Redshirting consequences at Lafayette

[Anonymous]

Why are Lafayette parents like this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

The age difference in hs should be four years but it’s up to six years because of people like you. If your child struggles you don’t need to hold them back, you get them help and put them in appropriate classes.

If your child was held back for immaturity how do you think they feel with you telling others that? What help did you get them to make them more mature? How does it help with maturity to hold them back with younger peers who are less mature as they are the appropriate maturity for their age. If you hold your kid back they will always be immature as their peers are much younger and they will act like their peers. Want them mature, move them ahead with older peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

These are rich parents who can afford private interventions or their insurance can pay depending on the diagnosis. These is no diagnoses for them. Low income kids can get therapies through Medicaid. There are also universities and other programs that have more affordable therapies, which is particularly what we did.

You are so ignorant about this. Learning disabilities can go undiagnosed and untreated for years, average diagnostic age is way past kindergarten enrollment time, look it up. You seem to be fine with holding back and redshirting, but only after the kid has failed, or has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt they can’t handle the coursework. Parents often have an idea something’s off way before formal diagnostics and the point is to take measures early before things turn insurmountable.

Meanwhile you want a perfectly manicured environment for your kid, free of self esteem distraction like kids older than a few months from cutoff date, advanced math, gifted and talented programs, tutoring, the more the better. Also you don’t want to pay for it, so it’s got to be given to you in public. Private is for the rich parents who can afford interventions, diagnostics, or they should find affordable therapies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

Anybody can make sweeping generalizations and pass them as facts.

Younger, underdeveloped and emotionally immature kids pushed hard by their striver parents are a problem for the rest of their class. They slow down the pace of the advanced classes, because they didn’t fully master concepts they should know by now, require constant attention from teachers and distract the entire class with their immature behavior. They should not be in these classes which are not age appropriate for them, but the parents don’t want to follow the rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

These are rich parents who can afford private interventions or their insurance can pay depending on the diagnosis. These is no diagnoses for them. Low income kids can get therapies through Medicaid. There are also universities and other programs that have more affordable therapies, which is particularly what we did.

You are so ignorant about this. Learning disabilities can go undiagnosed and untreated for years, average diagnostic age is way past kindergarten enrollment time, look it up. You seem to be fine with holding back and redshirting, but only after the kid has failed, or has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt they can’t handle the coursework. Parents often have an idea something’s off way before formal diagnostics and the point is to take measures early before things turn insurmountable.

Meanwhile you want a perfectly manicured environment for your kid, free of self esteem distraction like kids older than a few months from cutoff date, advanced math, gifted and talented programs, tutoring, the more the better. Also you don’t want to pay for it, so it’s got to be given to you in public. Private is for the rich parents who can afford interventions, diagnostics, or they should find affordable therapies.

The Karen in the thread surely is entitled. Geez!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

There is no rule that K should start at 5. "They" want the ages set not to September (which would make it the case that all kids were 5 when they started K), but May or June (presumably to capture their kids' birth dates)... which captures kids who actually would have been 5. If they break the rules by sending their kid late, why should the district not get to decide how to accommodate them? Also, note that their rule would apply to kids who had already done K once, so it's not even limited to kids who missed "mandatory" K. Their rule is over and under inclusive because it is motivated by nothing but their desire to do whatever they want for their own specific kids... not even because their kids "need" it, but because they did it for their older siblings. That is insane.

Also, let's not pretend you are not one of the Lafayette parents. C'mon now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

Anybody can make sweeping generalizations and pass them as facts.

Younger, underdeveloped and emotionally immature kids pushed hard by their striver parents are a problem for the rest of their class. They slow down the pace of the advanced classes, because they didn’t fully master concepts they should know by now, require constant attention from teachers and distract the entire class with their immature behavior. They should not be in these classes which are not age appropriate for them, but the parents don’t want to follow the rules.

But their parents are following the rules. There is no right to put your kid in a higher level math class. It's up to the school. If anything, it's your logic that would say parents should be able to stick their kids in any classes they want to. You are talking yourself in circles in your desire to defend being treated like a snowflake for no reason other than... that's what you'd like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

There is no rule that K should start at 5. "They" want the ages set not to September (which would make it the case that all kids were 5 when they started K), but May or June (presumably to capture their kids' birth dates)... which captures kids who actually would have been 5. If they break the rules by sending their kid late, why should the district not get to decide how to accommodate them? Also, note that their rule would apply to kids who had already done K once, so it's not even limited to kids who missed "mandatory" K. Their rule is over and under inclusive because it is motivated by nothing but their desire to do whatever they want for their own specific kids... not even because their kids "need" it, but because they did it for their older siblings. That is insane.

