Kindergarten Now Mandatory in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle just signed a law to make kindergarten attendance mandatory.
From what I can gather from the news, and without being directly involved with the process of this bill becoming a law, this requirement has an interesting impact, and an interesting purpose.
First of all, it is mainly intended to deal with children who are already enrolled in kindergarten, but don’t attend regularly. Because K was not mandatory, the Wisconsin school districts were somehow unable to tap into resources when a K student didn’t attend school regularly, and of course, lost money from this, as well as creating a difficult time for teachers who need to keep on a rigid schedule with their 5 year olds.
For this particular purpose, the law is a bit like throwing out the baby with the bath water, isn’t it? Why couldn’t they change the law to allow truancy officers/CPS to follow up on absences once a child was in school? That seemed strange to me.
Then, this new law is not expected to increase the number of kids in school. So, why make it mandatory then, if its purpose isn’t to make sure the kids who aren’t going to school at all, go? Strange.
Lastly, I’m not seeing any blog entries or websites that explain how this law will affect homeschoolers. In this link, it says that homeschoolers will still be “allowed” to homeschool if they are “certified through the state.” That’s definitely not true, since Wisconsin is much like California in that it doesn’t give permission to homeschool nor does it require any particular level of education or a teacher’s certification.
This is not a homeschooling issue, but it’s one that very well may have a side effect on homeschoolers by:
1) Requiring them to register with the state one year earlier (Wisc. has a similar “filing” requirement as Ca.)
2) Creating a more difficult time enrolling children directly into first grade (it’s rare, apparently that people do this, but still important)
3) Put pressure on parents to enroll their children earlier, rushing them into making a decision, making them scared of truancy officers and not being as free to make a choice.
Those of us in California should watch carefully what happens in Wisconsin. Although they are not California, and have many different variables than we do, it’s still important to see how the mandatory kindergarten goes, and to perhaps use this as an example of why it doesn’t fulfill its purpose, and has an adverse effect on homeschoolers. I can guarantee that we will see this same push in California in the not too distant future.
Is kindergarten mandatory in your state? How does it affect homeschoolers? And, if you are in Wisconsin, I would love to have your feedback on my analysis.
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I don’t know what this means - I found you searching for answers after having what feels like a “major problem” with my 4K child in a Wisconsin school. We recently moved to Wisconsin and we have 5 children - 2 are grown and out of school. Our 5th grader and 8th grader are really doing well in this school environment. My 8th grader is making plans for her future for the first time in her life. I’m excited about this.
My 4k boy is another issue. He’s never lived in a very structured environment. We’re older and kind of let him do things at his own pace as we’re not in much of a hurry for anything. His classroom is extremely structured. We went in to visit and read a story last week and it almost made me cry. Kids just sat around waiting to be told what to do, and when we asked them how they did snack time as we had brought one, none of the kids knew. They just did what they were told. Even my son. it was like he wasn’t there. he just responded to what his teacher told him to do, and barely even acted as though he knew I was there - like a drone.
My boy doesn’t balk about going to school but it doesn’t bother him when he stays home either. We’ve found the teacher to be passively aggressive towards us on a couple occasions, and i’m not sure if he would even know if he was being treated badly as the “tone” of her voice doesn’t match her words. When he first started, he was very bouncy in the morning and ready to ride the bus with his sisters and his friends, and now he’s hard to wake, and just recently over the last week or so, he’s been throwing fits when he gets home - which he’s NEVER done!
Then the teacher calls us today and tells us she wants to hold him back in 4K for next year. My husband told me and my mouth dropped open and then I started crying hysterically. Of my five children, 3 were diagnosed with learning disabilities and/or ADD or ADHA. This boy was perfection. He started talking at 4 months old and was forming 4 or more word sentences by 6 months old. He has a highly developed sense of humor, and began playing little practical jokes on us by the time he was 8 months old.
He speaks some Spanish and Chinese (That he picked up from TV) and uses those words with English quite often. I can’t spell the Chinese word for “snow”, but it sounds like ‘Shiiiii’, and in the car on our move up here from Florida, he said “When I get there i’m going to jump in a big pile of Shiiiiii ! and he giggled. When my second oldest boy was his age, he didn’t even know his own name. I picked him up from pre-school on his first day and asked him if he made any friends and he said he didn’t know how, and I told him to ask their name and tell them his name, and he said “But mom, what is my name?” I asked “Is it Dillon?” “That’s what they keep calling me” he said. (It’s Ok to laugh at that - we do now)
This boy knows his full name, can spell his first name, can count to thirty, knows all of the letters by sight and the sounds they make, and can do basic math with beans and adding and taking away. He doesn’t have much for writing skills yet, but you understand what i’m getting at? He’s a bright boy.
