Holding back a grade

[Iza1]

Hi everyone!

At our last IEP ai had mentioned I would consider my 3rd grade son to repeat his grade as I feel like he is struggling a lot. Also now that we are doing the home schooling because of Covid, I feel like he is missing out on a lot. However, our principal said that they do not see it necessary. I’ve asked the same thing back in 1st grade, they said it was not necessary also back then. Now I feel like, this is my child and ai want to act now and do not regret it in future. He needs a lot of support at home, and at school he does math, reading&writing and speech in resource. What do you guys think? How can I solve this situation with our school?

[mom2eandb]

we've been told that repeating a grade often won't help, depending on the type of learning challenges a child has they will just struggle in the lower grade after a short time. can you ask the school specifically why they think it won't help? they should be able to explain their thinking, rather than just reciting a blanket policy. regarding covid, it seems like so many typical kids are going to be falling behind, too. some school districts aren't teaching new stuff, just reviewing existing material, which could at least help kids who aren't typical learners.

[Iza1 in reply to mom2eandb]

Principal just said that he would transit well in to 4th grade with the aupport he has (I think she means the resource help he’s getting now) However, this was something I had in mind since he started 1st grade. Especially now, with COVID, he is going to fall more behind. They said all kids are going to be behind, but my child is already behind so this is going to effect him more. How do I proceed? Take it to Superintendent?

[Grnmtnmama]

Apologies for the short reply (pressed for time these days), but I would do some serious digging for statistics on this subject. We felt the same (and I had the same frustrations), but the child psychologist we worked with provided some alarming statistics for kids who were held back, and later dropped out (and even increased numbers of incarcerations of kids who repeated grades). We decided it was not worth the risk! Of course, COVID has everything topsy-turvy so who knows where we will be next year! Just my two cents...

[ConfrontingChallenge]

My investigations into this topic, holding our kids back, suggests it is self defeating. Most my reading strongly indicates the emotional harm in holding a child back as his or her pears move on far outweighs any potential learning opportunity.

Personally, I wouldn’t do it unless we were moving communities and changing school districts.

[Onthemove1971]

Like Grnmtnmama said, Most district do not support holding a child back who has an IEP. By having an IEP it states that the child has struggles and needs goals and support to achieve at their best level( we hope they make great progress). When we write goals it is to support the child and advance their learning. All children are on a different pace and one child may take longer to learn some subjects than others.

In addition, peer support and interacts are very different when a child is older than their classmates. So holding them back means they are socially with a young group.

It would be great if you could do some research on the pro's and con's ( maybe you have already done this) so you can learn more about it.

Hope this helps. Maybe you could express your concerns with the school staff that help with his IEP and shape the goals around the areas of concern.

Take care.

[Iza1]

Thanks everyone for all the replies. We are going to do it if we can swith to another elementary in our town. We would not do it if we were to stay in the same school. I also have a 1st grader. She is not in resource room and her teacher thinks she is doing fine academically. Now that she is at home and I am the one who helps her svhool work everydag, I can see that she may use an extra year. She is also not so mature, and the youngest in her classroom.

On our IEP meeting they had mentioned if we were to do it, we can do it for my daughter since ber birthday is late September. Now when ai mentioned, I want to do it for both my children they said that they would not recommend for neither. I am so stressed. I feel like as a parent, we are to decide it.