Reply to Why don’t schools have stronger policies about redshirting?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m not sure where the multiple posters who are claiming that redshirting (within reason) has negative effects on the redshirted child are coming from. I went to a private school with a strict June 1 cutoff for K. I have a July birthday and was required to do a year of transitional K at the school before heading on to K as a new 6 YO. Academically, I was more than ready to start K at 5, and I STILL think that waiting the extra year had long-term benefits.

I was always very advanced in reading and writing (started reading at age 3), but I struggled more with math. It just didn’t come as naturally for me, and I had to work a lot harder to do well in math every single year from elementary school all the way through high school. I’m convinced that if I had been a year younger at each grade level, I probably would have been a B math student. Instead, with the benefit of an extra year, I was able to be an A- math student. (And I worked so much harder for those grades than I worked for any of my As in other subjects.) I ended up going to an Ivy League school for college. Would I have gotten in if I had a string of Bs in math on my HS transcript? Probably not.

Do I think that spring birthdays should be redshirted absent a compelling reason? No - otherwise the age differential in a class gets too wide. However, I think that the posters claiming that redshirting harms children or that being on the older end of the class isn’t actually an advantage are just telling themselves what they want to believe. In most cases, being a bit older absolutely is an advantage. I will likely redshirt my late August birthday daughter. [/quote]

Those aren't really benefits.  You had some learning needs and needed more support.  A tutor and working with you at home would have kept you up with A's.  You would have done just fine going on time and this sounds liek a justification.

In HS there is a huge age range.  In math, gym and electives you have freshmen through seniors in the classes at the large schools so you have 13-19 year olds in classes.

It sounds like you are holding back your child for your needs, not hers.

Its really not an advantage to kids who get support at school and outside of school.  To me what you are saying is you want to make it easier on everyone so you don't have to provide the extra supports and that's really unfortunate for your child.  Delaying school doesn't make you smarter.[/quote]

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