Also, let's not pretend you are not one of the Lafayette parents. C'mon now.

Sure, I’m one of the Lafayette parents, lol. The parents position is explained in the OP you dummy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

Anybody can make sweeping generalizations and pass them as facts.

Younger, underdeveloped and emotionally immature kids pushed hard by their striver parents are a problem for the rest of their class. They slow down the pace of the advanced classes, because they didn’t fully master concepts they should know by now, require constant attention from teachers and distract the entire class with their immature behavior. They should not be in these classes which are not age appropriate for them, but the parents don’t want to follow the rules.

But their parents are following the rules. There is no right to put your kid in a higher level math class. It's up to the school. If anything, it's your logic that would say parents should be able to stick their kids in any classes they want to. You are talking yourself in circles in your desire to defend being treated like a snowflake for no reason other than... that's what you'd like.

Exactly! It’s up to the school. Since you’re fine with the school figuring out how to accommodate your kids advanced math, then give the same courtesy to other parents and let them work it out with the school when their kids start kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

Anybody can make sweeping generalizations and pass them as facts.

Younger, underdeveloped and emotionally immature kids pushed hard by their striver parents are a problem for the rest of their class. They slow down the pace of the advanced classes, because they didn’t fully master concepts they should know by now, require constant attention from teachers and distract the entire class with their immature behavior. They should not be in these classes which are not age appropriate for them, but the parents don’t want to follow the rules.

But their parents are following the rules. There is no right to put your kid in a higher level math class. It's up to the school. If anything, it's your logic that would say parents should be able to stick their kids in any classes they want to. You are talking yourself in circles in your desire to defend being treated like a snowflake for no reason other than... that's what you'd like.

Exactly! It’s up to the school. Since you’re fine with the school figuring out how to accommodate your kids advanced math, then give the same courtesy to other parents and let them work it out with the school when their kids start kindergarten.

This is literally the current rule. The school told these parents no. Principals are already allowed to make exceptions for individualized considerations. There are none here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

Anybody can make sweeping generalizations and pass them as facts.

Younger, underdeveloped and emotionally immature kids pushed hard by their striver parents are a problem for the rest of their class. They slow down the pace of the advanced classes, because they didn’t fully master concepts they should know by now, require constant attention from teachers and distract the entire class with their immature behavior. They should not be in these classes which are not age appropriate for them, but the parents don’t want to follow the rules.

But their parents are following the rules. There is no right to put your kid in a higher level math class. It's up to the school. If anything, it's your logic that would say parents should be able to stick their kids in any classes they want to. You are talking yourself in circles in your desire to defend being treated like a snowflake for no reason other than... that's what you'd like.

Exactly! It’s up to the school. Since you’re fine with the school figuring out how to accommodate your kids advanced math, then give the same courtesy to other parents and let them work it out with the school when their kids start kindergarten.

The school said no. That is explicitly *not* what these parents are requesting. Nice try though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

These are rich parents who can afford private interventions or their insurance can pay depending on the diagnosis. These is no diagnoses for them. Low income kids can get therapies through Medicaid. There are also universities and other programs that have more affordable therapies, which is particularly what we did.

You are so ignorant about this. Learning disabilities can go undiagnosed and untreated for years, average diagnostic age is way past kindergarten enrollment time, look it up. You seem to be fine with holding back and redshirting, but only after the kid has failed, or has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt they can’t handle the coursework. Parents often have an idea something’s off way before formal diagnostics and the point is to take measures early before things turn insurmountable.

Meanwhile you want a perfectly manicured environment for your kid, free of self esteem distraction like kids older than a few months from cutoff date, advanced math, gifted and talented programs, tutoring, the more the better. Also you don’t want to pay for it, so it’s got to be given to you in public. Private is for the rich parents who can afford interventions, diagnostics, or they should find affordable therapies.

You are so incorrect. I have a real young for the grade and we DID not hold back. They had real developmental delays and we had them in daily therapies and a special preschool to deal with it. That's how you do it. You don't knowingly know your child has delays or a learning disorder or other issues and ignore them and hold them back. I knew about 15 months something was wrong and addressed it starting then through elementary school. We never got gifted support. We only started tutoring in high school. We worked with our child with workbooks daily. That's something you can easily do for little or no money. Parents at this school are generally very wealthy. And, if they aren't and on medicaid, medicaid pays for therapies. If a parent sees their child sturggling, holding them back, delays them getting help in school AND if they aren't getting them outside help and no school at age 5, they ARE failing their child.

