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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]19:00 again.  My curiosity got the best of me so I searched my email, and here is the response from March 2010.  (Clearly I am in a time warp!)

"We don’t maintain that information, and the age/grade table uses January 1 as a calculation date which masks the students who are 6 for Kindergarten as of 9/30 because that is 6 as of 1/1 which would include students who turned 6 in October through December.
 
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/supts_annual_report/2008_09/table07.pdf
 
Look over this VDOE chart for all of Virginia"[/quote]
Here is a more recent version of the chart, with 1/30/13 data. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/supts_annual_report/2011_12/table07.pdf  A couple items jump out at me:
1. Over 30k students not promoted in a single year.  That seems a lot.  I guess it's only 2-3%, but still seems like a lot.
2. More than 1000 students over the age of 20 in 12th grade.  That seems a lot.  But I guess it's only about 1% (so a senior class of 500 might have 6 students who turn 20 midway through senior year).
3. If my math is right, there's no epidemic of redshirting here.  January 1 is about 1/3 of the way into the calendar year each grade covers (Sept-Dec = 4 months out of 12), so you'd expect about 1/3 of the grade to be the higher age, and 2/3 to be the lower age.  As an example, if all K students start on-time, you'd expect about 2/3 to be 5yo on Jan 1, and about 1/3 to be 6.  So with that in mind, here are a few stats on randomly picked grades ...

For K: 
Total students: 98,461
Expected vs. actual # who are 5yo on Jan 1: 65,640 vs. 69,275 (5.5% more than expected)
Expected vs. actual # who are 6yo on Jan 1: 32,820 vs. 28,591 (13% fewer than expected)
# significantly older than expected (7-11yo): 569 (0.6%)

For 3rd: 
Total students: 95,994
Expected vs. actual # who are 7yo on Jan 1: 63,996 vs. 61,775 (3.5% fewer than expected)
Expected vs. actual # who are 8yo on Jan 1: 31,998 vs. 32,466 (1.4% more than expected)
# significantly older than expected (9-12yo): 1372 (1.4%)

For 9th: 
Total students: 102,872
Expected vs. actual # who are 14yo on Jan 1: 68,582 vs. 56,375 (17.8% fewer than expected)
Expected vs. actual # who are 15yo on Jan 1: 34,291 vs. 36,743 (7% more than expected)
# significantly older than expected (16-20+yo): 9,427 (9%)

I'm not sure what to make of this.  At first glance though, it does not look like there is any big push to redshirt children at young ages.  Indeed, it looks like many parents are starting their children as early as possible, which makes sense because school is effectively a form of childcare.  The number of older children appears to grow with each grade though, so that eventually a significant percentage is older than the norm.  My best guess from looking at these numbers though is that most of that "aging" is the result of children failing to be promoted.  (Of course, if so, then that should match up with the "retained" numbers at the bottom.)

I don't have a clear view.  Maybe someone can help take another step with analysis.[/quote]

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