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"Red-Shirting" of kids
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Anonymous
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At some point you have to suck it up or conceive your kids at a different time of the year. I am sure that none of pro-redshirters would want the average kindergartener to be 7 or 8 years old in a few years. That is the logical consequence of everyone wanting the "best" for the children. Anecdotally, the most successful people I know were the youngest in the classes. But then I don't run in the sporty crowd. I am talking about people who are successful intellectuals. Professors at Stanford etc. Some of them were 2 years younger than their classmates. If sports is your thing, then go ahead and make your kid go to preschool when they are 6. I am sure they'll be the best athlete ever and will certainly be able to learn their letters too. In fact, they'll be the definition of success.
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Anonymous
Right, and then someone else decides they want their kid to be older than your kid in the same class, and eventually you get kids shaving in elementary school. The school boards and administrators need to put an end to this by drawing a line in the sand with firm ranges for what is appropriate for each grade. |
Anonymous
OK, new poster here. I can understand the escalating arms race problem that red-shirting creates, but I think the slippery-slope, shaving-in-kindergarten argument is not really persuasive because its so exaggerated and unrealistic. I'm not poking at you PP; I just see that same slippery-slope argument every time this topic gets discussed, and it comes across as silly. Isn't the real effect that at some point the majority of the class will be red-shirted, so there will be no benefit to red-shirting, and in fact a penalty for those parents that don't red-shirt? At that point, schools will need to impose hard age-caps to avoid penalizing the younger (previously normal-aged) kids. In the meantime, some parents can potentially benefit their kids by red-shirting them, and thus making them older than the class. Gladwell makes a good case that in various sports, the older kids have a leg up, and I assume that advantage would apply to academics and social skills as well. However, let's be real here -- if an average kid is red-shirted, he's going to get some advantage, but does anyone think he really will instantly become Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama all rolled into one (i.e., the leader of his class physically, intellectually, and politically)? No, he's still going to be a relatively average kid but with some slight advantage over where he was before. BTW, PP, if you really truly believe that red-shirting will in fact lead to shaving among kindergartners, I apologize for minimizing your worries. |
Anonymous
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PP here. No, I never said shaving in K, but elementary school in my mind goes to 8th grade.
Really, what was the age distribution when you were in K? For me, it was mostly 4 to 5 year olds. Now, it is 5 to, in some cases, 7. An 8 year old in first grade leads to a 15 year old in 8th grade. This condition exists today and unless administrators put an end to it, where will it go? And what are the implications for jr. high and high school? What are the implications when teachers need to cover an 18+ month spread in learners? |
Anonymous
Fair enough. You did say elementary school. I wasn't trying to distort your position by saying shaving-in-kindergarten; my mistake. I personally think of elementary school as ending around 3rd or 4th grade, with middle school beginning in 5th or 6th, but I suspect the line is a gray one. On your question about age distribution in my K class, I have absolutely no idea. I can't even remember my teacher's name or how old I was, much less how old anyone else was. You ask a lot of significant questions -- ones I am sure those in education policy will need to consider closely. I just chimed in to say that shaving age is probably not a high-priority question. |
Anonymous
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Found an interesting study that concludes there are no long term advantages for "redshirting".
Here's the link and the abstract: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~gpainter/Season%20of%20Birth%2009_04.pdf Does the Age that Children Start Kindergarten Matter? Evidence of Long-Term Educational and Social Outcomes ABSTRACT This study uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey to examine longterm effects of age at school entry on human capital accumulation. Recent studies suggest that individuals with summer birthdates, who are assumed to be younger at school entry, gain more education on average (Angrist & Krueger 1991; Mayer & Knutson 1999), while other research suggests that younger students perform worse on average in early elementary school (Stipek 2002). At present, little is known about the impact of age at school entry on education attainment as youths transition from high school into college and the labor market. This study focuses special attention on those students who enter kindergarten a year later than their peers. The results of this study suggest that delaying kindergarten does not create any long-term advantages for students, and that younger students may have a small advantage in human capital accumulation. |
Anonymous
What should schools and sports leagues do? The primary advantage I see is sports and social. A years worth of growth . I only know of academic redshirting when a child had a disability and needed work on social skills. Youth lacrosse followed the lead from youth football and went with ages not grades in school although football also has weight matrixes. I noticed that the fellow from Good Counsel [Jenkins] is a spring 1992 birthday, a senior, and has a gpa over 3.5. Do you all realize that he could be a sophomore in high school now? Well all I can say is by sophomore year there usually is a catch-up and the early plusses for sports move away as others mature. |
Anonymous
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"Gladwell" poster here:
