Harvard study about downside of redshirting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, I missed that entire thread and my life was better for it. What is fascinating to me is how often the posters attribute some form of competitiveness to the parents who held their children back, but they reveal that they are the competitive ones with their vitriol, threats and whiffs of superiority.

I also wonder how many of the anti-redshirters are parents of onlies. I think one thing that happens when you have more than one child is that you realize that your stereotypes of "children" are often wrong -- based on your own small sample -- and that raising children requires some complexities that you just don't have when you only have to decide for one. I mean, all children are different and require different calls by their parents and I am trying to figure out why so many posters here don't get that and are so judgmental of other parents' decisions.

How would you know how complex it is to have only one? Do you? And it sounds as if you are the one whiffing of superiority.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone reading this thread ever received a straight answer from an administrator at one of the private schools re: why fairly typical boys need to start at 6?

I ran into this myself, and we didn't push the issue (went another route) but now I regret that I didn't speak up at the time and ask probing questions ... would love to be a fly on a wall during the staff meetings where they discuss that "April is the new July" for boys' birthdays.

Oh, and I too have an anecdote about one of the 4 schools mentioned earlier, in which the June boy will be able to attend but must "repeat" a "grade" of preschool. It wasn't a choice for the parents.

[Anonymous]

Do you want an older 18 year old, or 19 year old girl living under your roof?

I think I would prefer that to our alternative which would be to send our August DD off to college at 17. Fortunately, she's in private school and the cutoff dates seem to be June 1st - May 31st, so it's not an issue for us.

I would be conflicted, however, if she were in public school where the age spans seem to be much wider. I wouldn't want her to be the oldest by 15 (or more) months and I wouldn't want her to be the youngest by so many months either. The widened developmental age group is the problem - not where the cutoff date is set.

Perhaps the schools are allowing parents to hold kids back unquestioned because the curriculum has become more challenging. It is not doing anyone any favors having kids with 15+ months age differences in the same classroom, though. The curriculum has not been changed to support a wider age range in the classroom.

The gifted and special resource programs (which are typical in the better school systems where redshirting is so common) are going to need to be expanded to help teach to these kids on the ends of the developmental spectrum. That, in effect, will mean the watering down of these services. Instead of teaching to a gifted 3rd grade group, the G&T teacher will be teaching basic 4th grade work to old 3rd graders. And, the reading specialist will be trying to teach a 4 year old how to read instead of working with a 1st grader who may have dyslexia. Unless, of course, the schools hire more special resource teachers to address this.

Why are schools so quick to allow someone to hold their child back, but make it nearly impossible to jump them ahead? I don't understand why these two situations don't require the same level of scrutiny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why are schools so quick to allow someone to hold their child back, but make it nearly impossible to jump them ahead? I don't understand why these two situations don't require the same level of scrutiny.

I think it is all the testing. I think there are similar arguments/issues people may have with schools putting resources into GT etc. versus putting all the resources into making sure everyone is proficient in the state mandated test. Call my cynical but if I could get children with an extra year of preschool or kindergarten, another year of maturity etc. to teach versus a young 4 not quite 5 - who would I pick?

[Anonymous]

So I actually read the academic article (available here: http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neppc/wp/2008/neppcwp0803.pdf), and I'd sum up the findings as, "good for the red-shirted kid (because s/he is likely to do better in sports, testing, and college admissions) so long as s/he is not from a low socioeconomic class (and thus somewhat likely to drop out of school as soon as permissible -- with a year less schooling than if s/he had not been red-shirted), but bad for society (because s/he pays into Social Security and Medicare for one fewer year)." Nothing here to explain why parents with the means to do so shouldn't red-shirt their kids (absent whatever communitarian leanings they may have, of course).

Here's the article's conclusion, for those curious but unwilling to wade through the whole study:

Given the pace of research in this area, we will soon likely have the evidence we need to more confidently calculate the social welfare consequences of the graying of kindergarten. While we cannot yet say whether the net effect is zero or negative, we can say with near certainty that increasing age at school entry intensifies inequality in human capital and social welfare. Both redshirting and increases in the legal age of school entry have this variance-increasing effect on social welfare.

