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][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]

Uh, I'm PP and I'm not "demanding" anything of the sort. The vast majority of parents don't want to redshirt, and of those that do, most of the time the kids are summer birthdays. My suggestion (actually OP's suggestion, I just happen to agree with it) is that outside maybe a 3 month window, redshirting should require some kind process. So this means that for the small handful of students each year whose parents want to redshirt them even though they will be a minimum of 5 years and 3 months on September 1st, the parents have the option of (1) providing documentation from their own pediatrician/behavioral psychologist/etc. showing a delay that merits a delayed start, or (2) asking a district counselor to assess the child. This would really not be enormously burdensome because we are talking about a small percentage of the overall school population, and most parents in this category who want to redshirt likely would already have the documentation necessary. But the advantage of this approach is that it would discourage anyone hoping to game the system by redshirting a winter or spring birthday without any documentation.

Most parents send their kids on time and most prefer to do so.[/quote]

…no one is “gaming the system” by sending a winter or spring birthday. This narrative of victimization just ignores the facts which are…the rules say you have to send by 6. That’s it. Those are the rules. I’m sorry you don’t like them, but the idea that people following the rules that exist for everyone are somehow hurting you is something you should work through in therapy not public policy. [/quote]

The rules say send by 6, not start kindergarten at 6. A child isn’t required to attend kindergarten. A child can skip it and enter first grade at 6. If a child is entering school for the first time at 6.5, they probably should be evaluated to see if they’re better suited for kindergarten or 1st. [/quote]

Again with the magical thinking about how someone should just do some “evaluation” because of your own issues that would be better addressed in therapy. [/quote]

If a child is not ready to start school on time, it should be mandatory that they are evaluated and given services that year to catch them up. [/quote]

Okay then, answer the practical questions: who will be trained to do this? On what criteria? Who is doing the evaluation as part of their job performance, and how are they compensated? How many evaluations of this sort should be performed? What critical services will you defund to pay for this? What budget will you allocate? What pedagogical and evidentiary basis do you have to justify the program, the costs, and to show it will be more important than the programs you defund to pay for these evaluations?[/quote]

If a child isn't ready to start school, then it's perfectly reasonable to have them evaluated for a suspected disability or delay.  We already have that system in place via Child Find.   Literally any parent can call and have their child evaluated.  It's not unreasonable for a school to say that if you think your child has a delay such that they can't start school on time, they should be evaluated via Child Find [/quote]

This. No one is talking about creating some brand new apparatus for making these determinations. It already exists. The issue is that some parents want to be able to override it with their own determination, which of course may be self-serving and biased.

Saying that outside a fairly broad window, parents need to have an outside evaluation to justify starting their child late is not some insane expectation. Especially when the goal is to ensure that grade cohorts make sense in terms of maturity so you don't have super broad ranges of maturity in the same cohort, something that can be bad for all kids in the cohort, not just the oldest or youngest.[/quote]

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