Re: study of red****rting (late entrance to kndergarten)

In article 
<8b5cfd78-60fc-4886-a4f8-b55aebc0f60c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Beliavsky <beliavsky@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> NBER has a new study on the effects of red****rting. The abstract is at
> http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14124
and the full paper at
> http://www.nber.org/~dynarski/Deming_Dynarski_Childhood.pdf
. Overall
> the authors appear negative about it:
<snipped> 

I'm not surprised.  Holding a child back in the hope that they will cope 
better with Kindergarten is only ever going to help a minority of children
-- 
the ones where the problem IS immaturity, rather than an undiagnosed
learning 
disorder, the results of parental overindulgence or -- the most common
thing 
-- completely normal behaviour that is viewed as pathological.

My experience has been of parents whose expectations for their
five-year-old 
boys (and it is boys in particular) are much too high.  Of course they
don't 
sit still at home for more than a few minutes (why should they?).  Of
course 
they aren't reading and writing.  So what?  Our public schools, at least,
are 
prepared for normal kids.  In fact, they are prepared for children who
can't 
speak any English, or who have learning disabilities.  Middle-class
parents 
seem to have some very strange ideas about what children do in
Kindergarten!

-- 
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia 
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/