Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Requesting "grade skip" into Kindergarten?

Anyone have experience with this? I'm about to send an informal query to someone (who happens to be on a listserv I frequent) who is an administrator at an alternative school program. I want to know if they would consider an "acceleration" by accepting a kid who would be 4.5 at the start of the school year. Even though I'm asking informally, I want to put my best foot forward.

Anyone been down this road? Are there buzz words or catch phrases to use? Arguments or ways of presenting the situation that are particularly effective? Or can anyone point me to a previous discussion here on this board?

Cheers,

Meg

I would probably use the term early-admittance, but I'm not sure that a precise term matters too much.

What you will want to reference is how your DD feels about learning, what types of things she is interested in, what her academic level seems to you to be, and anything that might show that she is ready to be in a K classroom. The biggest obtacle you're likely to be hit with is the argument that she might not be socailly ready for K despite her academic abilities. You know whether this rings true or not. If you've been exposed to K children (or older) or have visited a K classroom (or higher) and can refer to how your DD seems to you to compare, talk about that. They will want specific examples.

Do you have any ability or achievement testing for your DD?

Good luck!

Sounds pretty straightforward; you are first and foremost gathering information on their policy and procedures. Do they ever accept children that young for k? And if so, what process do you need to go through, what information do they need, who is the best person to get in touch with, etc.?

If the answer to the first question is no... then I guess I'd dig deeper at that point.
Good luck!

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Agreed, I'd call it "early admittance" or something similar. OP, I think you should be able to find a K program that'll consider early admittance by the fall 2012 timeframe, unless you're in a quite rural area. And if your listserv acquaintance indicates that there are special requirements for early admittance at her program, like testing, asking this far in advance also gives plenty of time to line up required documentation. Please check back and let us know how it went.

We did this 2 years ago. I called the school to request "early entrance to K". Because my son was so young, he was too young for the school's early entrance policy. (You can probably read your school's policy online or request a copy.) Because of this, he fell into the "whole grade acceleration" policy.

The school was very negative (bordering on rude) in my interactions with them. Because of their policy, he needed an IQ test, achievement test, and meeting of the "acceleration team". (The school provided all testing free of charge.) He couldn't be denied the testing because of the school's own policies, but he was the youngest child to ever go through it so they were very resistant. After the testing, their tune really changed, and they were so excited about him. The whole process took some time, so I would contact the school ASAP.

We called the local public and private schools (basically anonymously) to gather information and got pretty much shut down by the public schools and one of the private schools. "No, we do not do that, goodbye."

Another parent told us that what we would need to do if we wanted to push harder on the public schools is to request a very vague meeting in person with the principal (she uses, "We're trying to decide where to move") and bring it up face-to-face after they've already invested some time in it.

We're doing private for the next year or two, but we're keeping that in the back of our mind in case we need it.

I did a bit of research and found that, in my state, policy on early admission to K is decided at the district level. The school we're interested in is a tiny alternative school that is its own district (the principle is the superintendant). So I wrote a query asking about their policy. I guess we just wait and see.

We are struggling with this now.

Mr W (3y4m) has exceeded the ability of his Montessori primary program to teach him. In February he maxed out their assessment tests and was equivalent to the kids who graduate from their K program.

We are looking for an accelerated, structured K/1st grade situation so he can work on reading and math.

Same here but we did not call, but took an indirect route.

We went and did the tour thing and talked to the principal and or director. Listened to them first. Then we looked carefully at the curriculum and the classes and at the kids. We did not talk about Mr W during this time.

Then, at the end, if we thought this might work, we talked objectively about where Mr W was at in terms of his knowledge in the framework of their curriculum, what our issues were with where he was at, and what we were looking for. At this point, whether they asked us questions about him told us right away if they were flexible and were willing to try.

The long and the short of it is that couple of private schools are willing to let Mr W (3y4m) start in K this fall provided he fits in with the K-bound kids this summer.