What's the best class size for kindergarten?
The Chartiers-Houston School Board had a discussion during its education committee meeting about the right size of elementary classes. The district is considering all-day kindergarten. What's the right size for those classes. Is it OK to keep them smaller if that means the upper elementary classes are larger? (Say ... 18 in kindergarten vs. 25 or 26 in fifth or sixth grade.)
Labels: Class size
posted by Dawn Keller at
11:49 AM
9 Comments:
My son's full day kindergarten class had 27 children. The teacher was capable of handling that many children with the help of a student teacher and parent volunteers. That's probably not the case in most situations though. Overall, it has to be the right teacher and she has to have immediate backup or help available.
When I was registering my second son for kindergarten (full-day), I was told there were going to be 33 kids in his class! I instead enrolled him for first grade, where there were only 23 students.
You can just pick and choose what grade they start in?
Well, he has a July birthday. When he turned 5, he was a holy terror and no way ready for school, so we waited a year. He did a complete turnaround in that year and was sooo overready for kindergarten that first grade made more sense.
To my knowledge, kindergarten is still not mandatory and as long as the kiddo is six years old by the cut-off date, they can go straight to first grade. Best decision we ever made.
Do they have to be asian?
I'm just sayin' :-)
That's good to know, though... Thanks
When I was working on a kindergarten series, I learned that kids don't legally have to start school in Pennsylvania until the age of EIGHT. They also aren't required to take kindergarten so you can start your kids in first grade if you want. However, every teacher and principal I talked to agreed that kids who start school in first grade start out behind.
You need to talk to different first grade teachers and principals. LOL. Practically anyone can homeschool kindergarten and/or enroll their child in a good preschool program that gets them ready for first grade. I know things have changed and kids are not allowed be be kids anymore and get pushed faster and faster, but kindergarten SHOULD still be optional.
Very few said that kindergarten should be mandatory. They just said that kids that weren't in kindergarten weren't prepared for first grade because of what you mentioned ... that they have to do so much so much sooner. The ones I talked to based that on student data and how students did in class.
And I modestly have to admit that I am the mom of a kid who is "smarter than the average bear" to quote Yogi, so he probably had an advantage.
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