Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I haven't read the rest of the thread, but I feel like the following PSA should be posted to all redshirting threads on DCUM:

Anyone who says that studies show that redshirting is vastly helpful or harmful to students (either those redshirted or those not redshirted) is wildly exaggerating the available research and their opinions should be disregarded.

For all the ranting and froth the topic causes, there aren't very many good, rigorous, statistically valid studies about redshirting. Often when people say "studies say," you need to ask them for the exact cite, and they usually can't provide it, or when they do, it turns out they're outright wrong about the studies. Ask for cites, if people start babbling about "the studies," and read them yourself.

In general, publications in social science journals are analytically weaker than those in medical journals and don't go through the same level of peer review, so judge them accordingly.

The only large population studies (that I know of) that somewhat concern redshirting have to do with the studies on relative age effect and ADHD diagnosis. To summarize at a very high level, those studies link an increased probability of diagnosis of ADHD and/or prescription of ADHD medications with being younger in the class. The studies occur across populations that both do and do not redshirt. If you want to review the studies yourself, here's a meta-analysis of the studies; you can get to some of the individual studies through this meta-analysis. Not all studies found the same degree of impact, and not all studies were of the same level of rigor, but you can evaluate yourself. Also, to be clear these studies were not about redshirting; however, if you have a concern about ADHD you should consider talking to your pediatrician.

It pains me that this even has to be spelled out, but based on lots of observations of DCUM's redshirt discussions, it does need to be spelled out: private schools can redshirt as much as they want, because they can set their own admissions rules.

A follow-up point to the point above: if you do not like a private school's policy on redshirting, you do not need to apply to that school. To most people this is obvious but years of reading DCUM has taught me it is not obvious to everyone.

Public schools vary in their rules with respect to redshirting; it doesn't make sense to talk in general about "the rules" with respect to public schools because they vary by state and in some cases by districts.

Cutoff dates vary by state. Again, this does seem to be misunderstood on DCUM.

Go to the actual studies cited in popular media rather than the popular media articles themselves; the studies are usually easily available. You can decide for yourself if you want to make a decision based on about a questionable sample of students from a specialized Italian university or not.

Redshirting discussions on DCUM attract a lot of truly crazy people. Evaluate your feedback accordingly.

In the end, you know your child. It's not "not having faith in them" to redshirt. It's not "putting your ego ahead of their needs" to not redshirt. Anyone who says that nonsense (and there are a lot of them on DCUM) should just be ignored as they are likely not great parents themselves.

If you encounter someone who is wildly anti-redshirting but sends their child to private school, moves to an expensive school district, hires outside tutors, or who engages in outside academic enrichment, they're probably hypocrites and you should ignore them.

If you encounter someone who is wildly pro-redshirting but who doesn't support the right of kids to enter school early to the same degree as they might delay, they're probably hypocrites and you should ignore them.

Other than citations to studies, you're probably not going to get a lot of use out of these discussions given the crazies that they tend to attract. Evaluate them accordingly.

HTH.

I disagree with some of what you're stating as fact, when there really aren't facts to substantiate your claims. For example, what do you base your claims re: social science journals on? I've published in both social science and medical journals. Medical journals often have a higher impact factor if they are read and cited by a wider audience, but there are also some not very prestigious medical journals. However, I've often found more detailed peer review from social science journals--Ph.D.s educated in statistics and research methods are often sticklers and ask for extensive revisions before a paper is suitable for publications. I still work in research, and review the work of Ph.D.s and M.D.s every day. I don't find social science folks to be less rigorous at all.

I also disagree with your claims about posters who are "crazy" or "not good parents"--this sounds just as extreme as the posters it's meant to criticize.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think DCUMs anti-redshirt contingent largely consists of crazy hypocrites, having seen many of these threads. These are not rational people.

+1

Hateful nut jobs with nothing better to do than worry about what other families are doing.

What's hypocritical about sending your kid on time and wishing that other parents would do the same? I put my money where my mouth is--my kid's birthday is very close to the cutoff, and she went on time. So far as I can tell (based on classroom birthdays), so did her classmates. Which is good--it means that the teacher is dealing with kids within a one-year, not an 18-month, age range, and can have developmentally appropriate expectations for the class in terms of behavior and academic abilities. Seems pretty rational to me.

Yet I'll bet you either use private school or moved to a fancy school district. I bet you supplement outside of school. I bet you wouldn't dream of sending your child to a high school with a large number of disadvantaged kids. Ask yourself what has a greater societal impact on other kids. Or have you never thought of that in all your self-congratulatory smugness?

You anti-redshirt posters get yourselves tied in self-congratulatory knots over redshirting but can never point to a single well-run, peer-reviewed study over an large population cohort that shows all the (imaginary) harms you come up with, let alone multiple studies that duplicate the approach and results. Yet there is literally 60 years of well-documented research on the impact of school population segregation and access to educational resources that you happily ignore.

