Dear lord you need help. I didn't redshirt, I just read these theads to watch the absolutely bizarre anti-redshirters. |
same -- its like watching a train wreck. i can't look away. lol |
It is fascinating. I definitely side-eye anyone in real life who says they are anti-redshirting. |
Ha! I definitely side-eye anyone in real life who says they are pro-redshirting. |
Why? Generally pro-redshirt posters on DCUM are rational, but the anti-redshirters are totally nuts. You can't deny that as a group, DCUM anti-redshirt posters are really, really weird and come across as very socially stunted. As someone who didn't redshirt but has read a lot of DCUM redshirting threads, I don't think I learn anything when someone says they favor redshirting (it's just an opinion they have and does not tell me much). But if someone says they are against it, there is a higher chance they are crazy, based on years of watching these threads. |
Okay, why stop there? If there were no redshirting there could still be a 12 month difference. Why not insist that cohorts have a six month age spread? Or three months? Or one month? What makes 12 months fair and 13 months unfair? I’m really curious as to the thought process here. |
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ADHD is more likely to be diagnosed in the youngest kids in the year.
In the UK the oldest students are the most likely to be admitted to Oxford university. That’s what the research says and is plainly wrong and something that public policy makers and administrators should be trying to mitigate. 6 month year grouping until middle school wouldn’t be a bad idea, that should be short enough for the age gaps to be negligible. |
How does the answer the question of why redshirting is so rare? All it does is justify my confusion as to why redshirting is so rare. |
Some research says younger kids do better. |
Correlation vs. Causation It could be that the problem is less of being older or younger in comparison to classmates and more being sufficiently mature for starting school. Hypothetically, instead of trying to enforce strict age brackets set on a random date or narrowing the age bracket, maybe we should push the start date back, effectively red-shirting everyone. |
+1 The oldest students are also more likely to get their undergraduate degrees in 4 years and less likely to drop out of college. In fact, I bet that if you looked at everyone who ever dropped out of college or took longer than 4 years to graduate, you'd see that the vast majority started college before they were 18. |
This doesn’t even make sense. The vast majority of school systems default to starting kids in K who have turned 5 before the start of school. This means that after 13 years of school (K-12) they turn 18 before they start college. Unless you’re contending that either there’s a widespread phenomenon of parents talking schools into starting their preschool prodigies early because they’re advanced enough for K at 4, only to drop out of college later, or that college dropouts come primarily from the few school districts that have later start dates, but only students whose birthdays fall between the start of school and the cutoff. Numerically, I’d be highly surprised if the numbers of both conditions added together come anywhere near the number of college students who fsil to complete a degree in four years. |
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Here is a news article about how the youngest in a class fare versus the oldest.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/18/544483397/oldest-kids-in-class-do-better-even-through-college |
Sure, one study, not from this century, of a few Italian students who attended a specialized economics school in Milan came to that conclusion. Do you have any idea just how weak the "studies" that say that younger students do better are in this area of "science"? They can barely be called studies. The ADHD ones are solid because they are large and have been replicated across multiple populations and they are focused on a medical condition. But these mushy "younger students do better" studies that people reference have been vastly oversold. You simply cannot compare them to the ADHD studies (which aren't about redshirting at all, incidentally, and are replicated in countries that have no redshirting). |
Child benefit from the social interaction of school. I was sent to a part time nursery from about 2 and, according to my parents, loved it. It was the only time I wa able to play with non family members my age. So I don’t think that pushing back school entry date is a good thing but the environment and activities has to be developmentally appropriate. It’s normal for a 4 year old to be running around and learning through play but if they are being compared to a 6 year old who will sit down and listen to a teacher reading a storybook then they might unfairly fall short of the standardised group expectations. For example, I learned my ABCs from this jigsaw game my dad got me as a toddler. I was able to remember the feel of the physical shapes of the pieces before reading them on a piece of paper. |