In these cases there are no delays, no learning disorders, they are doing it to make things easier on them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Redshirting was fine and nobody batted an eyelash until DEI came and said it inequitable and classist. As DEI wave is passing, in a year everyone will move on to something else and things will be back to redshirting being fine.

I am willing to bet that the Lafayette parents will get their way in the end.

This is simply not true but keep blaming every thing you don't like on minorities. I'm sure it'll go great for you.

Not PP. I didn’t think PP was blaming it on minorities. I think PP was blaming it on equity.

I am a UMC white mom. I don’t think folks should be able to redshirt at will. It has nothing to do with equity and everything to do with needing to have a firm rule to create cohesive classes. Redshirting — or, more likely, retaining -/— with the support of the school for kid-specific developmental reasons? 100% fine. DC is a town of crazies and no age policy would mean 20 months’ spread of kids in each class. That’s not actually good for anyone.

What is a cohesive class? People of all ages mix in the workplace and in college. Somehow that’s a no-no for high school, and kids need to be within a narrow 12 moth age of each other otherwise bad things will happen. Not buying it. My kids friends are two-three years older and younger, tall and short, not really an issue at all.

Parents know best if they want to redshirt or not, some kids need a little more time to get there. The really strict redshirting rules are stupid, how are they going to know what’s right for your child? I mean, if a parent is determined there’s not much the school district can do. You can do kindergarten and first grade in private, homeschooling for a year, retain and retake kindergarten for two years in public etc., or just push hard against the silly rules. If I thought it helped my child I’d do it.

The workplace is not a good argument in this case. There are maturity gaps here that do not exist in the same way when a 25 year old has to work with a 32 year old. But in HS there is a huge maturity gap between a 14 year old and a 17 year old. It is obvious and can create issues.

Does your child have a 17-year-old freshman?

What about those stories of elderly people who go back to high school and get degrees: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/living/video/79-year-back-school-high-school-diploma-103131274

Do you have a problem with that person?

Stop trying to legislate edge cases. In fact, stop wasting the school’s very finite attention with this. Schools have real problems to solve.

This.

Especially since you can just go to private kindergarten for one year for about $5k, and voila you just redshirted your kid. But it’s irritating to have to do that when my property tax money supports the very school that doesn’t want to accommodate the needs of my child.

Btw I voted to increase my own taxes for extra funding of our schools. After the pandemic, won’t ever do this again. Happy to support the charter school where my kid is going, they have been really supportive in anything I ask.

Please find me a private kindergarten for $5k/year.

My property taxes support a lot of stuff, including your kid's charter, that I don't like. I think charters are overall a terrible thing for a country's education system and create inequalities with little oversight. We're seeing folks try and use charters to set up free religious schools. But it's not a donation to my alma mater, I don't get to tick a box and say I don't want my taxes going to this program.

A school is a space to educate and help students grow. It really shouldn't accommodate everything parents wish for because sometimes we as parents are wrong and just being told I'll do whatever a parent asks isn't always in the best interest of the child.

Sure we can be wrong as parents so we should let all the decisions up to someone who barely knows your kid by name.

My beef with the public school was that they wouldn’t accelerate my kid in math even when it was clear he should have been a few grades above. At the charter it only took a meeting with the principal, they MAP tested my kid and placed him two grades above a week after school start.

I’m guessing parents that want to redshirt would receive the same treatment, and I suspect a couple of boys in my kids class were redshirted. Choice is great.

My kid's DCPS accelerated him in math without us even requesting it. They came to us with a plan. Very unclear why you think your experience with exactly one DCPS and one charter school is particularly relevant.

If you’re fine with your kid being accelerated in math to accommodate his needs, you should also be fine with holding back kids to accommodate theirs. Yours was ready to learn above grade, other are not ready and need more time. Why are you ok with 2-3 years age difference in math classes but not elsewhere? If you want to hold the age cohort within one year, everyone should take the same classes K through 12, problem solved. No acceleration, no APs, no electives. But as soon as your child is disadvantaged you’ll scream the loudest.

This thread is about Lafayette parents wanting to redshirt their six year olds into kindergarten not about whether any kid should be allowed to be held back in any grade. These parents want to basically make this solely about birthdays giving them flexibility and not about the assessments of teachers and staff. That's why they themselves have a May 31st and then June 30th flexible cutoffs in their own proposal. Which given the two different dates over two different years seems to be crafting a policy entirely built around their children alone.

Nowhere in the discussion from Lafayette parents did they themselves push for more intervention funding for students who need extra help. What if you need extra help but your birthday is April or February or even October? This policy and lobbying doesn't help that.

Now we can absolutely have a conversation about schools, including DCPS and charters, who fail miserably at addressing kids who need early intervention. And it may be behavioral or subject specific. But again that's not what these parents are asking for.

