Reply to Do you consider redshirting cheating?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why is education a competition?  I would be less concerned that a redshirted child might edge out my child in acceptance at college, 13 years later, than an immature child might disrupt my child's education now.

Any cutoff date is by definition arbitrary.  Regardless of the date that might be set, there will always be kids who qualify for Kindergarten  who need an extra year and kids who aren't old enough to start, but are ready for it.

My child had severe speech problems requiring therapy.  We redshirted DC.  Do you consider this cheating?  Does it make a difference that the school was in the process of moving the cutoff because they felt it should be set earlier in the year?  In other words, the year DC should have entered kindergarten she was redshirted, but if DC was entering K now, the cutoff would dictate waiting another year because the school system decided kids in general should be older before starting K.

I think rather than worrying about "cheating",[b] you should do what's best for your child[/b], which as other posters have discussed, is not necessarily redshirting.  If you feel your child isn't ready for Kindergarten, then by all means hold him back.  On the other hand, if he is ready, then go ahead and start him.  Holding a child who is otherwise ready is not doing them any favors.  Only people who know your child can advise you.  There are many factors to consider, but age should be the least of these.[/quote]

Yes, the entitlement. Studies are showing pretty clearly that redshirting ends up being a disadvantage, so who is to determine whats actually "best"?[/quote]

This has not actually been shown, but let's see the cite to the study you are misrepresenting.[/quote]

NP here.  Here's an analysis from edweekly that talks about the difficulties of studying the impacts of redshirting and recommends that parents only redshirt their children if: there is extreme developmental delay, outside of the normal range, to such an extent that another year’s development will potentially put the child in range of his classmates. Another is when a child is experiencing trauma, such as having a terminally ill parent or sibling.

http://educationnext.org/is-your-child-ready-kindergarten-redshirting-may-do-more-harm-than-good/

[quote]

In his analysis, Gladwell overstates the benefits of redshirting to some degree. In fact, a balanced look at the research suggests that while children derive a short-term gain from being redshirted, that advantage dissipates quickly over time.

It is difficult to study the impacts of redshirting because students who are redshirted differ across a host of dimensions from those who start on time. As noted, children of more-educated parents are more likely to be redshirted; separating out the effects of the delayed school entry from those of other characteristics, such as family background, presents a challenge.

No one has conducted a true randomized trial related to redshirting. Instead, researchers have sought out opportunities to isolate the effects on student outcomes of the two variables that by definition change when a student is redshirted: age itself and the student’s age relative to those of classroom peers. Once these effects are known, one can simulate the impact of being redshirted by statistically aging a kindergarten entrant by one year, and predicting the impacts of absolute age and of relative age on his outcomes.

The research literature includes many serious attempts to estimate the impact of being one of the oldest students in a class or grade, using variation in students’ age or relative age that is driven by external factors. For example, a study by Todd Elder and Darren Lubotsky leverages cross-state differences in birthday cutoff dates for kindergarten entry. In some states, a child must turn five by December 1 to be eligible for kindergarten in a given year; in others, the cutoff date is September 1. In states with earlier cutoff dates, eligible children who enter on time (and not a year late or early) are, on average, older than their counterparts in states with later cutoffs. These differences in state policy allow researchers to estimate the impact of the child’s age at kindergarten entry.

Another study, co-authored by Elizabeth Cascio and Diane Schanzenbach, uses data from the well-known Project STAR experiment in which students were randomly assigned to classrooms prior to kindergarten entry. Project STAR was initially designed to study the effects of reductions in class size. The random assignment of students to classrooms, however, meant that pairs of children with the same birthday fell into different positions in their classroom age distribution by the luck of the draw.

Both studies find that the benefit of being older at the start of kindergarten declines sharply as children move through the school grades. In the early grades, an older child will tend to perform better on standardized tests than his younger peers simply by virtue of being older. This makes perfect sense—a redshirted kindergartner has been alive up to 20 percent longer than his on-time counterpart, which means his brain has had more time to develop and he has had that many more bedtime stories, puzzles, and family outings from which to build his general knowledge. This initial advantage in academic achievement dissipates sharply over time, however, and appears to vanish by high school when, as a 9th grader, the redshirted student is at most 7 percent older than his peers.

One benefit that redshirting might indeed confer has to do with grade retention and special education placement. Statistically, older children are less likely to be retained in a grade or to be diagnosed with learning disabilities such as ADHD. This may be because schools make judgments about retention and referrals based on a student’s relative achievement within a grade, and by virtue of their age, older students are less likely to have very low achievement. Most parents who are considering redshirting, however, have children who are not likely to perform at levels that would put them at risk for grade retention; thus, we would argue that the slightly decreased probability of retention afforded by redshirting should in most cases be given relatively little weight.

Both of us have stories of children who were redshirted and would likely have had a better school experience if they had enrolled on time. Larson tells the story of Joshua, a preschooler with a spring birthday who was on the low end of the normal developmental range in terms of work habits: he had trouble sitting still during circle time, for instance, and finishing multi-step projects. His parents decided to hold him back and give him an extra year of preschool. By fall, though, he had matured tremendously and clearly would have been flourishing in the kindergarten classroom. The following year, when he entered kindergarten at age six, Joshua was well ahead of his classmates and was often bored in class. Over subsequent years, he became demotivated and even developed behavioral problems. He was physically and emotionally more mature than his younger classmates and had trouble making friends.

[/quote][/quote][/quote]

You realize this is an opinion piece by authors who are not proponents of redshirting, not a research study, and does not actually find that kids are disadvantaged by redshirting.  [/quote]

You realize that the authors quoted a number of studies in this opinion piece that find minimal benefits for red shirting.  But if you want your kid to be 2 heads taller than the other kids in the class, go ahead![/quote]

Oh sweetie, you have issues if this is what makes you angry and hostile.  Do what you want for your own kid and don’t worry about other people’s kids.

I will add that if redshirting was actually detrimentally, it would not be widely encouraged by the best private schools.  If the effect on college matriculation was negative, this would not be the case.[/quote]

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