Why is redshirting so rare if it's so advantageous?

[Anonymous]

Most people can't afford to do it. Which is why there is so much angst about it.

[Anonymous]

As a teacher it frustrates me. Nearly without exception, the kids who are most challenged by kindergarten are the youngest boys. At my school, nearly all the white parents hold summer birthday boys back. None of the black or Hispanic parents do. So there is this crazy inequality built into the system from day 1. There has to be a better way to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people say that it gives the child one less year to work and earn money - it leaves them at a disadvantage.

But someone who does better in school will go to a more prestigious university and get a higher-paying job. In the long-run, someone who starts a prestigious career at 22 is going to be much better off financially than someone who starts a mediocre career at 21.

Except that there is not much evidence that being older gets you that better job. In fact there's a reasonable body of evidence that having to hustle to keep up with the older kids as a younger kid in the class, they ended up surpassing them. But as others have already said, only 1%ers can afford the extra cost of a year of daycare/being out of the workforce to mind a child. I know a woman who was induced to have her early September due date baby in August so they wouldn't have that extra year of daycare.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/youngest-kid-smartest-kid

It would be quite the poor decision to pay for an extra year of daycare AND be wrong about redshirting being advantegeous.

When a group of economists followed Norwegian children born between 1962 and 1988, until the youngest turned eighteen, in 2006, they found that, at age eighteen, children who started school a year later had I.Q. scores that were significantly lower than their younger counterparts. Their earnings also suffered: through age thirty, men who started school later earned less. A separate study, of the entire Swedish population born between 1935 and 1984, came to a similar conclusion: in the course of the life of a typical Swede, starting school later translated to reduced over-all earnings. In a 2008 study at Harvard University, researchers found that, within the U.S., increased rates of redshirting were leading to equally worrisome patterns. The delayed age of entry, the authors argued, resulted in academic stagnation: it decreased completion rates for both high-school and college students, increased the gender gap in graduation rates (men fell behind women), and intensified socioeconomic differences.

As it turns out, the benefits of being older and more mature may not be as important as the benefits of being younger than your classmates. In 2007, the economists Elizabeth Cascio and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach decided to analyze the data of Tennessee’s Project STAR—an experiment originally designed to test the effects of classroom size on learning—with a different set of considerations: How would the relative class composition affect student performance? Their approach differed from most studies of redshirting in one crucial way: the students had been assigned totally randomly to their kindergarten classrooms, with no option for parents to lobby for, say, a different teacher, a different school, or a class in which the child would have some other perceived or actual relative advantage. This led to true experimental variation in relative age and maturity. That is, the same student could be relatively younger in one class, but relatively older in another, depending on his initial class assignment. The researchers discovered that relatively more mature students didn’t have an academic edge; instead, when they looked at their progress at the end of kindergarten, and, later, when they reached middle school, they were worse off in multiple respects. Not only did they score significantly lower on achievement tests—both in kindergarten and middle school—they were also more likely to have been kept back a year by the time they reached middle school, and were less likely to take college-entrance exams. The less mature students, on the other hand, experienced positive effects from being in a relatively more mature environment: in striving to catch up with their peers, they ended up surpassing them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who don’t know, redshirting is the practice of delaying a fall-born child’s Kindergarten entrance until they’re almost 6 instead of almost 5. This is something I’m thinking about doing with my son, who will be 4 in November and will be eligible for Kindergarten in the fall of 2022. There are many studies that show that kids who are redshirted do better in school as well as later in life, and honestly, you don’t have to be a scientist to see why this makes sense. Kids who start older are going to be more mature and ready to handle the challenges of school. This means they’ll get better grades, get into better colleges, and get better jobs.

You’d think that based on this information, any parent with a fall-born child who could afford an extra year of daycare would redshirt without hesitation. But this is not the case. When I think of all people I know who have fall birthdays and are from affluent families, the vast majority started Kindergarten at 4. As tempted as I am to redshirt my son, I can’t help but feel that there must be a reason why so few parents do it.

If you have a fall-born child who you could afford to redshirt but didn’t, why not? And if you could do it over again, would you redshirt?

Most studies show it's harmful, not advantageous in the long run and it is actually pretty common.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who don’t know, redshirting is the practice of delaying a fall-born child’s Kindergarten entrance until they’re almost 6 instead of almost 5. This is something I’m thinking about doing with my son, who will be 4 in November and will be eligible for Kindergarten in the fall of 2022. There are many studies that show that kids who are redshirted do better in school as well as later in life, and honestly, you don’t have to be a scientist to see why this makes sense. Kids who start older are going to be more mature and ready to handle the challenges of school. This means they’ll get better grades, get into better colleges, and get better jobs.

You’d think that based on this information, any parent with a fall-born child who could afford an extra year of daycare would redshirt without hesitation. But this is not the case. When I think of all people I know who have fall birthdays and are from affluent families, the vast majority started Kindergarten at 4. As tempted as I am to redshirt my son, I can’t help but feel that there must be a reason why so few parents do it.

If you have a fall-born child who you could afford to redshirt but didn’t, why not? And if you could do it over again, would you redshirt?

Most studies show it's harmful, not advantageous in the long run and it is actually pretty common.

