Amy Hetzner on Waukesha's decision to halt early kinderdarten admissions:
The Waukesha School Board decided earlier this year to eliminate early admission for children who have not celebrated their fifth birthday by Sept. 1, arguing that the expense of testing the children outweighed the benefit for the few who got in to kindergarten.The move puts the district at the center of a national trend that observers say is resulting in an older crop of kindergartners
The incident reveals one of the challenges inherent in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: How do you rescue a struggling school when so many students, often the more ambitious, want out?via Joanne Jacobs."That's the youngster that's going to raise my test scores,'' said Esparza, part of a turnaround team that arrived six months ago hoping to lift James Lick from the lowest levels of test performance. James Lick is one of 18 schools in Santa Clara County where test scores have remained so low that students are allowed to transfer. "It's hard to take, that there's a law that says your child has a right to move on.''