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Did you send your late summer birthday son to kindergarten that Fall?
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Anonymous
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two interesting articles:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/09/03/should-children-redshirt-kindergarten.aspx http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazine/14Ideas-Section2-C-t-004.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=redshirting%20kindergarten&st=cse 20:33: care to elaborate on the areas you consider more educated and/or wealthy and the basis for your "insight"? This is a pretty educated area and it is rampant here. I also have educated and well off friends and family on the west coast who are familiar with the practice in their educated/wealthy neighborhoods. I must say I find the September 1 cut-off for grade eligibility ridiculous and it seems to be most heavily enforced at apparently exclusive private schools that cater to the educated and wealthy. My understanding (admittedly not expansive) is that most sports eligibility is based on birthdays, so an August birthday is an advantage to aspiring baseball players because the cutoff for age league eligibility is the end of July, not because of when they enter kindergarten. |
Anonymous
| My younger brother had a early August birthday and parents sent him to K (half-day program). He did fine educationally, but by the end of the year, he wasn't ready to sit still all day for first grade. So he repeated K (all-day program designed for kids not ready for 1st). Was a great decision. Not sure if your school district has a similar program. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. June is not late. I would consider end of August a late summer birthday, not June. |
Anonymous
| My DS has a late June birthday. We sent him and he is doing great. Actually, I looked at the birthdays posted in their room (MCPS) and there were few fall birthdays, a lot of Spring and Summer so I think he is definitely in the right grade. |
Anonymous
I didn't see a lot of radical redshirting among baseball parents. Baseball is a spring sport in high school and the more aggressive 'rents gravitate to lax. |
Anonymous
| Agree with PP on peer group. DS also has a late June b-day and he prefers the company of older boys. I am guessing that he would be fine academically, struggle a bit in terms of sitting down quietly, but thrive socially. |
Anonymous
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I am amazed by how much I am hearing about this now that I am about to send my 4 year old son K next fall. He will turn 5 at the beginning of June, and while I know he is ready for K, continually hearing that others are not planning on sending their kids (mostly end of summer b-days, but one May birthday) has given me pause. However, yesterday we had a meeting with his preschool teacher and she said he is absolutely ready since what they are doing in preschool now is basically kindergarten stuff. She also said that she was frustrated because she had spent most of the meetings with the other parents talking about why they should send their kids and going over the SOLs, etc. because they are considering not sending them when she feels they are ready. Here is an interesting article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/magazine/03kindergarten-t.html I find this quote from the article especially interesting, especially when talking about who is doing the redshirting: "Forty-two years after Lyndon Johnson inaugurated Head Start, access to quality early education still highly correlates with class; and one serious side effect of pushing back the cutoffs is that while well-off kids with delayed enrollment will spend another year in preschool, probably doing what kindergartners did a generation ago, less-well-off children may, as the literacy specialist Katie Eller put it, spend “another year watching TV in the basement with Grandma.” What’s more, given the socioeconomics of redshirting — and the luxury involved in delaying for a year the free day care that is public school — the oldest child in any given class is more likely to be well off and the youngest child is more likely to be poor. “You almost have a double advantage coming to the well-off kids,” says Samuel J. Meisels, president of Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development in Chicago. “From a public-policy point of view I find this very distressing.” |
Anonymous
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Three boys, three late summer birthdays, three on-time starts, three happy experiences at a public school.
Feel free to ascribe our success to a combination of superior genetics and brilliant parenting. I mean, I don't think that had anything to do with it, but it's been a long week and I could use some strokes. |
Anonymous
Not the PP you are arguing with, but your post makes no sense. Redshirting is just as prevalent in LA, NY and other even more affluent areas as this area. In fact, it also happens overseas (I lived in London a couple of years and different timetable, but same issue). I have a son who just barely misses the cutoff date so I won't need to redshirt, but if he was born 2 weeks earlier, I absolutely would redshirt him. He is in speech therapy and IMO would need the extra year. Maybe you don't really get why people redshirt, but I can tell you it is unlikely people are doing it for any reason other than that their child (usually son) is close to the cutoff and the pre-K or K teachers recommend it. Oh - and I have traveled throughout the world and lived in many different areas, though I don't really see the correlation btwn that and redshirting... |
Anonymous
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My Sept bday son just started K at the very strong recommendation of his preschool teacher and speech therapist and OT.
