If everyone is special, then no one is
David 'completed' Kindergarten today. I say that somewhat sarcastically for a number of reasons. First, he's being home-schooled, so the concept of completing a grade of school is little more than completing some paperwork for the school district. But that's really not why I'm filling up some real-estate on this screen. The teacher in charge of the independent study program (ISP) put David through an assessment to determine how much progress he's made over the course of the year. He placed in 1st semester 2nd grade for his reading comprehension level and end of 2nd grade for his reading level. So after just 7 months of ISP, he's nearly 2 grades ahead in reading. This after his 'original' pre-ISP Kindergarten teacher assessed him as "not ready to learn how to read" back in September.
David's development has been nothing short of amazing, and Denise really should take all of the credit. She's worked with him five days a week, for hours, for the past 7 months. That's no easy feat when working with a 5 year old who'd much rather goof off more often than not. There have been many days when Denise has been justifiably frustrated trying to get David to cooperate when he had little interest in sitting at a desk and exercising his brain. This isn't to say that David is a difficult student every day. He's had many days where he flies through new material (particularly math) and basically outpaced the lesson plans that Denise had prepared.
Of course the elephant in the room is me wondering what kind of progress would David have made if we had left him to rot in the original school. This was a school where his teacher was too busy trying to teach the alphabet to a significant minority of the class to have an interest in fostering young minds. I'm also left to wonder how many others have had their potential wasted in such an environment. Its a pity that many public schools (and some private too, I'm sure) have basically decided to give up on excellence and instead just teach to the lowest common denominator. Much of the problem here is parents who aren't being parents at all.
David will start 1st grade doing advanced 2nd grade material. My congratulations go to Denise & David for some amazing accomplishments.