Multiple people work with students, so the workload doesn't fall on one person at Escanaba Area Schools uppermichiganssource.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from uppermichiganssource.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Kindergarten classes in Escanaba and Dearborn are quite similar, with 5-year-olds wiggling in their chairs and brightly-colored artwork lining the walls. But when children walked out of those classrooms in the spring of 2011, they faced different futures.
In Escanaba Area Public Schools, almost 40 percent of the children were told they weren’t moving on to first grade and would be taking a second year of kindergarten; in Dearborn City Schools, less than 2 percent were asked to repeat kindergarten.
The chances of your child repeating kindergarten is not related to academics or maturity, but geography. A Bridge Magazine analysis revealed kindergarten retention rates in Michigan ranging from about 1 percent to more than 45 percent – a disparity that bears no relation to academic outcomes, poverty or race.