Can you find out from the school what % of kids are redshirted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:19:00 again. My curiosity got the best of me so I searched my email, and here is the response from March 2010. (Clearly I am in a time warp!)

"We don’t maintain that information, and the age/grade table uses January 1 as a calculation date which masks the students who are 6 for Kindergarten as of 9/30 because that is 6 as of 1/1 which would include students who turned 6 in October through December.

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/supts_annual_report/2008_09/table07.pdf

Look over this VDOE chart for all of Virginia"

Here is a more recent version of the chart, with 1/30/13 data. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/supts_annual_report/2011_12/table07.pdf A couple items jump out at me:
1. Over 30k students not promoted in a single year. That seems a lot. I guess it's only 2-3%, but still seems like a lot.
2. More than 1000 students over the age of 20 in 12th grade. That seems a lot. But I guess it's only about 1% (so a senior class of 500 might have 6 students who turn 20 midway through senior year).
3. If my math is right, there's no epidemic of redshirting here. January 1 is about 1/3 of the way into the calendar year each grade covers (Sept-Dec = 4 months out of 12), so you'd expect about 1/3 of the grade to be the higher age, and 2/3 to be the lower age. As an example, if all K students start on-time, you'd expect about 2/3 to be 5yo on Jan 1, and about 1/3 to be 6. So with that in mind, here are a few stats on randomly picked grades ...

For K:
Total students: 98,461
Expected vs. actual # who are 5yo on Jan 1: 65,640 vs. 69,275 (5.5% more than expected)
Expected vs. actual # who are 6yo on Jan 1: 32,820 vs. 28,591 (13% fewer than expected)
# significantly older than expected (7-11yo): 569 (0.6%)

For 3rd:
Total students: 95,994
Expected vs. actual # who are 7yo on Jan 1: 63,996 vs. 61,775 (3.5% fewer than expected)
Expected vs. actual # who are 8yo on Jan 1: 31,998 vs. 32,466 (1.4% more than expected)
# significantly older than expected (9-12yo): 1372 (1.4%)

For 9th:
Total students: 102,872
Expected vs. actual # who are 14yo on Jan 1: 68,582 vs. 56,375 (17.8% fewer than expected)
Expected vs. actual # who are 15yo on Jan 1: 34,291 vs. 36,743 (7% more than expected)
# significantly older than expected (16-20+yo): 9,427 (9%)

I'm not sure what to make of this. At first glance though, it does not look like there is any big push to redshirt children at young ages. Indeed, it looks like many parents are starting their children as early as possible, which makes sense because school is effectively a form of childcare. The number of older children appears to grow with each grade though, so that eventually a significant percentage is older than the norm. My best guess from looking at these numbers though is that most of that "aging" is the result of children failing to be promoted. (Of course, if so, then that should match up with the "retained" numbers at the bottom.)

I don't have a clear view. Maybe someone can help take another step with analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in MCPS - I believe my DD is the only kid in her class who started late. I don't know about the other K classes. So I think the percentage is quite low in our school.

It might be a bit higher percentage in private school than public.

[Anonymous]

No comment on the redshirting, but I imagine a lot of the 30,000 who were not promoted might have been high school students.

[Anonymous]

Private schools have a well-known history for agressively pushing parents to red-shirt. And why wouldn't they! It's to their advantage to have kids who are "more mature" and "ahead of the curve."

They don't want to deal with discipline issues, so they stack the deck in their own favor. They also have a financial incentive (if they offer K) to keep the kid in their school paying tuition for another year. But, on the whole, I think their main motivation is to get kids who are easier to deal with and easier to teach (b/c they are older).

Public schools take everyone who meets the cut-off and they have no incentive to have you stay an extra year. In fact, they typically won't let you choose to retain a child in K or 1st (extra cost to the district).

My kids are in FCPS, and there are a few red-shirts, but not many. My DC is a 7/31 bday and he was not the only one with that bday or later (not red-shirted). Typically, it seems there is 1 kid per class that is "held back." The kids figure it out when they have bdays at school and that kid is the only one turning 8 while everyone else is 6 going on 7.

Bottom line = public school, not so common to red-shirt.
Private school = very common to red-shirt.

[Anonymous]

No one is red shirted in my son's private - it isn't allowed coming into K. They have occasionally had a child skip a grade later, I hear, after the school has had a chance to see it is necessary. But I found this interesting: my child has dyslexia, and so in my reading about dyslexia I have found that it is very beneficial to get kids into school and potentially identifiable for challenges such as dyslexia early, because the older a kid gets the less brain plasticity there is. Identify a 5 or 6 or 7 year old with dyslexia and the child may have no lasting negative impact on reading. But wait till that same child is older, and it will be harder. But you need a couple of years in formal schooling to identify dyslexia, so the earlier school starts, the earlier remediation can start, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one is red shirted in my son's private - it isn't allowed coming into K. They have occasionally had a child skip a grade later, I hear, after the school has had a chance to see it is necessary. But I found this interesting: my child has dyslexia, and so in my reading about dyslexia I have found that it is very beneficial to get kids into school and potentially identifiable for challenges such as dyslexia early, because the older a kid gets the less brain plasticity there is. Identify a 5 or 6 or 7 year old with dyslexia and the child may have no lasting negative impact on reading. But wait till that same child is older, and it will be harder. But you need a couple of years in formal schooling to identify dyslexia, so the earlier school starts, the earlier remediation can start, too.

Your experience is contrary to almost every parent I know with kids in private school (catholic or secular). (Not speaking about dyslexia and starting asap -- only the part about not red-shirting.)

[Anonymous]

which private does not allow red shirting? I wasn't aware they could "disallow" such a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one is red shirted in my son's private - it isn't allowed coming into K. They have occasionally had a child skip a grade later, I hear, after the school has had a chance to see it is necessary. But I found this interesting: my child has dyslexia, and so in my reading about dyslexia I have found that it is very beneficial to get kids into school and potentially identifiable for challenges such as dyslexia early, because the older a kid gets the less brain plasticity there is. Identify a 5 or 6 or 7 year old with dyslexia and the child may have no lasting negative impact on reading. But wait till that same child is older, and it will be harder. But you need a couple of years in formal schooling to identify dyslexia, so the earlier school starts, the earlier remediation can start, too.

Is this in the DC area? ALL of the privates we considered were going to redshirt our summer girl.