Oldest kids in class do better, even through college - NPR

[Anonymous]

Every child is different. I was a K teacher. This blanket redshirting is ridiculous--but, no question, there are some kids who are more immature than others, and it does tend to be the later birthday boys.
But, you cannot generalize too much. Just because the stats show one thing, it does not mean it applies to all.

That said, I am strongly against sending kids early. If your kid has an August/September birthday, I would consider it. My own DS had an April birthday. He went on time. He might have benefited from another year. He was still strongly in play mode.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most "summer birthday boys"? Summer birthdays range from part of June through part of September. Who would redshirt a June or July kid?

I would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd be interested to know from a real researcher if this FL only data can be used as a proxy for nationwide outcomes.

As an elementary school teacher, I have seen this advantage from personal experience. In fact, I intentionally timed my pregnancy so that my child would have an August birthday, so I could red-shirt and give her an advantage. I shit you not.

[Anonymous]

I also think there is an element of confirmation bias / self fulfilling prophecy in all of this. I'm a PP who sent a summer birthday boy on time and I really do think it was / is fine as I noted above. For a while though, if I was upset about anything I would think - oh, this issue is happening because I didn't hold him back.
Whereas I had another friend who was concerned that her DD cried a lot. But this girl just missed the cutoff so wasn't young for the grade. So my friend just thought she had some kind of sensitivity / crying issue. Whereas if it was me, I would have probably automatically decided the crying issue was because he was too young.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also think there is an element of confirmation bias / self fulfilling prophecy in all of this. I'm a PP who sent a summer birthday boy on time and I really do think it was / is fine as I noted above. For a while though, if I was upset about anything I would think - oh, this issue is happening because I didn't hold him back.
Whereas I had another friend who was concerned that her DD cried a lot. But this girl just missed the cutoff so wasn't young for the grade. So my friend just thought she had some kind of sensitivity / crying issue. Whereas if it was me, I would have probably automatically decided the crying issue was because he was too young.

Great point. I do feel many parents attribute any difficulties their kid faced to them being young for age, if they're at all sensitized to the redshirting discussion.

[Anonymous]

I can immediately tell the 15 year old 8th graders walking into my class on the first day of school. Not in a good way.

I have no idea why they're 15 when they get to me (maybe held back, maybe red shirted, maybe moved from another country), but generally they have a "too good for middle school" attitude and hang out with mostly high school kids. There are social struggles being both the oldest and the youngest. Neither is ideal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can immediately tell the 15 year old 8th graders walking into my class on the first day of school. Not in a good way.

I have no idea why they're 15 when they get to me (maybe held back, maybe red shirted, maybe moved from another country), but generally they have a "too good for middle school" attitude and hang out with mostly high school kids. There are social struggles being both the oldest and the youngest. Neither is ideal.

Are you getting a lot of 15 year olds on the first day of 8th grade every year? A redshirted kid would be 14 on the first day of 8th grade, so I can imagine you have a number of them, but 15 is two years behind, so that would be less common, I would think.

[Anonymous]

Never considered not sending my son, born in June, to kindergarten when he was 5 years old. Several years later: he is excelling academically (AAP), and is happy, well-adjusted socially. He would likely be bored to tears if he started k after turning 6.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my experience as a middle school teacher (nearly 3 decades), I've seen many extremely bright summer birthday kids (especially boys, but girls as well) hit a wall academically around 7th-grade when kids who are even a bit older start to leapfrog over them in terms of maturity. This often plays out in terms of poor organizational skills that can swamp even the most able students. At the same time, the younger kids find themselves struggling to keep up as the social scene changes dramatically. For this reason, my husband and I decided to have our own summer birthday kids start kindergarten at age 6. We have never regretted it.

This is what happened to me. I was very young for my grade (pushed ahead), and though bright enough, really hit a wall maturity-wise in 7th grade. It was a mistake to send me early. It wasn't a mistake academically in the end, but socially it was very difficult, and it took me a long time to catch up as far as organizational skills.

