Reply to Redshirting consequences at Lafayette

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I doubt this will matter to the already derailed thread, but there have been boys redshirted all over the city.

It's not a strictly Lafeyette, or strictly NW, or strictly Ward 3 thing.[/quote]

I live in NE. I asked to redshirt my August birthday kid (in part due to Covid -- [b]she missed PK3 due to Covid and seemed immature for K to me[/b]) and was told no and that it was not permitted under DCPS rules. We know lots of summer and September birthdays at our school (the young kids from the grade seem to gravitate towards each other) and none are redshirted.

I was very surprised when this story surfaced to learn that redshirting was fairly common at Lafayette or any school. It is unheard of at our DCPS and I can't imagine them allowing it absent SNs.[/quote]
You just described most of the kids your dd’s age. They couldn’t redshirt everyone who needed it after Covid, because that was the majority of kids.[/quote]

Perhaps an uptick in redshirting requests due to Covid disruptions is part of what led DCPS to start cracking down on it. Redshirting is a practice that only works if it's fairly limited. If Covid led to it becoming more common, I could see the district deciding they needed to limit parental discretion. What if 5-10% of parents decides, at their discretion, they need to redshirt? And redshirting also begets more redshirting because in districts where most summer birthdays are redshirted, you start to see May and June birthdays being redshirted too, and it kind of becomes a snake eating its own tail.

To be clear, I am NOT anti-redshirting. But I do think you have to limit it somewhere -- it can't just be a free for all. I'm open minded about how the limits should work. Requiring an eval for readiness seems reasonable for me. I also think flexible cutoffs where there is a window would work.

The problem with the Lafayette parents is that they don't seem to care about creating good policy -- they just want a carve out exemption for themselves. That's hard to endorse.[/quote]

Many privates have many redshirted children. It creates quieter classrooms. The youngest children with April and May birthdays are just fine.

Imagine a class where the kids are learning addition. All NT children reach a point where there is no relative benefit to being older when it comes to learning addition. Or perhaps at a younger age, kids are learning about sharing. All NT children reach a point where they’re not struggling with sharing because if immaturity. The fact that you’re past this point by a month or six doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t give the six month older kid an advantage.

What it does do is create learning-oriented classes. This is why I support redshirting. Even for my kids who would never be redshirted because of the way their birthdays fall, I appreciate redshirting. It does impact them: it creates fewer conflicts. It’s better to be around mature, well-behaved children for many reasons.

Behavioral problems do exist in private, but I’m glad the schools eliminate as many as could possibly exist.[/quote]

Teachers set their lesson plans to the middle of what their particular class can handle. So if a class with a large proportion of redshirters can, to use your example, easily handle single digit addition, they might introduce double digit addition to stretch the class. The youngest on time kids might struggle with this and internalise that they are slow or dumb, not realising that the “ smart” kids are over a year older than them and had been exposed to that material more than them. That’s significant.[/quote]

No, teachers teach to national standards. A May birthday will not be as disruptive or impacted like the youngest in late September almost October. This is why privates do it without impacting the younger spring birthdays.[/quote]

If most kids in class are meeting national standards early in the year, a good teacher will push them a bit further. In private schools where they encourage/force redshirting for kindergarteners who aren't yet reading (fairly common at elite privates), they will adjust teaching forward, beyond national standards, in order to advance the kids. Publics will also do this, and it's not uncommon for schools to divide kids by test scores when they do class assignments, specifically so they can move faster in the classroom with higher scoring kids.

You also get pressure from parents to move more quickly. It's so common for parents to complaint that their child is bored or needs to be challenged more, and you especially see this among UMC and wealthy parents (in publics, they are aware that many privates are accelerating students and often feel the need for kids to keep up, especially in neighborhoods where it's common for families to switch to private in MS or HS, as is the case in upper NW). When you combine this practice with redshirting, you wind up with schools that are teaching past national standards in many if not most classrooms.

But my concern is less with academics than behavior. In a public school, you will always have a range of academic speeds and abilities, even at schools in wealthy neighborhoods or where redshirting is common. In elementary, with parental support and school resources, academic gaps can be overcome. Even with LDs or delays -- I've seen it many times. But behavioral deficits are much harder to "catch up." Kids who are less mature can fall into negative dynamics within their cohort. Being known as the kid who cries easily, who gets frustrated quickly, can be hard to reverse. Not impossible, but it's less straightforward.

I think one of the toughest situations to be in is to be academically advanced but behaviorally behind. There's no solution. I think this is the group that tends to be most impacted by redshirting, and not because the redshirted kids are so much more academically advanced. It's because an academically advanced kid will rarely be redshirted (schools won't want to -- they don't want to accommodate a kid reading at a 2nd grade level in K) but their immaturity will be more visible in classrooms with redshirted kids. It's an example of how the situation cannot always be gamed.[/quote]

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