Is Your Special Needs Child Ready for Kindergarten?

Two questions to consider

It starts around this time of year. Preschool programs are holding open houses and enrolling students for the Fall.

Parents are asking themselves and their child’s teacher, “Is my child ready for kindergarten?”

I’m a preschool special education teacher and I’ve been getting this question for 15 years now. It’s still tricky for me to answer. On the one hand, I can’t be certain of the right answer for any specific child. On the other, I’ll never know whether or not retention made any kind of difference since I will only be a direct part of each student’s life for one school year (though each child will forever have a place in my heart).

What I can do, however, is explain how I think about the kindergarten readiness question when it comes to preschoolers with disabilities in general.

1. What does it even mean to be “ready” for kindergarten?

Who can determine what ready means for any child, special needs or no special needs?

Please know that, even for typical children, the debate on readiness and retention is exceedingly fraught. Educators and parents alike, especially in affluent environments, often get caught up with the notion that this or that child is too young, too small, too immature, too hyperactive, inattentive, or what-have-you, and therefore not “ready” for kindergarten.

It turns out the research overwhelmingly suggests retention is almost never beneficial:

“In sum, we find that redshirting at the kindergarten level bestows few benefits and exacts some substantial costs. Both research and experience suggest that the gains that accrue from being an older student are likely to be short-lived.”(Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten? By Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Stephanie Howard Larson)

Kindergarten programs must be ready to offer any kindergarten-eligible child with disabilities a kindergarten education.

Your child isn’t responsible in any way for being ready. Neither are you, his parent, expected to make her ready.

Not even your child’s preschool special education program is expected to ensure your child with special needs has fulfilled this or that criteria to move on to kindergarten. The program is, however, expected to meet your child’s IEP and to provide him every opportunity to benefit from the preschool environment and curriculum.

As the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (or IDEA, the federal statute regulating special education) stipulates, your child is entitled to a “free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment for children with disabilities ages three through 21.”

Arriving at “appropriate” is, to my mind, where parental input and advocacy will make the most difference.

2. When would I, as your child’s special education teacher, feel justified in giving a valid opinion on retention?

Any opinion I might give on retention is based on two factors: one of them is completely unrelated to the child having special needs while the other is linked to the severity and nature of the disability.

If, say, the child moved from Belgium to the United States in March, speaks no English and has only been in school for three months, delaying kindergarten may be wise, disability or no disability. The same goes for a child who had a serious illness or accident and was absent half the school year.

I would almost never recommend delaying kindergarten for a child with a very severe disability who will in all likelihood be entitled to a “free appropriate public education” until age 21. The focus must be exclusively on the quality of the program and services the child receives over his 18 years of formal education.

Again, participating in creating an “appropriate” program is where parental input and advocacy will make the most difference.

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