What I take away from all of this is that current schooling measurements are wrong and we place far too much value on measurements that are inaccurate at best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also think there is an element of confirmation bias / self fulfilling prophecy in all of this. I'm a PP who sent a summer birthday boy on time and I really do think it was / is fine as I noted above. For a while though, if I was upset about anything I would think - oh, this issue is happening because I didn't hold him back.
Whereas I had another friend who was concerned that her DD cried a lot. But this girl just missed the cutoff so wasn't young for the grade. So my friend just thought she had some kind of sensitivity / crying issue. Whereas if it was me, I would have probably automatically decided the crying issue was because he was too young.

Great point. I do feel many parents attribute any difficulties their kid faced to them being young for age, if they're at all sensitized to the redshirting discussion.

I think this is a really good point too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So for those who red-shirt - do you have your kids repeat a year of pre-school? I'm just wondering how this is done logistically. My son is in a Montessori preschool that offers kindergarten and he is on the young side of his class with a June birthday. If I wanted to red-shirt him would I have him repeat a year in his current classroom? Or do kindergarten twice? I can see the advantage of doing it but feel like it would be weird for him if all of his classmates moved up and he didn't.

Do K twice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1. Very few people in this country understand the blacklisting public schools have gotten in the name of privatization, when the core problem has always been, and will always be, poverty. No matter how much we test kids, cut recess, or fire teachers, the rich kids will always do better than the poor ones. But it's easier to pretend poverty doesn't exist than work to make an equal society, especially in a society as individualistic as ours.

NP here but I agree that the issue is our country expects public schools to solve all the problems of poverty.

Actually I think the issue is that our country claims to expect public schools to solve all the problems of poverty. If our country actually expected this, our country would provide public schools with a lot more resources, and a wider range of resources. And our country certainly wouldn't allow public school funding to be primarily based on local property taxes from areas that are segregated by income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my experience as a middle school teacher (nearly 3 decades), I've seen many extremely bright summer birthday kids (especially boys, but girls as well) hit a wall academically around 7th-grade when kids who are even a bit older start to leapfrog over them in terms of maturity. This often plays out in terms of poor organizational skills that can swamp even the most able students. At the same time, the younger kids find themselves struggling to keep up as the social scene changes dramatically. For this reason, my husband and I decided to have our own summer birthday kids start kindergarten at age 6. We have never regretted it.

My parents sent me early, and they have never regretted it.

I sent my kid early, and I have never regretted it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd be interested to know from a real researcher if this FL only data can be used as a proxy for nationwide outcomes.

Not a researcher but here is the paper the news story is based on:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23660.pdf

Not a peer reviewed publication, though that doesn't mean it is wrong, just that they haven't gotten to that part of the process yet. Certainly I would place more weight on this than other "studies" I've seen with much smaller sample sizes.

Could somebody go through the tables and charts at the back and provide information about

1. effect size
2. statistical significance

The authors sure don't make this easy for a reader, or at least not this reader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1. Very few people in this country understand the blacklisting public schools have gotten in the name of privatization, when the core problem has always been, and will always be, poverty. No matter how much we test kids, cut recess, or fire teachers, the rich kids will always do better than the poor ones. But it's easier to pretend poverty doesn't exist than work to make an equal society, especially in a society as individualistic as ours.

NP here but I agree that the issue is our country expects public schools to solve all the problems of poverty.

Actually I think the issue is that our country claims to expect public schools to solve all the problems of poverty. If our country actually expected this, our country would provide public schools with a lot more resources, and a wider range of resources. And our country certainly wouldn't allow public school funding to be primarily based on local property taxes from areas that are segregated by income.

Title One schools get more more but it's up to the schools themselves to decide how that money is spent. No amount of money in the world can change the mindset of poverty. I teach in one of these schools and the pressure to be everything for these kids is intense. The only reason I don't burn out is summer vacation. If there was no long break from it, I couldn't do it. I have my own kids and I cannot teach and be the savior of other people's children too. Nobody expects you to do that in UMC schools. You are just expected to teach. I can't be someone's mother, family, counselor, psychologist, college counselor, etc. That's why schools like mine have such high turnover. This kind of work is for young people who don't have other time commitments. I stay because I get paid significantly more and I need the money for tuition for my kids.