A Timed Math Test in Kindergarten/

emmys K was a combo of both. it was in a rich area with a very strict public school testing. She was the youngest and it took her time to adjust. this year she goes one district over (less expensive area), its more relaxed but they expect the same results on the tests.
I would say if the school is like that all over the baord, its better to repeat them then have them strgugle each year. they have a late brthday so why not enjoy them being in K an extra year? going to the principal seems extreme unless her kids are testing off the charts and not moving up. even if the school is tough you have to go off where they are in regards to the other students

Your kindergarten sounds great. Your friend's sounds horrible and not at all age appropriate. If her district wants to design a curriculum to encourage kids to hate school at any early age, they are doing a great job.

Your kids are learning to add and multiply (that is what counting by 2s, 5s and 10s is) in a way that is fun AND that shows them the reality and application of numbers. Math work sheets do NOT teach children the applications of math nor do they give any appreciation for what numbers are and how they 'work' or interact with each other.

Children learn to read when they learn to read. It is largely developmental, just like walking. You can't make them walk any earlier than they are ready either. Children who learn to read at age 6 (or even 7) do no worse in life than children who are reading at age 4. DH and I were reading at age 4, before we started kindergarten. DH's brother read in second grade. We all have doctorates. It is so so so much more important that children love to read than that they read in kindergarten.

This business that kindergarten is 'the new first grade' is simple bs. My son is in first grade. I am so glad I had him in a Montessori school through kindergarten. They believe education should be child led and individual child appropriate.

There's a reason they do the math tests. They're called DRA Math Tests. All they do is test the level of Math Development that each individual child is at for math to help them get an idea of where to place them in their first grade year. It also helps them figure out where the class is as a whole in understanding the concepts that they're trying to teach.

They also have DRA Reading Tests to check Reading Development.

So if your friend's daughters aren't testing even at grade level in the DRA Math Tests, then maybe they're not testing well with the DRA Reading Tests either and the teacher feels that they need an extra year to catch up to their peers. It has much more to do with their capabilities than what the core curriculum is.

I liked Dana K from Pittsburgh's response.

Our kindergarten (rather, my son's) seems pretty middle of the road, from my perpective. They do have the children do some writing, some of it guided, some independently. The math questions are still usually offering some sort of tangible/visual augmentation (numbers presented with representative forms, like triangles, dots or apples to count to confirm their sums). They have a good balance of doing hands-on math stations activities as well as some paperwork. The writing goal is similar to your districts as well.

The only 'testing' I've observed is the teachers working with individual kids to ascertain how much math competency they do have. It seems pretty casual and benign.

Your friend's daughters' kindergarten sounds like a great way for kids to learn to dislike school. If the entry requirement is Dec and they had their birthday 6 months before and the teacher says they aren't ready-- good grief. Yes, she should talk to upper administration. Is the whole school set up this way, or just one teacher? This sounds beyond rigorous, this sounds very, very stressful.

It's the end of the school year , or close to it. Here we are 4 weeks away from summer vacation. So to me what your friend is describing isn't that far off of what should be getting done. The end of K is prep for 1st grade. All the things you describe is expected in 1st grade. Add in spelling tests and you've got what they do here end of year K.I'd be concerned that your school district isn't preping the kids for the next year. What you describe for your child's class is start of the year stuff. By this time of year "common core" should already be done.

Also her daughters might be too immature to move to 1st grade. "too young" usually refers to maturity level. The principal will likely present the evidence that the girls are too young. I hope that mom listens to the evidence and makes an educated decision working with the school to figure out what's best for her daughters instead of getting defensive.

Call me old fashioned but what the heck has happened to Kindergarten. Remember the book "Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten?" With all this math, when do kinds learn to be kind, to play together, to share and all the life skills to be a good person. The answer is they do not learn. That's why kids are beating up on others and generally being mean. Maybe we should just go back in time. So much pressure on kids at five years old. So etching has to change. Vent over.

Our district does quite a bit of testing, and yes, they test in kindergarten. I don't remember now whether the tests were as extensive as what you've written, though. The kids also had reading, writing, and math homework every night. We are in a large urban public district. The testing has gotten out of control but an inevitable part of their future if things stay as they are.

My son attends a Blue Ribbon award winning private Catholic school located in one of the top districts in the US, and his school outperforms the public schools. They do math the way your district does it--dice, dominos, grouping by 2s, 5s, 10s, fun projects to get the kids excited about the concept of 100, etc.

