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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A 32 page thread for this issue? Again?

Why do people care about this issue so much? For background:  I have 3 kids (none of whom are redshirted) but are all in the oldest half of their grade due to their birthdates. If I had a summer birthday kid, I definitely would’ve considered redshirting. Among people we know, it seems to be about 50/50 (redshirted vs non) for summer birthdays. I don’t know any kids with NON summer birthdays who are redshirted with the exception of one kid with a medical issue.

Why do people on DCUM care so much about this? Can someone explain to me how, exactly, this issue matters to you and/or your kid? I genuinely don’t understand it. The only argument I’ve heard is that it “having older kids in K increases expectations for everyone in K”….but unfortunately I think kindergarten is not ever going to back to “how it used to be” (and should be). As an individual parent, there is nothing one can do to change the K standards. To do so would require a huge campaign for change, and 95%+ parents simply do not care about this issue to bother (same as any other issue concerning public schools, it seems).

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Because people feel their non-redshirted kid is[b] getting overshadowed or would somehow rank high in their class[/b], have that AAP spot, or be first string on varsity if it weren’t for all those redshirted kids.  This isn’t true…but it’s how these specific parents here feel.  Then there is a subset of the anti redshirt parents that have adult kids, that haven’t been in the elementary scene in decades (unless you count their grands) that feel “well back when my kids were in K…”  and like to insert their irrelevant, dated opinion. [/quote]

These old kids typically fall into two camps: high achievers who actually do experience the advantage of having a more mature brain, and low achievers who get thrown off balance by being placed with kids who are too young for them. The second camp is often kids who were redshirted for having issues that weren't properly addressed.

When your kid falls into the first camp, great! You become a rabid pro-redshirter. Unfortunately there are lot of kids in the second camp too, causing disruption for everyone in class, even for the other high achieving redshirted kids. People only see the benefits of redshirting when their own kid personally benefitted from it. But that doesn't mean there don't exist kids whose issues were exacerbated by redshirting. That is why people are saying not to use redshirting as a cure all. Use your head.[/quote]

Redshirting is so common in your area that you have a sample size of 6-10 redshirted kids redshirted kids per classroom to make generalized observations like this? [/quote]

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