Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just enroll your kid in kindergarten already. Yes, your kid will be among the youngest and the early years of grade school will have more twists and turns, but in the long run it's better. That way, your student graduates from high school at 17 instead of 19 or 20.

Our summer birthday started college at almost 18 and will graduate with a bachelor's at 21. A lot of her redshirted peers in the same grade are already 23. They'll graduate with a bachelor's at 24/25/26. Half their 20s are already over, and now what? Grad school? They'll be almost 30 by the time they hit the workforce...

Look ahead 20 years, OP. Redshirting actually holds your kid back later.

This is….objectively not better. Also (and, again.) if they’re graduating in May at 20 - or, in the vast majority of cases, at 19…it’s not redshirting, something else is going on

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

+1 this is something else going on, if they’re 7 at this point in the year, in kindergarten

Makes even less sense that the school would put all of these kids in a single class instead of spacing them out!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

+1 this is something else going on, if they’re 7 at this point in the year, in kindergarten

Anonymous wrote:Schools can’t have it both ways either - in one breath they say that there’s no need for a kid to start early or skip a grade because they can differentiate just fine, and in the next they say you can start as late as you want if you aren’t “ready”
Either they can differentiate for kids within a 12 month birth range, or they should base class placement on something other than age.

What Id love to see is a small window (2 weeks on either side? Maybe a month?) when parents have discretion either way.
After that, you don’t have to send your kid, but when your April birthday kid shows up, they’ll be placed into the age appropriate grade. So redshirting basically means skipping K.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

I’m talking about our current class. 3 kids are 7 already and it’s February. This is a Sep 1 cutoff public school.

If these kids are 7 by February 2024 that means they were 5 by February 2022. You’re telling me THREE kids were redshirted so they would start K at age 6.5 going on 7? That seems crazy to me for even 1 kid let alone 3. What is going on in this class?

The oldest kid in my K kid’s class has a June 2017 birthday and will turn 7 the last week of school. He also has SNs so it was deliberate to hold him (I know the mom and it makes sense the family didn’t start him on time). I always thought June redshirting was the absolute limit. Normally it’s July/Aug kids who need just a little longer to mature. And usually boys.

I have an August bday (graduated HS at 17) and as a girl was fine being younger.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

I’m talking about our current class. 3 kids are 7 already and it’s February. This is a Sep 1 cutoff public school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could someone please point me to the anti-redshirting coalition that apparently is a united front against all redshirting, that several PPs have referenced?

I thought there were just a variety of attitudes/perspectives about when people should send kids "on time" versus waiting. I was not aware there was apparently an organized group with talking points.

Drama queen. Good Lord. How do you get through your day?

I'm just confused. I keep seeing all these posts about "the anti-redshirters" but I can't find them. I see some different posts arguing about different approaches to redshirting, including some people who would like there to be some narrower parameters around it, but these posters don't seem to have a uniform argument or be part of some movement, so I don't get it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Red shirting is bullshit. It’s basically outright cheating unless you are a month or two away from the cutoff.

Even in soccer leagues we have strict age cut offs to prevent older kids from being in same team as the younger ones. But somehow school sports think it’s just hunky dory to have almost two years differential in age on a boys team in middle school where there is a huge difference in size and aggression with age.

Cheating is breaking the rules. What rules is redshirting breaking? The schools know exactly how old the kids are.

The problem is that age cutoffs are presented as a rule but then are treated as a suggestion. OP is saying that it would be better to create more clarity around that so that families could make informed decisions.

I think the main reason redshirting gets a bad name is because in certain districts, people get blindsided by it. This happens because the rule is not clearly explained, and people are surprised to discover how much of an age gap there can be in the same grade. If you make the rule more clear and communicate it to everyone, there won't be surprises and people can make informed decisions.

My sister when through this with her kids. She had no clue redshirting was even a thing with her oldest, who has a summer birthday and wound up in a grade with a lot of much older kids and it was not a great fit. She just followed the age cut off thinking that was the rule and not realizing others didn't view it that way. And once your kid is in a grade like that, it's hard to go back and change it because there is a lot more stigma around "holding back" than redshirting, plus often kids are on target academically and the repercussions are just social, so then you are stuck with no good options.

She wised up with her second, who she redshirted with a July birthday and he's much happier. But that's only because she had the trial and error of the first, who got screwed. A clearly defined rule would have made for a better school experience for my nephew (and potentially also his classmates).

Clarity is good.

I am not sure new rules should be made because your sister can’t be bothered to talk to or learn about her own school district, while other parents clearly did.

No, this is a common thing -- parents won't redshirt with a first child but then will with a subsequent child because they "wise up." Often redshirting is not something a first time parent can understand because it's a sort of hidden nuance of the system.

Redshirting is essentially a loophole that is mostly intended for kids "on the bubble" -- kids close to the cut off where they really aren't ready. Most parents intuitively understand that if their kid is close to the cutoff and was particularly immature for the age or had developmental issues, they'd probably hold them back from K, maybe checking with the school to make sure it's okay.

But because age cutoffs are often framed to permit that kind of decision, sometimes people whose kids are not at all on the bubble -- they are of age well before the cut off and they have no maturity or developmental issues that would indicate that they need to wait -- exploit it because they think it will give their kid an advantage academically or, sometimes, athletically or socially. And that's what results in a K class with ages ranging from 5 to 7.

OP is saying go ahead and keep redshirting as a concept for kids on the bubble, but close it as a loophole for kids who aren't on the bubble but have parents who want to try and garner every advantage. This would have no impact on most redshirting -- most kids who are redshirted fall in that on the bubble group where their birthdays are close to the cut off and they have some maturity or developmental issues. And kids who are older but have pronounced maturity/developmental issues could still redshirt, it would just need to be cleared. The only people who would be impacted by what OP is proposing is the people with developmentally normal kids who are well past the cut off but who want an age advantage for whatever reason. Well good, those are the people who give redshirting a bad name when it's actually a perfectly normal, acceptable practice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could someone please point me to the anti-redshirting coalition that apparently is a united front against all redshirting, that several PPs have referenced?

I thought there were just a variety of attitudes/perspectives about when people should send kids "on time" versus waiting. I was not aware there was apparently an organized group with talking points.

Drama queen. Good Lord. How do you get through your day?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can confirm there is no red shirting in NYC. Our K class is all kids born in 2018. I have a March kid who is one of the oldest.

Another confirmation here. My daughter turned 5 in November of Kindergarten and there were 4 kids younger than her in class. They're very strict against red-shirting, I think I know of maybe 2 kids out of more than 100 in her grade who, because they moved from out of the city or whatever, are not born in 2015, my DD's birth year.

Anonymous wrote:Because the school is just don’t care. they have no incentive to do it. Older kids are easier for them.

Anonymous wrote:You’ll have to reach out to your school board. A redshirted spring/summer birthday would be turning six before K not 7.

Anonymous wrote:Could someone please point me to the anti-redshirting coalition that apparently is a united front against all redshirting, that several PPs have referenced?

I thought there were just a variety of attitudes/perspectives about when people should send kids "on time" versus waiting. I was not aware there was apparently an organized group with talking points.