Reply to Why don’t schools make you just through some hoops for redshirting?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People really forget what it looks like to send a kid to kindergarten who isn't ready.  You end up with child who continually disrupts the entire classroom and who ends up 100% miserable because they can't seem to meet expectations and view themselves as bad.

It really isn't good for the other students or teacher.  Redshirting for maturity isn't the same as for a sports advantage. [/quote]

I have zero problem with redshirting for maturity. But I agree with OP that outside of a certain age window (say within 3 months of the cutoff, which would cover all summer birthday for a Sep 1 cutoff), a redshirting decision should require some kind of assessment or evidence of delays. Because some people will say they are redshirting for maturity, but they aren't. If you are redshirting a January birthday, and there is no clear evidence that it's necessary, I just assume it's because you are trying to work an advantage.

Bracing to be called a "crazed anti-redshirter" even though I literally just expressed support for redshirting in 3, 2, 1...[/quote]

NP. Your position is pretty much the most reasonable one on this thread![/quote]

Why do you think this is a reasonable position? PP is demanding that cash-strapped school districts across the entire country implement an entire assessment protocol, presumably to be administered by costly specialist evaluators, to solve something that very few people and districts seem to think is a problem. There is no widespread evidence of harm from redshirting and there are very few kids redshirted who are outside PPs three-month window. If there was actually a problem here, school districts could implement a strict cutoff rule, like NYC has, no expensive assessments needed. However, very few districts nationally have followed NYC’s approach.

I genuinely do not understand what is “reasonable” about demanding an entire regulatory apparatus be installed in school districts across the country. What PP wants is probably millions of dollars per district, by the time it’s up and running. That’s millions of dollars that could be spent on education, just so PPs kid doesn’t encounter a kid that is older than PPs kid. Could you explain why you think that’s reasonable? It seems wildly and somewhat insanely unreasonable to me.

[/quote]
I lived in a place that used to do this.  Every kid came in for an evaluation the summer before they were supposed to be starting 1st (no public kindergarten). Some kids were asked to delay 1st by a year and attend a public "readiness" program, essentially redshirting them.  It seemed to work pretty well, but did mean that there were a good number of older "readiness" kids in each grade (probably 10-15%).[/quote]

I don’t think eliminating public kindergarten in favor of “readiness programs” and evaluations of readiness is at all a good idea. [/quote]

I don't think PP was suggesting eliminating public kindergarten. She's just saying that back when districts didn't have public kindergarten, it was more typical for there to be a readiness assessment. Now kindergarten is pretty standard in public schools, but we still have issues with readiness determinations, as evidenced by this conversation. I think there is an argument that there should still be some kind of determination of readiness, though questions about who should make it and when.

This isn't an anti-redshirt position, by the way. Readiness assessments are actually pretty explicitly pro-redshirt because they acknowledge upfront that not all 5 year olds are ready for kindergarten. Districts that have strict no redshirt policies (like DCPS, for instance) would not be open to readiness assessments because they would be seen as explicitly inequitable -- the kids most likely to be deemed not ready would likely come from the families for whom waiting to enroll would be most burdensome. DCPS gets around this now with a public preschool program which both helps prepare kids for elementary (including kids who otherwise would not have access to that kind of predatory experience) while also locking kids into a age progression that is pretty strict and makes redshirting almost impossible.[/quote]

What do you propose defunding to put this readiness assessment in place? What educational program will you cut back to pay for readiness assessments? Who will run the assessments, how will the criteria be determined, what independent evaluations will you support, who needs to be trained on how to assess? [/quote]

I don’t see how this would be a value-add for schools at all. Redshirting doesn’t create problems for schools (and in fact seems to be softly encouraged). It may be annoying to parents at times (as many things can be) but it doesn’t mean the school is going to spend $$$$ to fix it. [/quote]

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