A couple months back, my daughter Neeva asked her mother and I if we would let her go to the local public school. Since the school in our neighborhood has a much better reputation and academic record than the school in our old neighborhood, we decided to enroll her and see how things went.
Neeva is nine years old. When she was five, she wasn't quite ready to begin reading, so we waited until she was ready rather than try to fight an uphill battle for a year with a disinterested pupil. Neeva has also struggled with Amblyopia ("Lazy Eye" Syndorme) and a more recent eye infection which has caused delays in her reading development. As a result, Neeva has progressed to the third grade level in her reading and math skills.
Her birthday is on August 26, just five days before the cutoff date to determine which grade a child should be placed in in Utah. When we enrolled her in the local school, the school used her birthday as the determining factor in her class placement, and stuck her in the fourth grade, despite our request that she be placed in the third grade. Had she been born on September 1, the school would have placed her in the third grade.
She was not up to doing the 4th grade work, and could not even begin to do the math assignments. Her teacher told her that her reading wasn't up to par, and then told her she was assigning "kindergarten level" books for her to read. Almost immediately, we began to notice "attention getting" and other stress related behavior in Neeva, including complaints that her eye was hurting and her vision was getting worse which resulted in two visits to the opthamologist. She wasn't getting along with her siblings, she started lying and not wanting to do chores, and so on. Finally on Sunday evening, she decided to run away from home.
After we found her, I spent some time talking with her about what was causing all of the errant behavior, and she told me that her school work was too hard, and she thought she should be in the third grade instead of the fourth. I agreed to go to school the next morning and ask to have her placed in the third grade. I asked her what she wanted to do if the school refused, and she replied, "I think I should be homeschooled."
I visited the school with Neeva the next morning, only to be told by the secretary that placement was based on the child's age and birthday, and that only the principal could change the placement based on a teacher's recommendation. The principal wasn't in and wouldn't be in until the following day. When I told the secretary that I would take Neeva back to homeschool, the secretary called in a "resource" teacher.
I explained the entire situation to the resource teacher, who, of course, had no authority to make any changes without discussing the matter with her "team" consisting of all of the resource teachers, the school psychologist, the school socialiologist, the principal, etc., but she promised me that the team would discuss it and make a decision the next day. I made it clear to the resource teacher (and the vice principal who called later in the day) that we were resolved that either Neeva be placed in third grade or that we would resume homeschool.
About 10 AM Tuesday, we received a call from the secretary informing us that Neeva would be placed in the third grade. Neeva returned home from school ecstatic! She loved her new class, and had made friends immediately; she was able to do the work without too much difficulty, and was even able to help some of the other students with their math. Instead of being the youngest (by almost three months) and smallest person in her class, she was now the oldest student in a class with children about the same size and ability level.
Also truly remarkable, the inflamation of her retina and the discomfort in her left eye dimished greatly. Where her left eye vision had been measured between 20/60 to 20/150 on Thursday and Friday of the week she spent in 4th grade, at her follow up check on Wednesday she was reading the 20/20 line with ease. Further verification that placing Neeva in the 3rd grade was the appropriate place for her.
The age segregation practiced by the public school system, based on an arbitrary birthday cutoff date made no pedagogical sense in Neeva's case, and I suspect that it makes no sense for many other children. Children are born with different characteristics, different strengths and weaknesses; they develop at different rates, and occasionally they suffer from individual maladies that affect their readiness to learn.
It makes sense to group children in school by ability level, as it permits the teacher to concentrat on building that ability level for the entire group rather than trying to develop individual paths for each student. Segregating based just on age is ridiculous. It neither smooths the path of learning for the child nor does it provide an analog to "the real world" the child is being prepared for.
Neeva is nine years old. When she was five, she wasn't quite ready to begin reading, so we waited until she was ready rather than try to fight an uphill battle for a year with a disinterested pupil. Neeva has also struggled with Amblyopia ("Lazy Eye" Syndorme) and a more recent eye infection which has caused delays in her reading development. As a result, Neeva has progressed to the third grade level in her reading and math skills.
Her birthday is on August 26, just five days before the cutoff date to determine which grade a child should be placed in in Utah. When we enrolled her in the local school, the school used her birthday as the determining factor in her class placement, and stuck her in the fourth grade, despite our request that she be placed in the third grade. Had she been born on September 1, the school would have placed her in the third grade.
She was not up to doing the 4th grade work, and could not even begin to do the math assignments. Her teacher told her that her reading wasn't up to par, and then told her she was assigning "kindergarten level" books for her to read. Almost immediately, we began to notice "attention getting" and other stress related behavior in Neeva, including complaints that her eye was hurting and her vision was getting worse which resulted in two visits to the opthamologist. She wasn't getting along with her siblings, she started lying and not wanting to do chores, and so on. Finally on Sunday evening, she decided to run away from home.
After we found her, I spent some time talking with her about what was causing all of the errant behavior, and she told me that her school work was too hard, and she thought she should be in the third grade instead of the fourth. I agreed to go to school the next morning and ask to have her placed in the third grade. I asked her what she wanted to do if the school refused, and she replied, "I think I should be homeschooled."
I visited the school with Neeva the next morning, only to be told by the secretary that placement was based on the child's age and birthday, and that only the principal could change the placement based on a teacher's recommendation. The principal wasn't in and wouldn't be in until the following day. When I told the secretary that I would take Neeva back to homeschool, the secretary called in a "resource" teacher.
I explained the entire situation to the resource teacher, who, of course, had no authority to make any changes without discussing the matter with her "team" consisting of all of the resource teachers, the school psychologist, the school socialiologist, the principal, etc., but she promised me that the team would discuss it and make a decision the next day. I made it clear to the resource teacher (and the vice principal who called later in the day) that we were resolved that either Neeva be placed in third grade or that we would resume homeschool.
About 10 AM Tuesday, we received a call from the secretary informing us that Neeva would be placed in the third grade. Neeva returned home from school ecstatic! She loved her new class, and had made friends immediately; she was able to do the work without too much difficulty, and was even able to help some of the other students with their math. Instead of being the youngest (by almost three months) and smallest person in her class, she was now the oldest student in a class with children about the same size and ability level.
Also truly remarkable, the inflamation of her retina and the discomfort in her left eye dimished greatly. Where her left eye vision had been measured between 20/60 to 20/150 on Thursday and Friday of the week she spent in 4th grade, at her follow up check on Wednesday she was reading the 20/20 line with ease. Further verification that placing Neeva in the 3rd grade was the appropriate place for her.
The age segregation practiced by the public school system, based on an arbitrary birthday cutoff date made no pedagogical sense in Neeva's case, and I suspect that it makes no sense for many other children. Children are born with different characteristics, different strengths and weaknesses; they develop at different rates, and occasionally they suffer from individual maladies that affect their readiness to learn.
It makes sense to group children in school by ability level, as it permits the teacher to concentrat on building that ability level for the entire group rather than trying to develop individual paths for each student. Segregating based just on age is ridiculous. It neither smooths the path of learning for the child nor does it provide an analog to "the real world" the child is being prepared for.
Comments
I don't think it's a funding issue for testing as much as an ingrained philosophical idea that is rarely challenged. I will have more to say on age segregation in future posts, so stay tuned.