I’m not sending him back there now. We did some reading and found that it’s very typical here to pressure parents to hold their children back in 4k and 5k, because they don’t have to report those hold backs to the state and it doesn’t go on their school record as retentions, then they have older and supposedly “more mature” children in their classes later on and they’re supposed to get higher grades, though the studies say otherwise.
This new law goes into effect the year that my son will be entering the first grade - Will it apply to him? I don’t know what to do. I’m very upset about this. I expected my boy to be found bored and put into a gifted class, and this was quite the blow today. He gets bored easily at home when we’re working with him and then he starts saying silly stuff.
Should I register as a home-schooler next year, even though the law isn’t in effect yet? Should I try the school again in Kindergarten, and assume this teacher is just a bad seed because my other two are doing so well? If I do register as a home-schooler, what documents do I have to have to get him into the first grade? We lived in Arizona for the majority of our life, and I home schooled my oldest boy for a half a year because he was having panic attacks when I took him to school. I registered and everything, but when I put him back in school they put him in the previous grade because I didn’t have the proper documentation of his curriculum and such.
I don’t really know what to do next. I’m making a doctor appointment for my son and telling them what the teacher said, just to make sure there’s not something “wrong” with him. I’m so angry with that teacher for taking my little piece of perfection away from me in my mind. I hope that doesn’t sound completely irrational, but now when he throws a fit, or says silly stuff like he does, it’s cause for wonder. My husband must feel the same way because he’s been kind of “quizzing” him all day, and we listen intently on the answers he gives, just to make sure we haven’t been delusional all this time.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Hi Peggy,
I am sorry your family and especially your son has had such a rough time with 4K. While I don’t have personal history with 4K because we have homeschooled my 8 yr old and 5 year old, I am a member of Wisconsin Parents Association and I just received the March newsletter which has an article regarding Homeschooling and New Kindergarten Legistlation. One of the questions you posed was registering him for Kindergarten or homeschooling. The key regarding the new law is that “the compulsory school attendance law has not been changed and does not cover children children who have not turned 6 on or before September 1.” Please consider goign to the WPA website to enducate yourself more fully. http://homeschooling-wpa.org/
Under Issues and Legislation in the sidebar you will find much information regarding Preschool & Early Childhood Education specifically. They will also have a list of regional coordinators under Contact WPA (top right) that you can contact in your county. I hope this information helps some.
Elizabeth
PS. I would suggest that you probably are a good judge of your children, better than his teacher. I know many mom’s who are homeschooling their sons because of a difficult 4K experience.
Collin will be 5 next year on Sept. 1st. I’m assuming this means that I have to register as a home-schooler or else enroll him in a kindergarten. I couldn’t find anything on that site about what I need to provide to the school if I want to enroll him in first grade.
Hi Peggy, I am sorry they don’t seem to have the article posted as of yet. I had so many of the same questions because my Kate turned 5 already this year and we wondered about the forms and such. Did you find the contact information and contact the representative for your area. If you are in the Central Wisconsin area I know that the current WPA leaders will be speaking Thursday night, March 18th 6-8 pm I believe at Grace Baptist Church in Plover.
Really! I feel this law should have passed in the 80s not in the 21st century. It’s a known fact that kids with earlier social interactions tend to be better students and functioning members of society, not to mention literate earlier in life.
I wonder how this whole kindergarten thing will pan out in my home state.
Dells´s last blog ..Hotel Rome at Mt Olympus Park
Wow! It took long enough for someone to use the “socialization” reason to enter the discussion! Seriously? I am a former teacher and the socialization parents envision is, in reality, Lord of the Flies domination. Put a child in a room with 20-28 other same age kids and have them compete to be the smartest, funniest, prettiest, most athletic and call it socialization? Have you seen the reports of bullying and suicides from children who are bullied and encouraged to kill themselves so their classmates won’t have to look at them again?
Yes, there are parents who do not read to their children and encourage socialization. There are parents who treat children worse than the family pet. That is reality. They will be the same ones who do not continue to support their children throughout their lives and education. These children will need massive amounts of support to become productive members of society. I get that. But to make a law for 5 year olds must be in school is sad and does not address the problem.
Yes, my 5 year old can read and write and do math in his head. He has friends and is able to be a functioning member of the 5-year-old society in which he lives.
School provides education, but NBC just had an entire week spotlighting how horrible the public schools in America are performing. It showed how far beyond 20 other countries American children are currently.
With the depressing statics surrounding American public schools, why would any parent want to turn over their children to them one year earlier?
Why did I pull my children out of public school? An educator told me he was becoming a superintendent because, “Parents have abdicated their role to raise their children and it is up to the schools to teach the children how to think and vote when they graduate.”
Now they have one more year to do it.
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