I was raised at a school that did it like your friend's district--worksheets. I've never been very confident in my math abilities (I'm not BAD at math, but didn't complete Calculus in high school as most of my friends did), relative to my other subjects. I don't know if having the more hands-on approach would have helped me develop better math skills, but I can see that it helps my son. There will be plenty of time for the students to do rote learning of 3+4=7, but it is a much more valuable skill to see WHY 3+4=7.

Rather than write a novel I'll just say your schools seems to be the far better of the two. The process by which they are teaching math is far more effective in the long run. I'd ask your friend if she has any other education alternatives in her area.

If the testing and excessive worksheets start in Kinder the rest of the elementary experience will be a bubble filling, robotic bore, devoid of critical thinking and real world learning. I'd run to the nearest private or charter school.

Is your question asking us, is this normal or average or expected? Personally, I think it sounds excessive. I know the cut-off in MI is Dec. 1 but the reality is that very few parents with kids that have Sept-Oct-Nov birthdays actually start them when they could - they elect to wait a year so that their child turns 6 during kindergarten instead of 5. I realize things are different now and kindergarten has become the new first grade, but I don't remember as a kid having timed math tests until maybe 2nd grade. If the girls turn 6 in June, I don't understand why they really would need to repeat kindergarten when this curriculum sounds too advanced already - it's almost like they are being set up to fail. Repeating kindergarten would mean they would be turning 19 right after they graduated high school. I know there are times that repeating kindergarten really is in the child's best interest but unless there is something else going on, it's hard to say. What I would want to know is how are the other kids performing - are the majority of the kids in the class able to perform these tasks and your friend's kids are behind compared to them? Are the other kindergarten classes in the same school or the same district all following the same curriculum or is this teacher trying to push these kids more?

Your friend is going to the principal already, which is what I would recommend anyway, so I'm not sure what else anyone can say. I can say that my daughter goes to kindergarten at a private Catholic school with a more accelerated curriculum compared to the local public schools, but even then, they are not doing timed addition/subtraction tests and writing 5 sentences a night. Their teacher wants to them to write at least 1 sentence a night, and they have one book at a time that they are expected to be able to read all on their own (in addition to whatever library book they pick out). They do a lot of reading and writing already during the day in school so there isn't a crazy amount that they are expected to do at home also. They have done some simple addition worksheets in school but nothing they are tested on with a time limit. They are also working on telling time, reading clocks, and money concepts - that's all part of math too.

My kid had timed math test in kinder. They did the activities like you described- counting by 2s, 5s, etc but they also had timed tests. They start out with kindergarten addition- 24 problems and they have to get 92% right in 3 minutes on 3 separate occasions to pass and move onto kindergarten subtraction. Again, it's 24 problems with 92% right in 3 minutes to pass 3 times. If they do that in the year then they move on to 1st grade addition and so on. And as the grades go on the tests get longer and the time shorter and the pass percentage gets higher. Right now, mine's in 2nd grade and she's working on 3rd grade subtraction. It's like 36 problems and she has to get 34 right. I think the time limit is like 2 minutes. Which is crazy because I couldn't do 34 subtraction problems in 2 minutes. They don't do the tests often- it's like every few weeks or once a month or something like that. And it usually takes a few tests before she gets a passing score.
In kinder she also had "homework" which was she had to read or be read to for so long every night. I think that's standard homework for every grade at her school. Actually, she's in 2nd grade and her homework every night looks like this (all set by the teacher):
a page of math sent home (from her workbook)
20 minutes of reading every night
20 minutes studying her spelling words (they have a test every 2 weeks)
20 minutes of practicing her math facts
and then once a week she has to write down how she used her word of the week and we have to do the same- how we saw her use her word. And then every day we have to sign off in her homework folder.
Also, occasionally additional homework will be sent home- like she had to write a weather report recently.
So my 2nd grader has over an hour of homework every night. I think it's ridiculous- I didn't have an hour of homework until I was in high school. I think they push the kids way too hard and they push working above the grade level too much for my taste. Like my kid is doing 3rd grade math and 4th grade reading. There are kids that are doing 5th grade reading and math. I don't get why they are in such a hurry to have them do work above their grade but that seems to be the goal in her school.
When she was in kinder they also tested her recognition of word walls word and reading skills every so often. Every year she also has writer's workshop every day- where they are required to write so many sentences and as the grade goes up the number of sentence goes up as well as the expectations of correct grammer, punctuation, etc. There is a lot of pressure on kids these days in schools. It's not like when I was a kid- the pressure didn't start until at least middle school.
Oh, and my kid was born on June 23rd and she entered kinder when she was 5. She's the youngest kid in her grade. But that never came up as an issue- her age.
Our school says they try to teach at all levels and accomodate the kids who aren't as advanced but I don't see it. Yeah, they use the testing to separate the kids into groups according to ability but they have all of them taking the same tests and they all know where they are in the line up and pressure is put on them to move up to the next level. My kid's self esteem really takes a hit every time she comes home after testing and she hasn't moved up a level or didn't pass her timed test.

