I had assumed that Avery would go to Pre-K next year since his birthday is past the October 1 cut-off date. However, during our school tour, we asked the Principal about his ability to read. She suggested we look into Kindergarten and thus began several long weeks of asking questions, talking to people, testing, more talking and vacillating wildly between the two options. We really had no idea what we were getting in to.
Our first step was to schedule a reading assessment at the school and during the assessment, I learned that Avery would have to pass a District test to even qualify for K, should we choose to go in that direction. Avery did fabulously in his first assessment. He's reading at a 1st grade level and his comprehension is where Kindergarteners need to be by the end of the year. After the test, I spoke to the administrator and she cautioned against moving kids ahead regardless of academic ability. She suggested I speak to the K teacher at the school.
My conversation with her was very thought provoking. She also seemed to lean towards keeping Avery at grade level and that he would most likely be brought into K for reading and math. She also told me about her son who is a September birthday and is struggling a lot as a freshman because he hasn't hit puberty and is a child among men. This really struck me. If we put Avery in K, he would be, by far the youngest in his class, and not even by a year. Some parents red shirt their children meaning they are 6 turning 7 in K. I don't think Scott and I were ready for Avery to be playing with 7 year olds every day when he would just barely be 5. Academically, I know K is the right place for him, but there is another side to it, and his social development is equally as important. During conferences this year, his teachers said he was the class leader, which was surprising because we consider Avery more of a follower. I think it is an ideal position for him to be one of the oldest in the class and I would much rather have him set the tone rather than an overly aggressive and violent 7 year old.
However, I was so concerned about his academic growth. He is definitely ready for something a little more rigorous. I worried that he would be treading water. However, during a conversation with the director of a local preschool (I had called to see what kind of K options they offered, but would not let Avery in because of his age) she told me that he won't stop learning, and even though I knew this, it was reassuring to hear from a professional educator. The more people I spoke to, the more I realized that anyone who worked with kids professionally urged us to keep him at grade level. The only people who encouraged him to move up were other parents who had made that choice for their sons, but each one of them said, at some point, it was very hard, and sometimes the hard was YEARS.
We went ahead with the District test even though at that point we were leaning towards Pre-K just to see if our assessment of Avery was accurate. The test took 45 minutes and Avery did great. They don't give the results right away but the lady said she would be surprised if he didn't qualify and then I picked her brain about our situation. She said some kids do 2 years of Kindergarten (weird, but apparently it's a thing) and that there are gifted and talented options. A week later, I was ready to submit his application for Pre-K, but I thought I would call and see if his test results revealed anything since we had not received the letter in the mail yet.
Well, he did spectacularly. His focus was great and scored in the 99.9% for math and reading. His fine motor skills are average! No surprises here, except that I didn't really expect his percentile to be that high. When I dropped off his application, the Principal said she never sees scores like that.
So, even though he is going to be ahead (he's actually reading this out loud over my shoulder right now, aren't you, Avery???) we have decided to keep him at grade level for now, have him tested (again) in the fall with the hopes of getting into the advanced kindergarten program next year. For us, it came down to the fact that we can always help and challenge him academically but we can never make him older and for a 14 year old watching his friends get their driver's licenses, that's probably a pretty big deal.
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