a deferred college enrollment / gap year / study abroad after high school but will figure all that out when the time comes. The important thing for us is that DS has always been challenged and happy and never lost his love of learning.