At CSA we use a developmental education approach because we believe that all children go through the same basic stages of development but they progress at different paces. We believe that the age-grade connection used in most schools is harmful because it fails to recognize the different paces of individual child growth and development. As an example, we all know that girls mature earlier than boys do. Most girls are more ready for academic instruction earlier than boys, on the other hand this is different with each child. At CSA our goal is to match our instruction to the developmental readiness of each child. One thing we do to accomplish this task is to allow students to stay in an academic unit as long as they need to, to accomplish all of the academic goals for that unit. In this way we can adjust our instruction and expectations for students, to match their individual growth, without creating a stigma by drawing attention to the differences between children.

We have found that sometimes parents donīt understand our approach and start to push their child and demand that the teacher test their child using standardized or norm-referenced tests. Parents also tend to compare their childīs school performance with that of other children they know. For example, you may hear what your neighborīs eight-year-old is doing in school and you may feel that your child should be doing the same thing. When parents start making these comparisons they sometimes insist that the school test their child to determine if the child is achieving on the second grade level. Let me ask you a question. If your neighborīs eight-year-old boy is wearing a size 11 shirt, but your eight-year-old daughter wears a size 6 shirt, would you be worried? Would you go to the clothes store and try to find out what size eight-year-old children are supposed to wear? Would you make an appointment with your pediatrician to get some magic drug to make your daughter grow faster so she wonīt be too small when she gets to high school? Of course you wouldnīt. If you went to your pediatrician she would show you a normal growth chart for height and weight, fairly gross measures of growth, and there would be a fairly wide range that was īnormalī. There would be a different chart for boys and for girls.

When we use standardized tests on young children to see if they are performing on grade level, we run into several problems. The first is that there is a lot of variance between children. Another is that until at least the third grade, there is so little in the way of specific academic skills to measure, that one or two right or wrong answers can drastically change the grade level score. Finally, each test uses different methods and populations on which to īnormī their test. One of the things they all do is make an assumption that the test should produce a bell shaped profile of scores. This means that for their test to work, there have been a few kids who do really well, a lot who do okay, and a few who fail.

At CSA we want all children to succeed. We try to achieve that by allowing all children the time they need to build the foundational skills necessary to perform academically. For example, there are a number of pre-requisite skills that children need to possess before they can begin reading. A child needs to be able to use spoken language in conversations to describe activities and to tell stories or report experiences. The child should know how the language sounds and have some understanding that words have specific repeatable sounds. They should be able to recognize that some words sound alike and others different. This language/sound knowledge is called phonemic awareness, which is auditory awareness of spoken language. Beyond that the child needs to have visual memory and visualization skills. They need to be able to remember the look of things, especially the look of words. The child also needs to be able to remember things visually and to make pictures in their mind when they hear words. In addition, the child needs to have body awareness and specific motor skills. They need to know up, down, left, right, back, and front on their own bodies or they will have difficulty telling the difference between letters and words that look alike. Finally, they need the motor skill to move and focus their eyes together from on a spot that is close and to rapidly change to one that is far away. They need to know to, and be able to, move their eyes across a page from left to right, top to bottom, and line by line, while seeing more than one word at a time. Thatīs a lot of things! No two children accomplish this large group of skills and knowledge at the same time. And no single test can hope to measure a fraction of these reading readiness skills. If children donīt have most or all of these skills when they are first asked to begin reading they will have a hard time, and often they will develop bad learning habits that hurt them for the rest of their life. In Sweden they recognize this basic fact and so they donīt teach reading at all until after the second grade. They lead the world in reading test scores when their children are in eighth grade.

At CSA we have a different approach. We teach our teachers how to determine which children are ready for each specific instruction. We give children enough time to achieve the foundational skills that are prerequisites to successful learning. We need your help to have patience and work with us as we match instruction to your childīs pace, observe his/her growth, and enhance his/her development. We have found that the best way for you to measure whether your childīs growth at school is appropriate, is to watch and see if he/she is happy in school. You should also talk with your child to find out if they can tell you what they are learning and how they are feeling about school. Finally meet with your childīs teacher twice each year to look at your childīs work and to discuss their progress. Ask the teacher to show you the curriculum objectives and unit exit criteria, and to tell you how your child is progressing on those outcomes. Let the teacher tell you how they think your child is progressing and what learning they will be introducing next. If you want a bench mark to shoot for, we believe that all children at CSA should be reading at a beginning 3rd grade level by the time they are 10 years old, and at the beginning 5th grade level by the time they are 12 years old. If your child is not approaching these goals, we will be developing specific plans for them to make sure they reach academic success. Even these bench marks should be considered flexible if your child has encountered a serious problem like a childhood illness, family trauma like divorce, or has been previously identified as having a learning disability or attention deficit. Children can overcome these things but they may need additional time.

In conclusion, We would like to draw your attention to the many other things that we are working on at CSA. We believe that all children should acquire basic academic skills and we will constantly work to achieve that goal. We also believe that the most important thing we do here is teach children how to think, how to make choices, how to solve problems, how to get along with the people in their world, and how to know and understand themselves. These are important life skills as well as important work skills.