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Old 06-13-2012, 10:44 AM
 
4,253 posts, read 9,430,764 times
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The solution is very simple, syracusa:

if your kid knowing 3rd grade material next year in the 1st grade will make you breathe easier, prepare him at home! These are long summer days that could be filled with brain gymnastics. Find Grade 3 books in your local bookstore, on the 'net, and the "expected outcomes" from your school district. Multiplication table, shapes, graphs, stereometry, volume. That way, you will know for sure that your child performs at the Grade 3rd level the next school year. (yeah he will be bored at school but that's secondary to mommy's competitiveness, right?)

And I am only half joking. Last summer, I got terrified with the holes my dd had in math. She had finished 2nd grade, but seemed to not know how to add and subtract. We had drills 1 hour each morning, from simple numbers to millions. We did the whole multiplication table. She was more than ready for the 3rd grade last September. Just do it, the way you remember the basic milestones from your childhood.

Last edited by nuala; 06-13-2012 at 10:52 AM..
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Old 06-13-2012, 11:09 AM
 
1,831 posts, read 4,424,465 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by syracusa View Post
For example, we are particularly worried about my son's "processing speed" and "staying on task" abilities which came out very low compared to the general population when he was evaluated last year.

This was not part of the cognitive test on which he scored high and very high on most sections and which prompted the psychologist to tell us he is "very smart" (her words). However, it is an important part of his neurological functioning which can severely mess up his performance and place him way behind many less "officially smart" children.

I doubt many parents whose child would score so low on "processing speed" and "staying on task" tests would be completely relaxed about their child's performance.
The teacher too confirmed that he does indeed have attention problems. So "he is advanced" but "he has attention problems"...what am I supposed to get out of this? How about an honest ranking so we can cut to the chase?

To know that your child has more than enough intellectual ability yet he can score very poorly on tests or just seriously under-perform...that can be enough to make you want to know more about how he stacks up.
The question I would want answered, as a mother of a child with attention issues who tests well above grade level, is whether the weaknesses are significant enough to impact learning and performance. If so, that can hold him back without some accommodations. However, if he can compsensate for the weaknesses with some intervention or self-motivation, he should do well.

The issue as I see it is that K is too early to really tell where he is consistently going to stack up. You can get some indicators now as to how his attention issues or processing speed impact learning and performance. And you can work on those issues to help him be successful (btw, the "laziness" could actually be the attention issue rearing its head). But comparisons to other children's performance is not necessarily going to help you to help him excel academically.

At the school one of my kids attends, you get a pretty good picture of the top kids and the other kids. There are three honor rolls: one for all As, one for As and Bs, and one for a child who has a C on the report card. There is an assembly where the children on the first two honor rolls are recognized with certificates, stage presence and parent paparazzi. The children on the last of those honor rolls get their certificates in class later. At the end of the school year, the kids who made the first two honor rolls for two out of the three "recognizable" quarters (school is out when the final quarter report cards are issued) have a special cook-out.

This has caused some confusion and upset among the children. I don't know how you feel about this, but I think it sets some children up to look down on others, while other children feel bad about themselves. The parents are puffed up about the recognition. Children like to talk about how they are on an advanced reading level and worry about other children scoffing at them for making a B.

I had to get my head and my child's head straight about that nonsense (he has received some but not all of that recognition). Because speaking realistically, I am more concerned about middle school and high school. I encourage him to work hard and I help him. I am worried about him learning and retaining, but somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that he will utimately be all right. In the meantime, I keep telling myself to focus. on. him.

OP, schools do all kinds of standardized testing, that will tell you whether your child is scoring basic, proficient or advanced. So you will know next year without having to ask. Good grades don't always mean advanced scores. Advanced scores don't always mean good grades. Being in the top five in K or 1st grade doesn't translate into being in the top five at high school graduation.
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Old 06-15-2012, 12:29 AM
 
1,429 posts, read 2,410,978 times
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I think it is perfectly reasonable that OP wants to see how her child stacks up to classmates...my son will be in kindergarten and you bet I will want to compare his learning milestones with the other children. Every parent I know is curious about how their child compares to another. It is human nature, not pressure.
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Old 06-15-2012, 01:10 PM
 
17,183 posts, read 22,809,602 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by breakingbad View Post
I think it is perfectly reasonable that OP wants to see how her child stacks up to classmates...my son will be in kindergarten and you bet I will want to compare his learning milestones with the other children. Every parent I know is curious about how their child compares to another. It is human nature, not pressure.
Why?

