Speak up (to your school) if you are worried about all the redshirting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where I have a problem is when my April birthdate son, who is pretty good athletically, but not great, is bumped out of a spot because he is competing against kids 12-18 months older than him. On smaller count athletic teams like basketball, this has a huge effect.

This makes no sense. I don't know of schools that have teams with limited squads until at least 6th grade, and more commonly 7th grade. By that point the differences due to chronological age are far outweighed by the differences due to experience, talent, practice, and timing of puberty.

My DS plays on a travel soccer team (so we know the precise birthdate of every boy, and they are within a strict 12-month range). By U13 (7th grade), the boys ranged from well-into-puberty to not-even-close, with the tallest boy more than 12 inches taller than the shortest boy, but there was no correlation to birthday.

Add growth, physical dexterity due to age to experience, talent, practice, and timing of puberty. limited squads exist on school teams and there is the issue of game time, starters, position. travel soccer is on a 12 month but school teams are grade based.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People have asked about schools with 7 year olds in K. GDS has 6 year olds in PK. Turned 6 in April.

Great! Finally (for the very first time by my count), someone actually names a school. Is the PK student who turned 6 in April the oldest? How many PK students have turned 6 to date?

My recollection is that the PK class there is about 24, correct?

[Anonymous]

Quite frankly, there simply shouldn't be six year olds in Pre-k (and GDS isn't the only school, by any means where there are April, or older!! kids in Pre K).

I know the curricula has changed and blah blah blah, but weren't most of us 6 when we were in first grade? I was not old or young for my class, but I was.

Summer birthdays are one thing that I can remotely understand, but Feb-May kids should be right aged for the grade.

[Anonymous]

Langley and Potomac have some seven year olds in kindergarten. They may have turned seven recently, but STILL.
I have heard from friends that there is tons of redshirting at Sidwell and Maret, but I don't know that info firsthand.

[Anonymous]

There were kids in my kindergarten class who turned 7 that year. They had been held back a year because they flunked K the year before. K was for kids who were 5 years old and turnin 6 that year. Kids who flunked K therefore were 6, turning 7 -- so they were 7 by the end of the year.

The difference is, back then parents waited for kids to fail, and the kids got flunked. No one deliberately held their child back, without having that great "flunking" experience.

[Anonymous]

In the age of helicopter parenting, people don't want their child's self-esteem to be "ruined" by repeating K. Plus, it makes them look bad too so they just hold them back to prevent that from happening.

[Anonymous]

That was my experience too--the older kids were the ones who flunked. So I guess for some families are "pre-flunking" their kids by redshirting them because they fear they will eventually flunk out anyway.

Anonymous wrote:There were kids in my kindergarten class who turned 7 that year. They had been held back a year because they flunked K the year before. K was for kids who were 5 years old and turnin 6 that year. Kids who flunked K therefore were 6, turning 7 -- so they were 7 by the end of the year.

The difference is, back then parents waited for kids to fail, and the kids got flunked. No one deliberately held their child back, without having that great "flunking" experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That was my experience too--the older kids were the ones who flunked. So I guess for some families are "pre-flunking" their kids by redshirting them because they fear they will eventually flunk out anyway.

Anonymous wrote:There were kids in my kindergarten class who turned 7 that year. They had been held back a year because they flunked K the year before. K was for kids who were 5 years old and turnin 6 that year. Kids who flunked K therefore were 6, turning 7 -- so they were 7 by the end of the year.

The difference is, back then parents waited for kids to fail, and the kids got flunked. No one deliberately held their child back, without having that great "flunking" experience.

But today's redshirts are not likely to flunk. Most if not all the [pre-August] redshirt parents I know are very aggressive, social, sporty. The "Beautiful People" among the priv ate school set. Then there are some parents of m/f twins with the boy in the grade behind.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to those who posted the names of the schools with the 7 yr olds in K.

I noticed that most said the kids turned 7 right around now which basiclaly means the end of the year so the kids were not 7 during the school year.

I do think that makes a difference.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it makes a difference.

I also know that there are plenty of kids whose parents have "pre-flunked" their kids at other schools whose birthdays are anywhere from December to May. This isn't about summer birthdays, this is about the Spring birthdays, which is really pushing the bar lower.

It is simply sad and the schools should not be encouraging it or allowing it.

(and the "pre-fluniking" term is brilliant - let's call it what it is!)

[Anonymous]

Can't we refrain from putting derogatory labels on young children?

[Anonymous]

Well, I know that the reason there are some kids who are 6, turning 7, in K now is different from the reason there were kids who were 6 turning 7 in K back when I was in K. But the fact remains that there were kids turning 7 when I was in K and there will be kids who are 6 turning 7 in my daughter's K next year. I guess I don't see how it affects her though. She's 5 turning 6 her K year, and back when I was in K I was 5 turning 6.... and yeah, there were some older kids in my K class... and there will be older kids in her K clas too. So the only difference is that back then, the kids wereheld back because they flunked; and nowadays, parents decide to hold their kids back. Don't see how either decision affects me or my daughter, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can't we refrain from putting derogatory labels on young children?

I think the people who are opposed to parents having the choice to redshirt their child would be OK with it as long as there were some kind of stigma attached to it. If the kid TRIED Kindergarten and flunked, then those opposed wouldn't mind so much the parents and school making the child repeat kindergarten.

Maybe a solution would be to tell those parents who were opposed to redshirting that your child flunked preK and had to repeat an extra year? Then no one would feel like the redshirted kid was getting some extra advantage -- he FLUNKED PreK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it makes a difference.

I also know that there are plenty of kids whose parents have "pre-flunked" their kids at other schools whose birthdays are anywhere from December to May. This isn't about summer birthdays, this is about the Spring birthdays, which is really pushing the bar lower.

It is simply sad and the schools should not be encouraging it or allowing it.

(and the "pre-fluniking" term is brilliant - let's call it what it is!)

See my earlier post -- the kids aren't pre-flunking K, they flunked preK and need to repeat it.

Does that make you feel better now?

[Anonymous]

Teacher here...

Unless it is a deliberately planned for multi-age classroom, you shouldn't have more than a 12-month age range in a classroom. How hard is that to accept? 5-year-olds go to K, 6-year-olds to 1st, 7-year-olds to 2nd, etc, etc, etc. If a child is chronologically ready but developmentally not (meaning more than 6-months behind chronological age or otherwise having a diagnosed need preventing necessary access to the curriculum), then they need either a different school environment or additional supports in the classroom. I do believe that children are individuals and should be treated as such and, ideally, we wouldn't have to be hard and fast with cut-offs. But, that's the system we have now and these attempts at quick-fixes only throw it even more out of whack.