You just described what is going on in my daughter's FIRST GRADE class. She does those 2 minute timed sheets. (Daily activity, called "Rocket Math") And although my daughter has always been past the goal GRL, I do remember that the Kindergarten expectation was to be at Level C by the end of Kindergarten (H or I by the end of 1st, I think). And I know of other kids in a neighbor district to mine that are doing the same things as my daughter, again in 1st grade.
I don't think those girls are too young for Kindergarten at all. I just think the school she is in has a harder curriculum!

My son has math tests frequently, however they learn math in a simmilar manner as your child's school and take the tests orally. During our testing week(s) at school even our kinder kids have things they are to be tested on during the week, they are just done at their own pace and mostly orally.

I wonder if the teacher is saying that the girls are "too young' to go to first grade, does she really mean that they are too immature?

As for the timed tests - welcome to the world of prepping kids for standardized tests. I don't like it either, but when school funding depends on kids standardized test performance, many school start prepping for this right away.

My son did complete timed math tests in kindergarten, although I don't think it was addition and subtraction yet. The K math curriculum also uses dice and blocks to manipulate to learn math, along with worksheets.

And the writing goal in our school was to write a paragraph by the end of kindergarten. Also, according to our school, the goal for reading is to be at a D by the end of kindergarten (with C being the average mid-year reading level).

So, it doesn't sound to me like the girls are that far behind academically. Which is why I am wondering about the 'too young' statement, and perhaps their maturity in the classroom.

Can she change schools? Is that an option. I am just going to be putting my first kid in Kindergarted next year. I have a lot to think about. I was recently at a party and this persons son missed 46 days of kindergarten due to illness and being in the hospital. The school would not let him repeat it, and consequently 3 years later, he is still behind. I as young for school, but I loved it. I graduated at 17, went to college at 17 (my birthday is in Nov).

Their kindergarten sounds very tough for that age child. I would be that they don't even understand what timed means.??

If they know the stuff that was taught, They should move up. If they do not know the stuff that was taught - re-doing it might not be bad.. You have to build a structure from the ground up, not the top down. If they don't have the basics then they will be lost in 1st grade.

Good luck

Our Kindergarten is closer to your friend's but not as stressed. They don't have timed math tests, but they do learn adding and subtracting. They are taught to do word problems that use multiplication and division (they don't think of it like that, but draw it out to simplify it. However, the problems are multiplication and division). Although my son is at the higher end of his class, he can do multiple digit addition and subtraction if it doesn't require carrying/borrowing. He is at a guided reading level E-F. Writing is weaker for him, but he can write 3 sentences on a topic. There are kids in his class that can write entire pages. Weekly homework includes 2-3 math worksheets, two mini book reports (i.e. read a level E book and write three sentences about it - usually beginning, middle, and end), and then some other homework relating to science.

I think your friend's children sound find for advancement. But if she is at a private school or chose to put them at an academically rigorous school, they may not be meeting the school's standards. If they are at a typical public school, there should be no academic reason for retention. Are you sure it's not a maturity issue that the teacher is recommending that they remain in K for another year?

My GD did not have timed math tests until 2nd grade. Five sentences is a lot for a kindergartener who is just learning how to write. It does sound like they are moving much more quickly than our school did.

In answer to your question, my child's kindergarten is a hybrid of your friends and yours. At the beginning of the year they did more pre-k style learning of counting dots, sorting, identifying site words, etc. but now at the end of the year they are doing math sheets (timed??) journals every day in class (five or more sentences) and he reads every night. My guess is if he was struggling in reading or writing comprehension, we'd be doing sentences at home, too.
Hope that helps answer your question.

Common Core is not a teaching methodology... they are guide posts regarding Key Concepts and topics that should be covered at certain points throughout specific school years.

