Registering as a homeschooler- Placement?

[Lovenest]

I am trying to figure out what to do.
I will be registering my son as a homeschooler here in OR who will be 7 in August. I am trying to figure out if I should place him as a first grader even though he will be doing second grade curriculum at home. Is there drawbacks to doing this? I would like to do it because I am not sure how my son will feel about testing in 2 years as the first test is in third grade. He gets very shy and nervous with people he does not know and has sensory issues. Does this affect anything as he gets older into the upper grades? Anyways, any input?

As a parent, you have the choice of placing your 7 year old in 1st grade or higher. OAR 581-021-0026 (6) Once you choose a grade level placement, you should use it consistently. For example, you should not "hold back" or "skip" your child to avoid the four assessment grades (3, 5, 8 and 10). If homeschoolers do this, we will lose our flexibility to determine when our children are ready for 1st grade.

[onlyzombiecat]

I would call it first grade since you are a beginning homeschooler.

You might appreciate the extra time to work with your ds before doing any required testing. I know it took us a year to get in the swing of using our cuirriculum and figuring out what worked best for dd.

I don't know what disadvantage there could be in giving him an extra year.
I think a lot of first graders are 7 years old.

If you say he is in 2nd grade at age 7 and later put him in an activity with kids his "grade" who are mostly a year older he might have a harder time.

I think what they are talking about in that quote is holding your child back so they don't test and then skipping them ahead the next year so they are never actually in the grade that tests.

[Princess ConsuelaB]

I believe you can decline to state a grade level on your registration and they consider the student as first grade by default, regardless of what level you are actually teaching, so it will give you an extra year. I did this with my dd when it came time for mandatory registration at age 7(Oct. birthday) even though we'd been homeschooling for some time; as such she just took the 3rd grade test this week even though she is primarily "in" fourth grade at home.

The only drawback I can see is if you planned to do K-12 online(or whatever Oregon's online school-at-home is, I forget) later, I don't know how that would affect your placement.