HEADS UP: CA
Pending Assembly Bill 1236 would lower (not raise) the compulsory attendance age:
In California, all 5-year-olds could be starting school by 2011 if a bill by Assemblyman Gene Mullin for mandatory kindergarten passes, but home school advocates argue it decreases beneficial parent contact time with children.
Mullin, D-South San Francisco, proposes raising the minimum age to enter kindergarten from 5 years old by Dec. 2 to 5 years old by Sept. 1 and requiring those children to attend school. Current law doesn’t require students to attend school until age 6, making kindergarten optional. At this point, about 8 percent of students in California don’t attend kindergarten, said Mullin. He hopes his bill — which will be discussed in the education committee today — will give more students a strong educational foundation. The bill is Assembly Bill 1236.
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5 Responses to “HEADS UP: CA”
Comment by christine April 25th, 2007 at 9:39 am |
I’d be interested in seeing how those 8% that skip kindergarten fare academically compared to their peers that attended K. |
Comment by Nance Confer April 25th, 2007 at 9:49 am |
“home school advocates” what? This makes no sense. If I’m hsing in CA, why would I have less contact with my child if I have to do whatever paperwork is involved 6 months earlier? Nance |
Comment by Lisa Giebitz April 25th, 2007 at 10:23 am |
The Nanny State is trying desperately to strike again. Doesn’t it make sense that those 8% don’t want their kids to go to Kindergarten, so they’d just homeschool for it anyway if the law passed? |
Comment by Tammy Takahashi April 25th, 2007 at 11:44 am |
This is going to committee today. We’ve been calling and writing for over a week. Oh, and this “Private and Home Educators of California” group mentioned in the article, run by an HSLDA guy – never heard of them. We have three state-wide groups here in Cali – CHN, HSC and CHEA, and I work with lots of different groups here, and never heard of this ‘advocacy group’. Gonna have to do some research on them. About the bill – it’s not about the kids at all. It’s about universal preschool, and making it so that K teachers have to be certified, paid a certain amount, accountable, etc. They know that lowering the school age won’t significantly increase the number of kids who go to K. Most people don’t even know that K isn’t mandatory. |
Comment by Tammy Takahashi April 27th, 2007 at 8:54 pm |
Update: The bill went through committee. So now, we’re working on a possible pilgrimage to Sacramento for a protest. Definitely going to write letters and what not. As for PHEC, I found out that it’s the official name of the legal/legislative group for CHEA, which I’m not a member of. So I didn’t know the name. Apparently, but it seems that HSLDA/PHEC had no direct involvement in getting that info out to a reporter somewhere. He must have got a hold of CHEA’s alert that was sent out to all the CHEA members by PHEC. HSC and CHN sent out similar alerts to their members. We called, faxed and mailed letters. The vote was right down party lines. If we can persuade some Dems to actually read the thing, and how it’s not actually going to help our kids – we might have a chance. But just like the universal preschool bill, our best bet is probably going to be to focus on the money. |