He loves loves loves school. He's holding his own and has made huge strides since the beginning of the year. Like an earlier poster said, his preschool team felt that he would be bored if held back. |
Anonymous
If I am understanding you correctly, this quote from a NY Times article basically contradicts what you are saying. According to this, it is MOSTLY educated and wealthy parents who are doing the redshirting: Recently, redshirting has become a particular concern, because in certain affluent communities the numbers of kindergartners coming to school a year later are three or four times the national average. “Do you know what the number is in my district?” Representative Folwell, from a middle-class part of Winston-Salem, N.C., asked me. “Twenty-six percent.” In one kindergarten I visited in Los Altos, Calif. — average home price, $1 million — about one-quarter of the kids had been electively held back as well. Fred Morrison, a developmental psychologist at the University of Michigan who has studied the impact of falling on one side or the other of the birthday cutoff, sees the endless “graying of kindergarten,” as it’s sometimes called, as coming from a parental obsession not with their children’s academic accomplishment but with their social maturity. “You couldn’t find a kid who skips a grade these days,” Morrison told me. “We used to revere individual accomplishment. Now we revere self-esteem, and the reverence has snowballed in unconscious ways — into parents always wanting their children to feel good, wanting everything to be pleasant.” So parents wait an extra year in the hope that when their children enter school their age or maturity will shield them from social and emotional hurt. Elizabeth Levett Fortier, a kindergarten teacher in the George Peabody Elementary School in San Francisco, notices the impact on her incoming students. “I’ve had children come into my classroom, and they’ve never even lost at Candy Land.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/magazine/03kindergarten-t.html?pagewanted=2 |
Anonymous
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Just an anticdote... My husband was born on September 24th, he went to Kindergarten the year he turned five (he started the year at age 4). Throughout elementary school he was behind, he had a hard time learning to read but was way ahead in math. This was very hard because the school system he grew up in (in Maryland) didn't divide kids out for both reading and math, the group he was in was based off of his reading ability. He was always board in math, and a behavior problem. While he caught up in reading and eventually excelled he was penilized in highschool for being in the lower level classes in elementary. He wasn't aloud to be in the upper level and AP classes for English in Highschool. While he graduated #8 in his class he truely believes that he would have gotten a better, more rewarding education if he had started school a year later (back then they had a Sept. 30 cutoff).
I don't believe that a June Birthday should be held back a year but a late August Birthday Boy who wasn't ready to read should be held back. I don't think I would judge it based off ove his activity level but off of his pre-reading skills, if those aren't where they should be I would send him to pre-school and start K the next year. |
Anonymous
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"I must say I find the September 1 cut-off for grade eligibility ridiculous"
You can must say all you want, you know little if anything. "Forty-two years after Lyndon Johnson inaugurated Head Start, access to quality early education still highly correlates with class; and one serious side effect of pushing back the cutoffs is that while well-off kids with delayed enrollment will spend another year in preschool, probably doing what kindergartners did a generation ago, less-well-off children may, as the literacy specialist Katie Eller put it, spend “another year watching TV in the basement with Grandma.” What’s more, given the socioeconomics of redshirting — and the luxury involved in delaying for a year the free day care that is public school — the oldest child in any given class is more likely to be well off and the youngest child is more likely to be poor. “You almost have a double advantage coming to the well-off kids,” says Samuel J. Meisels, president of Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development in Chicago. “From a public-policy point of view I find this very distressing.” Thank you for your insight that didn't involve a typically DC based slanted periodical. |
Anonymous
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I really think it has to be on a case-by-case basis. Some June kids may be ready, some may not be.
FWIW, I was a later August birthday, started "on time", always excelled academically to the point that they switched me to the separate GT school in 3rd grade--and promptly discovered that while I was flourishing there academically, I was WAY behind socially and 6 weeks into my 3rd grade year decided to bump me back to 2nd grade. (And of course, the politics at the GT school were such that they wouldn't hold me back AND keep me there, so I had to go back to the regular school.) I have vague memories of being somewhat traumatized by this, as I had to leave the best friends and teachers I'd had in my short life so far, but in the long run it was certainly the right decision. It probably would have been better for me though to have just started K a whole year late, rather than having to deal with being held back, but obviously that is LONG behind me now! |
Anonymous
But where do you draw this cut-off?? I don't think anybody debates the "just before the cut-off birthdays" but when we start holding back June and May what stops people from holding back January or even December because "the child is not ready." THOSE are the children that NEED to go to kindergarten. There is a chance these children have a LD that can be easily diagnosed in a school setting. THen the child can get the extra help they need. By waiting that year, the parents could inadvertently be hurting their child even more. I am a PP with a May boy and EVERY week his reports come home saying he has a hard time sitting still. No shit, he's 5!!!! He will get it eventually, but should I have held him back because he couldn't sit in a seat for more than 5 minutes?? |