In response to the "Standford" poster above... I frankly want my kid to be well rounded... good academically, good at sports, good at arts, and- probably most importantly - confident socially. My family's personal values do not define "successful" as a "Stanford intellectual", but hey, that's us. The PP made the point that I was going to make - which is that the "slippery slope" argument is not really intellectually honest. The issue here is that A LOT of growth often happens between ages 4-6.. and sometimes kids, particularly boys, do not develop their fine motor and processing skills until they are 5 1/2 to 6. Starting them in a highly competitive K program here in DC when they are a summer birthday and just barely 5 puts them at a huge disadvantage to the rest of the class. Gladwell's point is that the kids who show early signs of achievement often end up getting the most attention... selected out for special work, more intensive training, accelerated learning, etc. (he makes his biggest point about Canadian hockey players who, when you examine team rosters, are incredibly heavily weighted with Jan-Mar birthdays (the team age cut off in Canada is Dec 31). He found similar patterns in other sports. By this he concludes that these older kids do better in the early years of playing, and end up being picked for the select teams where they get more training and opportunity for growth. I think the question is simply "should a kid with a, let's say April/May to August birthday, be allowed to redshirt in order to give them the additional growth they need. If I'm making policy, I'd then put the true hard cut off in April/May. Again - it's a choice that parents have to make for what is best for THEIR CHILD. The other folks on this board who strongly disagree are certainly entitled to their opinion... but I have to question their motive for disagreement (the good of the whole, or the good of their particular child??). |
Anonymous
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I'm a PP who wrote in favor of considering waiting a year before sending a summer b'day boy to K. Posters opposed to this are mischaracterizing the argument for doing so: it's not about giving your child an unfair advantage; it's about not putting him at a disadvantage.
As far as Gladwell's argument, however, it can cut both ways. A child with a summer birthday is very lucky if he or she likes swimming, where the age cut-off is May 31. This means the child will never be the youngest swimmer in a race and will be among the oldest every other summer. Both my kids have summer b'days and both have several friends with May birthdays who don't like to swim competitively for this reason. |
Anonymous
If every parent is entitled to make decisions based solely on what is best for his or her child, why question the motivations of those who oppose redshirting? Are they expected to meet a higher standard? |
Anonymous
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Gladwell's use of statistics are used to prove his hypothesis. This does not prove anything other than what everyone in the world knows -- older children are usually more mature than younger children. This is a fundamental principle to human development -- duh!
I am against redshirting for many reasons, but mainly because it sets up false expectations for the redshirted, and the normal aged children (ie younger children) are then put into a comparative disadvantage in the classroom -- again setting up false expectations. Clearly, private and public school systems are failing us all.They need to set firm age requirements for class entry. No more gaming the system. If schools decide that 6 is the new age requirement, then fine as long as universal preschool is available to everyone. |
Anonymous
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As a PP said... redshirting should not be about creating an "advantage", but rather about avoiding a "disadvantage" for a summer birthday 5 year old who has not yet developed his/her fine motor skills and processing, or who is still immature from a social/physical standpoint. My point is that parents and educators should be able to make a decision as to whether a late spring/summer birthday should be lapped to avoid this disadvantage. My contention is that once the age of 5 1/2 to 6 is reached... most kids have been given the time to develop these traits.
By the way, 20 years ago this was not as big a deal, because K today is what PK was then (in private school, K today is what 1st grade was 20 years ago... problem is that by accelerating the curriculum you catch some kids that have not yet had the time to develop). Those parents opposed to redshirting on the basis that "it's not fair that my winter birthday kid, who was going to have an age advantage, now does not have that advantage" are really making the arguement that they want their kid to have an advantage over another kid - rather than just mitigating a disadvantage due to age related development. |
Anonymous
I thought one of the neatest points Gladwell made was that using hard cut-off dates is actually discouraging potential superstars who are "unlucky" enough to have inopportune birthdays. To use his hockey example, if we assume that the top 1% of hockey players actually only represent the top 1% of those hockey players with birthdays in January-February (since that's the most advantageous time for hockey players in Canada), then there could be some potentially amazing hockey players that just never got the opportunity to develop skills since their birthdays were in summer months. As a result, the Canadian leagues do not have as many good players as they potentially could. Gladwell recommends that if the leagues used multiple cut-offs (e.g., Jan 1 and August 1), then the segmentation would give more kids a chance to develop and double the number of stellar hockey players. Very keen. In many respects, that's what our current education system allows, since each family can choose when the opportune time is for their kids to enter school (assuming all parents are thinking that way). I suppose if the system is too loose though, then that creates problems if everyone red-shirts. Tough issue. |
Anonymous
| One of the PPs hit the nail on the head. There simply needs to be a consistent and published policy. |
Anonymous
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A friend of mine who has a son at a top tier private high school said that redshirting is creating all kinds of social problems. They have 19 and 20 year olds running around the school -- not as TA's but as students! She believes that the ramifications of this policy have not been thought through by either the parents nor the schools.
Big problem. |