So why do people care? I don't believe they are that worried about the futures of affluent kids. Something doesn't add up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher it frustrates me. Nearly without exception, the kids who are most challenged by kindergarten are the youngest boys. At my school, nearly all the white parents hold summer birthday boys back. None of the black or Hispanic parents do. So there is this crazy inequality built into the system from day 1. There has to be a better way to do this.

But it doesn't help the white kids, or does it? If it doesn't help them then what is inequitable?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people say that it gives the child one less year to work and earn money - it leaves them at a disadvantage.

But someone who does better in school will go to a more prestigious university and get a higher-paying job. In the long-run, someone who starts a prestigious career at 22 is going to be much better off financially than someone who starts a mediocre career at 21.

Except that there is not much evidence that being older gets you that better job. In fact there's a reasonable body of evidence that having to hustle to keep up with the older kids as a younger kid in the class, they ended up surpassing them. But as others have already said, only 1%ers can afford the extra cost of a year of daycare/being out of the workforce to mind a child. I know a woman who was induced to have her early September due date baby in August so they wouldn't have that extra year of daycare.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/youngest-kid-smartest-kid

Thought that was common knowledge. DC also had an August birthday. They were kind of quiet and very well behaved and were always at the top of the clas for math and reading from the start despite their age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most people can't afford to do it.

I know that, but even among those who can afford it, the vast majority don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most people can't afford to do it. Which is why there is so much angst about it.

We could afford it and choose not to. We have a fall kid who we pushed forward. Child is thriving/older and I cannot imagine them a year behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most people can't afford to do it.

I know that, but even among those who can afford it, the vast majority don't.

Because there's no proof that it's actually advantageous, so most people let nature dictate when their kid starts school. It's only the helicopter parents who fear their mediocre child will be tagged as mediocre, who redshirt. But that same child will not magically become less mediocre as the years pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Detrimental in some ways?
- a lot of prestigious opportunities and internships in HS have a strict age-limit and he is always younger by a couple months.

Not really impactful for a kid who is a focussed student and not a wild party animal. YMMV. -
- his driver's license came a few months later than most of his peers
- he will probably be a few months younger than his peers before he can have his first legal beer.

Well, if he drops out of college due to anxiety like I did, comes back later, and finishes later, he won't have to experience that "detriment", now will he? Is that you he would rather have happen to him? I know that I would've much rather been the last of my classmates to turn 21 if it meant I could've had a straight clean path, as opposed to the crooked messy path I had; a path that being the first of my classmates to turn 21 wasn't worth.

Is that what you took from all of this? As I said it is not impactful to my kid to be younger but YMMV. He does not care if he cannot drive or have a beer. He is fine. Thank you for your faux concern or whatever you were spewing. Yes, life sucked for you. Sorry. You are not my kid and I cannot take the burden of what went wrong with your life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most people can't afford to do it.

I know that, but even among those who can afford it, the vast majority don't.

Because there's no proof that it's actually advantageous, so most people let nature dictate when their kid starts school. It's only the helicopter parents who fear their mediocre child will be tagged as mediocre, who redshirt. But that same child will not magically become less mediocre as the years pass.

+ 1
If your kid can handle kindergarten at 5 and my kid can handle kindergarten at 6, your kid is clearly more advanced than my child by at least a year.

[Anonymous]

It’s hilarious how the anti-redshirters will simultaneously screech about how some kids are getting an unfair advantage AND assert that redshirting makes kids dumb, poor, and violent.

They should thank redshirters for making their kids relatively younger, which is an advantage, right? Enjoy! Your precious Larla will be super advanced because of all of those dumb older kids!

Or you could just worry about your own kids’ education, and let other people worry about theirs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most people can't afford to do it.

I know that, but even among those who can afford it, the vast majority don't.

Because there's no proof that it's actually advantageous, so most people let nature dictate when their kid starts school. It's only the helicopter parents who fear their mediocre child will be tagged as mediocre, who redshirt. But that same child will not magically become less mediocre as the years pass.

+ 1
If your kid can handle kindergarten at 5 and my kid can handle kindergarten at 6, your kid is clearly more advanced than my child by at least a year.

Real question is why can't you kid handle K at 5? Maybe you should get yours evaluated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Detrimental in some ways?
- a lot of prestigious opportunities and internships in HS have a strict age-limit and he is always younger by a couple months.

Not really impactful for a kid who is a focussed student and not a wild party animal. YMMV. -
- his driver's license came a few months later than most of his peers
- he will probably be a few months younger than his peers before he can have his first legal beer.

Well, if he drops out of college due to anxiety like I did, comes back later, and finishes later, he won't have to experience that "detriment", now will he? Is that you he would rather have happen to him? I know that I would've much rather been the last of my classmates to turn 21 if it meant I could've had a straight clean path, as opposed to the crooked messy path I had; a path that being the first of my classmates to turn 21 wasn't worth.

Is that what you took from all of this? As I said it is not impactful to my kid to be younger but YMMV. He does not care if he cannot drive or have a beer. He is fine. Thank you for your faux concern or whatever you were spewing. Yes, life sucked for you. Sorry. You are not my kid and I cannot take the burden of what went wrong with your life.

Most kids aren't waiting till 21 to have a beer, lets be real. Saying you should hold your kid back so they can drive first makes absolutely no sense.

If that poster dropped out of college due to anxiety, it has nothing to do with age, it has to do with a mental health issue that regardless of age needed to be treated. If anything where were the parents noticing their child had anxiety and helping them get it treated. Being older doesn't stop these issues.