Ok got it, you’re ok with age differences of 2-3 years in accelerated math as long as your kid benefits, and you approve with the rationale for mixing kids of different ages, because of “assessments”.

Then if you don’t like the Lafayette parents reasoning, ie the kid is not emotionally mature, doesn’t have the executive function etc, then their sole motivation is based on birthdate alone and they are just looking for unfair advantages and “flexibility” because you said so.

To turn the redshirting arguments around, if other parents don’t like your kid in accelerated math because the impact the other kids “self esteem”, or they are not ready and the teacher expectation are skewed and curriculum is watered down, then you know what, they should go to private if they don’t like how the public is run. Public is for kids to grow, learn and flourish, particularly yours. Cognitive dissonance much?

Your whole argument is rooted in ferocious selfishness.

If there is a special need, yes but that’s not what’s happening. And, the issue comes into play in high school where you have 13-14 year olds in the same class as 18-19 year olds. Some older kids are great, some bully. I have the young for the grade, as in a fall birthday in some advanced classes so as a freshman they were with mostly juniors and seniors for art, pe and math. Sophomore year they are the only sophomore in their math class. Your older held back kid is not more advanced as they are not with age appropriate peers or the age appropriate grade. They are on target for the grade level they should be in, not the one you choose for them. My kid is accelerated, your is not.

Astounding that you don’t see how it’s the same argument you’re making.

On one hand you object to kids being too far apart in age due to redshirting, because it skews the expectations of the teacher and affects the self esteem of the other kids. At the same time you’re happy to send your kid to advanced math where the age difference is even larger, 4-5 years. You’re not worried about bullying anymore, and age differences are fine as long as your kid benefits from that setting. According to you, advanced kids can mix with different aged kids, but non-advanced kids can’t, they should stay in the grade level they’re assigned, you can only mix up in age.

What if the parents at your school would complain that your child in advanced math is ruining their kids self esteem, that it skews the expectations of teachers and colleges, arguments you made against red shirting. Your kid is not with age appropriate peers and in the age appropriate class! Or if you’ll be told to go to private if you want accelerated math, because the school doesn’t have the resources to waste on these things, and that you do all this because you want unfair advantages for your child.

You really are ferociously selfish!

What I am saying is the age differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids. You are selfish by not following the rules. Why don’t rules apply to you? The privates cannot accommodate the accelerated math. We tried to switch in middle school but the age difference and math were both issues. They did not have the advanced math in middle school

You are trying to get others to hold back their kids to justify you holding back yours. I don’t get why you’d do that to your child. You aren’t making them smarter, you are dumbing down a smart kid who deserves more.

So you want the public school to go out of their way accommodate for free your kids math level several grades above, way beyond what a private could do, but are whining about when other children start kindergarten.

Again, if age “differences are unhealthy and are difficult for most kids”, why do you send your kid to advanced math class, where they’ll be surrounded by students that are 3-4 years older?

The Lafayette parents argue that the rules are kindergarten should start at 5, but also that kindergarten is mandatory. So if their kids didn’t start kindergarten at 5, they should start with kindergarten at 6 instead of first grade. It’s a reasonable interpretation in my view, particularly since their older kids did the same.

You are ruthlessly self centered.

Older, larger, and emotionally dysregulated boys are a problem for the rest of their class. Maybe not in kindergarten, but later on. Younger kids in advanced math classes may be unhappy, and it might not be a good idea for them, but they're not causing problems for the other kids.

Anybody can make sweeping generalizations and pass them as facts.

Younger, underdeveloped and emotionally immature kids pushed hard by their striver parents are a problem for the rest of their class. They slow down the pace of the advanced classes, because they didn’t fully master concepts they should know by now, require constant attention from teachers and distract the entire class with their immature behavior. They should not be in these classes which are not age appropriate for them, but the parents don’t want to follow the rules.

But their parents are following the rules. There is no right to put your kid in a higher level math class. It's up to the school. If anything, it's your logic that would say parents should be able to stick their kids in any classes they want to. You are talking yourself in circles in your desire to defend being treated like a snowflake for no reason other than... that's what you'd like.

Exactly! It’s up to the school. Since you’re fine with the school figuring out how to accommodate your kids advanced math, then give the same courtesy to other parents and let them work it out with the school when their kids start kindergarten.

The schools have rules. If you choose not to follow them you go private or homeschool. Simple. They didn't follow the rules and don't have a good reason why they held back their kids. Advanced math come middle school is common. You get a few offerings and choose when your child starts algebra. There is no special accominidations for that. Depending on the school 6-8th graders can take algebra. They are all mixed together.