Kindergarten Early Admission

Warning: This post may be lengthy and detailed in hopes to answer questions any fellow Bendite might have concerning early admission to Kindergarten.

The cut off date for the Bend- La Pine school district is as follows:

A child is to be five years old on or before September 1 to enter kindergarten and six years old on or before
September 1 to enter the first grade, except that:
Parents of a child born between September 1 and September 30 may apply for an
early entry into school following the child's successful completion of assessment.
Students born after September 30 are not eligible for early entry consideration.

Ellie's birthday is Sept. 22nd. She misses the deadline by 21 days. Anyone who knows Ellie would agree that she is ready for Kindergarten. She has been attending preschool for 2 years and loves it. She loves to learn and is academically ahead of most children her age. I think that she is very mature (probably comes from being the oldest) and would do very will in Kindergarten.

So, how do you apply for early entry?

1. Contact the school office of the school that your child will be attending. Meet with the principle and discuss research and recommendation for early entry students (I skipped this stepped and only learned afterwards that this is the correct course of action).
2. Obtain a Packet from the office about early admission. (If the school doesn't have these you can call the Bend - La Pine School district office for one.)
3. Contact an approved evaluator to schedule an appt. to get your child tested.
4. The cost of the test is $275 made payable to the evaluator. They do the evaluations privately and on their own time. The tests are held on a Saturday or Sunday.
5. As part of the evaluation the counselor will go to your childs preschool to oberve her in a school setting. This happened the week of her test.
6. Parents will complete a 134 questionnaire regarding the child's behaviors. This will be scored by the district evaluators.
7. Day of testing you drop your child off at the School Administration building. The test is approx. an hour and a half.
8. You should get your results the next business day, once the secretary scores the test. The evaluator called me at home and went over the areas of the test with me. They will also send you a copy of the results.
9. Per the school district a child MUST perform at the 97th percentile or higher nationally in all areas of testing OR test at the 97th percentile or higher in the areas of Speech & Language and Social/Emotional IF all other areas tested are at the 93rd percentile or higher.
10. If the scores are acceptable you meet with the School Principle once again. He/She makes the final decision as to whether your child will be allowed early admission.

A note about the Evaluators:
I didn't know what I was doing when I started this process. I asked friends and heard stories from different people about having their child tested. I decided to just call the school district and ask for the evaluators names and numbers. There are two counselors who do the testing. I called both of them. The first, Mary, was pretty rude and told me that "the test is very difficult and only once in a blue moon does a child get in". She was eager to get me off the phone and told me that it was way to early to be calling about this and to call back in August. Then I called the second, Judy and had a really nice conversation with her. She explained the process thoroughly and said that the kids have a lot of fun at the evaluation. They just play games, build things, and talk. That made me feel a lot better about what I was going to subject my 4 year old daughter to. I set up an appt for the end of February. Some principles and the other counselor recommend waiting as long as possible to take the test for your child to "mature" but Judy assured me that she has been administering the test for 20 years and that a couple of months will make no difference. Either your child will pass or not and there is nothing you can do to prepare. She agreed that it was best to just know the results so we can plan. Anyone that lives in Bend understands that come February local preschools start filling up fast.

About the tests: The questionnaire the parent fills out is the BASC-2: Behavior Assessment System for Children. The test the evaluator administers is the KABC-II: Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition.

Test day: I was so nervous. I didn't tell Ellie this was a test that would decide whether she would be going to Kindergarten next year. I just told her that she was going to meet with a teacher that will play games with her and teach her about kindergarten. She was very excited to go. Judy was so nice and quickly made me and Ellie feel at ease. When I picked Ellie up she asked when she could go back and told me she had fun. :)

The Results: Ellie scored in the 99th percentile on almost all areas of the test. She scored in the 95 percentile in one area but everything else was high enough to get her considered for early admission. So now I just have to meet with the principle and go over the counselors recommendation and she is in. Yeah! And I already have a verbal confirmation from the principle that if the counselor recommends the child he will accept her. What a weight off my shoulders. I have seriously been stressing about this all year and it has been in the back of my mind for the past 3 years.