response to previous post comment

response:

to note, the child was retained PRIOR to having been made eligible for special education services. he cannot be retained now that he has been made eligible. i was saying that it seemed like a poor idea to skip him a grade because of his age, since his IEP places him in the general ed classroom 69% percent of the day. while the district has apparently been skipping children who had been retained prior to being made eligible and are thus several years older than their peers, i don’t think that’s a great idea, especially in the primary grades. even if he’s behind, what is the purpose of trying to accommodate and modify fourth grade materials when he hasn’t had third grade yet?  we’re not talking about reading to gain information quite yet, he’s still in the learning to read phase. nor are we talking about a child whose needs are so severe that no matter what grade he’s in he can’t participate in the general curriculum. so to me, promoting him doesn’t make much sense. what IDEA has to say on the matter, etc, is another story. considering that many of the children here have been retained, it is not as if he’ll be the only one who is old for his grade. it’s only more obvious that he’s old for his grade (having been retained compounded by a birthday just on the other side of the cut-offs) because he’s also huge for his age. even if he was in third grade this year, he would be among the largest third graders…should we skip him because he’s tall? should we hold back my kindergartener because he’s the size of a three year old? no. another one of my LD second graders will be 9 in two weeks and is repeating second grade currently. he’s old for his grade, but it isn’t as obvious because he’s quite small for his age, he looks like he could be 7 going on 8 no problem. no one has ever suggested to me we skip him a grade because he doesn’t stand out as much.

I had a similar conundrum with my first grader. His birthday is December 28th, meaning that he was the youngest in his class. There are some children in his homeroom class that are nearly a full year older than him. He could well have been in kindergarten, but because he was made eligible for SPED, he could not repeat kindergarten, even though he’s young for his grade and he’s developmentally delayed. But that’s the way it works. I think he would have benefited from another year of kindergarten, particularly with the very very strong kindergarten teacher I work with.