You froth on about redshirting, as far as I can tell only because it feeds your ego because God knows you can never produce any large body of rigorous research to support your ranting, but you would never take the concrete steps you could take to actually positively impact others, since you seem to care ever so much about how other people's educational decisions impact others.

Put your money where your mouth is, as you say. Or did you not actually mean it?

Hypocrite.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think DCUMs anti-redshirt contingent largely consists of crazy hypocrites, having seen many of these threads. These are not rational people.

+1

Hateful nut jobs with nothing better to do than worry about what other families are doing.

What's hypocritical about sending your kid on time and wishing that other parents would do the same? I put my money where my mouth is--my kid's birthday is very close to the cutoff, and she went on time. So far as I can tell (based on classroom birthdays), so did her classmates. Which is good--it means that the teacher is dealing with kids within a one-year, not an 18-month, age range, and can have developmentally appropriate expectations for the class in terms of behavior and academic abilities. Seems pretty rational to me.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I did with my Oct baby girl. No regrets.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

So change the laws.

For now, it's legal and a path that many parents choose to take. Have an issue? Talk to your state representatives and quit bitching about it.

You’re such a nasty piece of work! It’s just stunning. Please find a conscience and don’t be such a goddamned bitch to mothers who are more honest and braver than you. If that bothers you, change your message board habits.

LOL. Please go back and re-read these posts and tell me who is being a bitch to whom.

Just from the first couple of pages:
"It's unbelievable. And all those kids will one day know that their parents thought they were too dumb to compete fairly with the other kids their age so they had to cheat the system to give them an advantage. "

"Redshirting is for cowardly parents without faith in their kids"

"That’s a made up reasons to keep you in their preschool longer. "


Hypocritical twits who have NO CLUE about child development.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

No worries... there won’t be any 7 year olds, only 6 year olds

Right. Where are all of these 7 year old kindergarteners DCUM speaks of?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

So change the laws.

For now, it's legal and a path that many parents choose to take. Have an issue? Talk to your state representatives and quit bitching about it.

You’re such a nasty piece of work! It’s just stunning. Please find a conscience and don’t be such a goddamned bitch to mothers who are more honest and braver than you. If that bothers you, change your message board habits.

What??? PP is totally right! She is not doing anything wrong or illegal. If you don’t want your kid at home for one more year or don’t have money for preschool, don’t be bitter about it. She is not dishonest AT ALL!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

So change the laws.

For now, it's legal and a path that many parents choose to take. Have an issue? Talk to your state representatives and quit bitching about it.

You’re such a nasty piece of work! It’s just stunning. Please find a conscience and don’t be such a goddamned bitch to mothers who are more honest and braver than you. If that bothers you, change your message board habits.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

No worries... there won’t be any 7 year olds, only 6 year olds

There were 3 kids in my oldest’s class who turned 7 in kindergarten (in Apr and May)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

No worries... there won’t be any 7 year olds, only 6 year olds

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

No worries... there won’t be any 7 year olds, only 6 year olds

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.

So change the laws.

For now, it's legal and a path that many parents choose to take. Have an issue? Talk to your state representatives and quit bitching about it.

You’re such a nasty piece of work! It’s just stunning. Please find a conscience and don’t be such a goddamned bitch to mothers who are more honest and braver than you. If that bothers you, change your message board habits.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think DCUMs anti-redshirt contingent largely consists of crazy hypocrites, having seen many of these threads. These are not rational people.

+1

Hateful nut jobs with nothing better to do than worry about what other families are doing.

What's hypocritical about sending your kid on time and wishing that other parents would do the same? I put my money where my mouth is--my kid's birthday is very close to the cutoff, and she went on time. So far as I can tell (based on classroom birthdays), so did her classmates. Which is good--it means that the teacher is dealing with kids within a one-year, not an 18-month, age range, and can have developmentally appropriate expectations for the class in terms of behavior and academic abilities. Seems pretty rational to me.

Eh. Not always so obvious. I have a kid with an August 30 birthday in a district with a September 1 cutoff. She's very emotionally immature, has trouble sitting still, and tracks socially with kids a year younger. I sent her "on time" and she has spent the year as the classroom behavior problem. I suspect the K teacher would have preferred that we hold her back because it would have actually narrowed the maturity gap in the classroom.

Just because your kid is mature enough to succeed in K at newly 5, doesn't mean all kids are.

Anonymous wrote:I wish people HAD to send their kids on time unless the kids are special needs. I have two summer babies and I'd like to send them on time, but not if it means they're the only 5 year olds in a Kindergarten of 7 year olds.