Retention should NEVER be based on a single assessment, especially for very young children. If you friends' twins have been showing signs of immaturity and difficulty with learning throughout the school year, then they may well be good candidates. If the teacher is making the recommendation based on a single assessment, then your friend should definitely request additional information before making any decision.

The Kindergarten where I work is a hybrid of what you are describing. The learning is teacher-guided, but with elements of exploration and discovery-based learning. There ARE assessments because they are required by the district, but the assessments are not timed nor are they the sole data point used to determine promotion.

Addition and subtraction (paper and pencil) is not Kindergarten appropriate, nor is extended writing... from a developmental standpoint.

My district sounds more like yours, at least in terms of math. it is very basic and certainly doesn't have timed tests. They haven't done any subtraction at all. I don't know what grade those start, but it's not kinder. Their mom can practice this with them at home though, to help them perform better on the tests at school.

With a June 24 birthday, they most certainly should be in kinder this year and I would not think they need to repeat. They aren't young for their grade. Is the teacher giving specific examples of ways in which they aren't keeping up with their peers? If they are reading at Level 3, it sounds like they are doing well.

Practice the math more. While it seems excessive for kinder, the fact is that they have to do it, so they might as well work harder to do it better.

I think you need more information here. Are these timed tests something that is a regular, weekly part of the regular classroom activity? Or is the mom seeiing that the kids are having these tests but she doesn't realize that these are not part of the regular teaching but are standardized aptitude tests that are administered, once, maybe twice a year?

The tests as you describe them sound to me like a standardized aptitude test, the kind of thing that all school systems now require of students at all levels. I would be surprised at a K having those kinds of activities as just part of the regular classroom work, unless it was a K program for academically advanced kids. Ask the mom if these really are regular things or if she is mistaking required aptitude testing for something it's not.

If the mom has issues with it she really needs to sit down with the teacher and get into what the girls are doing on these tests and why the teacher wants them to repeat K. It sounds as if the mom feels the teacher wants to hold them back because the girls didn't do well with these tough tests--??. The key thing is-- what is expected of them in first grade at this school? If the girls are expected to have mastered these operations before going to first grade, and they have not, then yes, there IS a reason to have them repeat K, very possibly; the mom needs to find out what lies ahead, not just focus on what she thinks her kids shouldn't be asked to do right now.

If the academics is not the reason for the recommendation to repeat, then the mom needs to find out what is really going on and if the issue is maturity. And maturity is a real and legitimate reason to hold a child back; I've seen kids who should not have gone on to first (who really should not have started K when they did) and who ended up going to first and then struggling because they were not yet ready.

No matter what, if the girls need to repeat, it is FAR easier to do that in K than to wait and possibly set them up to repeat a grade later on when doing so is socially much more difficult.

If the teacher is just pushing the kids too hard because she wants to be tough, the mom needs to find out why and what the principal and first grade teachers think about it.

I agree, our boy is in kindergarten and he does nothing like this. I think it's scary how our school programs are changing. They don't teach the kids anything except how to take that test.

We're losing to much of the childhood experience. Our girl did testing last year and was in the high 80's up to 97% in reading comprehension. This year her teacher flat told me she wasn't teaching anything that wasn't on the test because if they didn't do well it was her job on the line.....well, guess what. Our girls test scores have gone down to even a 38% and her reading comprehension is still high but all the other test scores went down and down.

I think that it's sad. I almost feel like home schooling her. BUT I feel that I would not be good at it. I don't like that sort of stuff and I look forward to having my days free to sew and do other stuff. I wouldn't like having the kids home all day and fighting with them to do their school work.

i think the problem is that there's a wide disparity in our country over what kindergarten OUGHT to be. i'm in your camp, i think, but your friend's teacher is of the opinion that kindergarten should now be what 1st grade used to be.
nothing inherently wrong with timed tests, so long as they are presented in an interesting and challenging way without being anxiety and pressure-filled.
so the teacher isn't really wrong, she just has a different educational philosophy, and one that is increasingly prevalent in the public schools. she's not being 'mean'. by her yardstick, your friend's girls ARE too young for kindergarten. so your friend needs to decide if she wants to take on the school's entire syllabus, or if there are less sisyphean solutions to be found.
the core curriculum sounds great, but the reality is that all schools aren't the same, and they SHOULD have some degree of autonomy. what the parents expect in one town or area or state isn't what they want in another.
hence my ongoing ambivalence about our educational system's stubborn insistence that all children blossom and develop at exactly the same time and ages. but that's another rant........
khairete
S.