First, increases in the age of legal school entry intensify socioeconomic differences in educational attainment and achievement. Lower-income children are at greater risk of dropping out of school when they reach the legal age of school exit; increases in age at school entry therefore disproportionately decrease their completed education. Analyzing data from the Tennessee STAR class size experiment, Cascio and Schanzenbach (2007) find that the later school entry has negative impacts on outcomes for disadvantaged children but not their more advantaged peers. One explanation for this finding is that young children who enter school later spend more time in unequal environments. Both at home and in formal care, children who start school later linger in settings whose quality is positively correlated with parents’ human capital. This is exactly the point made by advocates of early childhood interventions: insofar as home environments are unequal, delaying public schooling increases the likelihood of unequal outcomes (Kirp, 2007; Heckman, 2007).

Second, redshirting disadvantages children who enter school on time. In kindergarten, the most advantaged children are the oldest in the class, reinforcing socioeconomic gaps in school readiness: “[C]hildren who may be at academic risk from factors associated with poverty face the additional hurdle of being compared to advantaged children 12 to 15 months older….the youngest children may appear to be immature and unready to tackle the tasks their significantly older classmates find challenging and intriguing (Crosser, 1998).” Younger children in the classroom are more likely to be labeled as learning disabled (Elder and Lubotsky, forthcoming). Ironically, the racial and socioeconomic segregation of the US softens this dynamic, since in our school districts the most advantaged and least advantaged children rarely share a classroom. But the standardized test scores of children of the same grade are compared across districts and states, and the relative ages of these children will contribute to the distance between the scores of rich and poor districts.

[Anonymous]

I agree that you shold not hold your child back unless really necessary. I was adopted in April of 85, speaking only Chinese, and then turned five in August and started Kindergarten in September and I performed at the top of my class every year. When you push your children (reasonably) they will meet the challenge. I was always one of the younger ones in my class, and even as kids, certain ones would brag that they started kindergarten when they were four. I believe while there may be a time disadvantage to those with summer birthdays, there is a corresponding mental advantage that you are smarter because you are younger. Kids know this.

[Anonymous]

Something seems really really odd to me about this idea that holding a child back a year is bad because it is taking him out of the workforce for a year.

Aren't we all going to be working till we're 90 anyhow in the future?

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't be too concerned about the social security or workforce issue.


With red-shirting, you get an older kid in Pre-K with the other kids "socially behind" him or her. Then s/he's the oldest in K, and the other kids are "socially behind" him. Seems like a total wash. If some parents don't want their own child to be the youngest, I can't see what harm it does. One thing that fascinates me is that this is recommended and done more often for boys than girls. In our pre-k, the youngest boys and girls seem to be similarly comfortable in the environment, but a couple of boys might stay back. I wonder if our society expects boys to be leaders, and being at the back of the pack is more acceptable for a girl than a boy. I don't know; I just wonder.

Totally anecdotally, in my experience the parents of redshirted boys were not competitive at all. Rather, each of them was a very cautious, anxious parent who was always more concerned than we were about any remote sign that their child was different or struggling or uncomfortable. The most protective parents I know red-shirted their very popular (among preschool friends) son because they were convinced that he was "not ready" as they were convinced that he was "not ready" for drop-off play dates.

FWIW, I'm a late December birthday and went to kindergarten at age 4. I suppose that I was socially behind, but it didn't make much of a difference then, or in the long run. I graduated high school at the top of my class, started a good college at 17, and here I am, socially behind enough to get into these fun conversations with other parents.

I often think that our parents took a much mellower approach to parenting. My mother sent me off to school at four, and my brother and I were allowed to run around our neighborhood (in NYC) without her from as early as I can remember. Maybe they did a lot of talking without us in the room, but I just don't remember so much over-thinking, and I don't remember ever my parents ever telling me that some decision or other was going to be HUGE until I contemplated getting married. Those were the days, I guess.

[Anonymous]

I personally think ALL KIDS would benefit from starting Kindergarten a year later. Why the rush to start them so young? They have their whole lives to be institutionalized and to work (whether in school or the office). Let them be kids!
It may not be convenient for the parents who use school as free daycare (I have heard this described by parents this way many times) but oh well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I personally think ALL KIDS would benefit from starting Kindergarten a year later. Why the rush to start them so young? They have their whole lives to be institutionalized and to work (whether in school or the office). Let them be kids!
It may not be convenient for the parents who use school as free daycare (I have heard this described by parents this way many times) but oh well.