What is important is that your child is learning the skills needed for life.

Poem: All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
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Old 06-15-2012, 06:40 PM
 
Location: North Carolina
102 posts, read 311,834 times
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This is kindergarten, not junior or senior year of high school. I highly doubt that there even is an academic ranking system for the kindergarten year. Let's get serious, colleges are not going to pull records from elementary school (or even middle school). School is already competitive and stressful enough without adding in a ranking system in kindergarten!
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Old 06-15-2012, 06:50 PM
 
Location: mass
2,905 posts, read 7,334,813 times
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What would even be the point of knowing a specific standing?

How would the teacher even measure this? They are graded 1's, 2's and 3's usually in Kindergarten, and most of them don't even know how to read yet so you wouldn't even be able to compare book levels? (DD is in 1st grade, and according to her reading log the last books she "read" to the teacher were level 18, whatever that is)

Anyway, Kindergarteners aren't graded to the decimal in K.

I think if you expect to any information like you are wanting, you are going to need to ask the teacher specifically (and generically), "Would you say my child is in 5 brightest kids in the class? Or in the top 10? Then MAYBE she might speculate.

Your kid might be in the top 3 in math and the bottom 3 in reading.

This is just plain bizarre.

Where are you from, anyway?
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Old 06-16-2012, 05:43 AM
 
Location: Florida
7,195 posts, read 5,696,836 times
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I'm going to guess that this is simply a cultural thing. American parents are typically not worried about where their 5-year-olds rank in comparison to other 5-year-olds. In some other countries, this is not the case.

You are not going to be able to get a class rank for your first grader, either. That's just not how things are done here. We don't even "grade" kids at that age... they get vague marks like "satisfactory," "outstanding," and "needs improvement." Or perhaps some sort of number system that roughly means the same thing. At this age, it's not about competition; it's about teaching the kids to read and do basic math, and any differences at the kindergarten tend to close up by the 3rd grade or so. In a few years, the kid who can barely sound out CAT in kindergarten very well may end up out-reading the kid who is reading 3rd grade books in kindergarten.

Another aspect to this is that, to be honest, teachers really don't want to tell parents, "your kid is in the bottom 10 percent of the class." It's one thing when you're talking about a high school junior and thinking about his future job prospects; it's quite another when you're talking about a child who's only been out of diapers for two years.

Just relax. When he's in middle school or high school, you very well may look back and realize how silly all of this was. On the other hand, I do understand that cultural expectations are very deeply ingrained and take a very long time to change. If he's meeting state guidelines and he's reading, then just know in your heart that he's doing fine.
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Old 06-19-2012, 05:22 PM
 
4,043 posts, read 7,418,235 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherTouchofWhimsy
I'm going to guess that this is simply a cultural thing. American parents are typically not worried about where their 5-year-olds rank in comparison to other 5-year-olds. In some other countries, this is not the case.
Thanks again everyone for the input, especially those who had some concrete suggestions as to how I might be able to frame my question at school.

Regarding the above, with all very much due respect...this was a bit too much to be left unaddressed. Yes, it is a cultural thing - but nowhere close to what you are suggesting. It is, in fact, the opposite.

To say that American parents are "NOT typically worried about how their 5 yo measure up compared to other children"...this is what many outside the borders perceive as a wonderful example of the tremendous amount of hypocrisy cultivated in this culture.

Are you serious?...when this is the land of "my 2 yo taught himself how to read?".
"Mine sat up at 3 months, what about yours?"

Really?

How about "it's all right, it's OK, you're gonna work for us someday"? It is still here that I first heard this stadium chant which I found quite crass and repulsive (the clearly intent humor was lost on me).

How about this title - written by an American living in Switzerland:

Why my child will be your child's boss - CBS News

It's not about the Swiss just allowing kids to be kids.
It's about who's gonna become a leader and who is going to ride whose a**.

America is the most wildly competitive culture I have ever experienced - and I have been personally immersed in many. It is in fact exactly because parents are so incredibly cut-throat competitive and self-centered (child is included in the "self") that this atmosphere of "everyone should mind their own business and should not want to know rankings" was born.
Rankings are kept secret from schools to work places exactly because there is so much unaddressed and unreleased tension.