It doesn't sound like you understand the study, or indeed the whole socio-economic rationale behind Head-Start. (But, oh well...)

[Anonymous]

Kindergarten is not just daycare. Kids can learn to read before kindergarten . I lean towards pushing your kids to succeed rather than trying to give them every possible advantage especially when these advantages are completely unrelated to MERIT and totally related to how your parents try to game the education system.

Of course there are times when holding back may be appropriate, but given the type of parents on here that get caught up in which school feeds into to that school and the even snobbier parents who tell other parents don't worry about the name, worry about "fit" for a 4-year-old....I think the practice of holding back kids is generally rubbish expecially when it comes to private schools. If the priavate school is supposedly so wonderful with small class sizes and wonderful teachers, then why would you need to hold back?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kindergarten is not just daycare. Kids can learn to read before kindergarten . I lean towards pushing your kids to succeed rather than trying to give them every possible advantage especially when these advantages are completely unrelated to MERIT and totally related to how your parents try to game the education system.

Of course there are times when holding back may be appropriate, but given the type of parents on here that get caught up in which school feeds into to that school and the even snobbier parents who tell other parents don't worry about the name, worry about "fit" for a 4-year-old....I think the practice of holding back kids is generally rubbish expecially when it comes to private schools. If the priavate school is supposedly so wonderful with small class sizes and wonderful teachers, then why would you need to hold back?

This is based on how many years of formal training in the study of education, public policy, and/or child development? Or are you so narrow-minded as to honestly believe that just because you personally have never known a child who is developmentally on the bubble that they must not exist in any statistically significant numbers? With needs that can't be diagnosed and treated by you via fiat.

By your logic, just because YOUR child doesn't need insulin shots that must mean that nobody else's does either.

[Anonymous]

PP-> I wasn't talking to you if you had a legitimate reason for holding your child back. I guess you skipped the line where I said of course there are instances where it would be appropriate. But I know many private school teachers who tell me it is a common practice in private schools and it doesn't surprise me that private schools changed their cut-off dates, because it certainly would help their testing statistics. My point is that there are so many intelligent parents who get so caught up in trying to game every scenario to get their child that little edge and at the end of the day, I don't think it's best for the child.

If you child is on the cusp of the develomental bubble, then so what? Why hold them back? It's KINDERGARTEN. It doesn't determines whether or not they become president of the united states or not. Children don't have to be the number one student in elementary school. It's important to have a good start in school (K-12), but this getting rediculous.

If my child was on the cusp of anything, I would push them up. NOT down. And what does insulin have to do with anything?

You would probably also want your child to get extra time on her SATS, because they have a late birthday too.

[Anonymous]

This thread is almost the nastiest one I've read on DCUM. Let's see if I can push it over the top: Oyster is over-crowded, over-rated, and mostly populated by kids with rabid, cult-ish parents; please discuss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP-> I wasn't talking to you if you had a legitimate reason for holding your child back. I guess you skipped the line where I said of course there are instances where it would be appropriate. But I know many private school teachers who tell me it is a common practice in private schools and it doesn't surprise me that private schools changed their cut-off dates, because it certainly would help their testing statistics. My point is that there are so many intelligent parents who get so caught up in trying to game every scenario to get their child that little edge and at the end of the day, I don't think it's best for the child.

If you child is on the cusp of the develomental bubble, then so what? Why hold them back? It's KINDERGARTEN. It doesn't determines whether or not they become president of the united states or not. Children don't have to be the number one student in elementary school. It's important to have a good start in school (K-12), but this getting rediculous.

If my child was on the cusp of anything, I would push them up. NOT down. And what does insulin have to do with anything?

You would probably also want your child to get extra time on her SATS, because they have a late birthday too.

Oh nonsense. You seem to think you're entitled to details. As if you had the full picture and then got to make a judgment perhaps it would be okay with you. Guess what. It's not up to you how other people raise their children. You have a life-long disease of sticking yourself in where you don't belong. It's not your child, you don't get to make the decision, so butt out.