Yes, where I grew up rankings were out in the open pretty much from pre-school.
Everyone knew who was the best kid in class, then the second, then the third...and at the end of the day, it was absolutely no big deal because it didn't have to be. It had little real meaning.
In fact, parents of the less stellar kids tended to love the kids who ranked best, usually because they were more obedient, nicer, more docile/respectful...things old-fashioned parents liked...so they wanted their own to associate with those "good kids".

There was zero animosity between parents because life had a very weak competitive component at the time. People just focused on raising "good" children as opposed to "winners".

Of course, they had the luxury of not worrying about "winning" as they didn't have to deal with a globalized free market and human labor made obsolete.
The doctor was going to end up very nicely but it's not like the little clerk was going to have a miserable life because of constant economic insecurity.

All parents knew that those first kids in class were going to end up with lots of studies, etc - but that didn't mean their own kids were going to end up "badly", even if they were not going to drown in grad degrees.

Pre-school rankings actually predicted with pretty much 100% accuracy who ended up with better socio-economic position in life. It was exactly those kids who were ahead in preschool, funnily enough.

Despite all these practices of naming names and calling spades a spade...there was no overall sense of competitiveness. People truly went about their lives with ease, they were completely open with others who had kids too and they sure did compare each other's kids without shaking with fear at the thought of theirs turning out below those of others.

Generally, they were too busy with day-to-day work as well as social ties (extended family + friends) to obsess over junior. They just wanted to get a good report card at the end of the term.

Today, in this culture, despite parents being constantly told to focus strictly on their own child and his "best", there is an enormous amount of competitiveness among parents.
When I am around other parents, I must always be very careful to phrase every question or sentence in ways that will not even vaguely hint at anything related to ANY child's performance/achievement/ranking etc. for fear someone might be offended.

Whoever denies this is either completely autistic (unlikely) or a giant hypocrite (likely).

I am not accusing anyone in particular for this state of affairs and I am not pointing fingers to individual "bad, competitive parents", because I find this to be a completely normal symptom of the global socio-economic and demographic changes over the past 20-30 years or so.

That being said, given the realities of our times, I remain interested in knowing how my child (yes, even in 1st grade) will rank in class, in school, nationally and even internationally - though I am aware no one is going to give me stats for the latter.

Quote:
Originally Posted by breakingbad View Post
I think it is perfectly reasonable that OP wants to see how her child stacks up to classmates...my son will be in kindergarten and you bet I will want to compare his learning milestones with the other children. Every parent I know is curious about how their child compares to another. It is human nature, not pressure.
I agree it is 100% human nature...and now with cherries on top: fear that the global markets will pretty much turn your child into human mush.

To pretend you don't care how your child compares to others today, is, in my opinion, a giant plate of hypocrisy thrown in your face. Or social engineering of the self. Or just being an Ostrich.

It means absolutely squat if your child has certain "life skills" as long as those life skills mean little/nothing relative to the skills others around have .
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Old 06-19-2012, 07:20 PM
 
Location: Here and There
497 posts, read 693,355 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by syracusa View Post
Pre-school rankings actually predicted with pretty much 100% accuracy who ended up with better socio-economic position in life. It was exactly those kids who were ahead in preschool, funnily enough.
Did you ever consider that this could have been the result of parents/other adults providing extra attention and instruction for the "best" kids? If a child is labeled at a very young age as not reaching his/her full potential, I am willing to bet that adults/teachers would take note and provide a different level of instruction/motivation/encouragement to that child.

For the life of me I cannot see how labeling/ranking young children will benefit anyone - except overly competitive parents who have been drinking the Keeping-Up-With-The-Joneses' Kool-aid. Don't allow it to bother you. Who cares when the neighbor's kid walks or learns a foreign language? Who cares where your child's best friend goes to college? WHO CARES?

Ugh!
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Old 06-20-2012, 07:25 PM
 
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Syracusa,

Considering the system you grew up in there was a definite advantage to being "obedient, nicer and more docile".

Seeing as how the people who rocked the boat or asserted their individualism frequently found themselves many, many miles from home and very, very cold.
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