<p>Taking a gap year before college seems to be an increasingly popular option for high school grads. At the same time, I see my friends with young children choosing to "hold back" their 5-year-olds from kindergarten until they're "ready" at age 6.
Together, those turn a college freshman into a 19- or 20-year-old. Do you think that will become standard?</p>
<p>Not in my household. We don't grade-skip (we homeschool so that we can have acceleration without grade-skipping) but we don't redshirt either.</p>
<p>That is extremely common in private schools here, especially with boys. The schools encourage parents of boys with late spring / summer birthdays to hold them back a year (the cut-off is usually September 1). My child, with an October birthday, was probably near the median age of her kindergarten class. Had she gone to public school then, she would have been in first grade. When my wife graduated from high school, she was younger than our daughter was at the end of 10th grade. The public schools subsequently changed their cut-off date to September 1, too.</p>
<p>I always thought this had a significant effect on the private schools' test scores and college admissions. Their kids often had a year plus of additional maturity compared to the public school kids.</p>
<p>I do see a lot of holding back (my son was 17 at graduation, but some of his friends had just turned 19), especially for boys who may not be ready to sit still and do the first grade work that is now required in most kindergarten classrooms.
If we had real kindergartens again, I don't know if this would be the case. 5-year-olds need outdoor and unstructured play, not workbooks and handwriting practice.</p>
<p>But that aside, I don't see many taking gap years at the other end. Maybe it's just my area, but every high school graduate I know went on to college or the military.</p>
<p>Chronological age does make a difference in more ways than just sports. Maturity has so much to do with academic success.
I noticed when I looked at our school directory (they put the kids' birthdays next to their names) that the top students invariably had birthdays in the late summer or fall. In other words, they were on average 6mo. to a year older than everyone else. </p>
<p>I think it does make a difference all the way from 1st through 12th grades.</p>
<p>Edit: I should say top in academic as well as overall "leadership" excellence.</p>
<p>I was held back before kindergarten because of my extreme shyness. I just graduated high school and turned 19 in June. I was one of the oldest students in my grade. I see it being a good idea in some instances, but I don't know why everyone would. It does make sense some of the time considering everyone grows and matures at a different rate. It would be interesting to see research on the matter.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It does make sense some of the time considering everyone grows and matures at a different rate
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Very true.</p>
<p>So many of the requisite skills in education (the way it's taught today) is dependent upon maturity. To be successful, kids at ANY age need to be able to track progress on independent assignments, keep up with deadlines, multi-task, organize papers and files...stuff that comes with age- not necessarily genius. You can have an absolutely brilliant, but very young, student who knows and understands the material better than anyone else in his class, but because of his immaturity, does poorly in the grades department. Many people attribute this to a character defect when in reality it is just because of his age.</p>
<p>Overly ambitious parents of private school kids in the Northeast often hold their kids (both genders) back prior to kindergarten (and sometimes repeat 9th grade when transferring to another high school). The idea is that because they will be more advanced in their development, they will outperform other kids. My daughter had friends in a prestigious private school who were two years older than she was. Holding her back might have been a good idea given the competition, but she started in public school. Since she seemed a little young for her age at the time, we asked the public school folks and they strongly recommended not holding her back. Nonetheless, she's now going to a hard to get into private high school, so it hasn't hurt her that much.</p>
<p>On the other hand, our son was obviously gifted at an early age and was impatient with the intellectual pace of school. Keeping him back a year would have been frustrating for him. </p>
<p>I skipped 3rd grade and was small and didn't fit in socially. I was the shortest kid in my 9th grade class, though I was over 6' when I graduated high school and grew at least an inch in my freshman year in college. I was asked to skip 9th grade and did so for two weeks. I was in my sister's grade and even in one of her classes, which was very awkward. And, I clearly did not fit in, so I moved myself back to 9th grade. I was bored to tears in school, but accelerating one grade did not help that and did not help my socialization. </p>
<p>I don't think the gap year has the purpose of making the kid more developmentally able as I think most of that has already worked itself out. Reasons for a gap year: In our hyper-competitive world, a kid has burned out in high school and needs to recover before starting college; a kid wants to explore things and travel before jumping onto the college treadmill; immature kid needs to mature (slightly different than overly ambitious parents seeking advantage, this is about catching up).</p>
<p>Holding back?????
I skipped 3 years - reverse phenomenon?
I haven't seen much holding back in Oregon.</p>
<p>A good way to take away the incentive for gaming the system like this would be to norm the SAT tests by age, just like they do for IQ tests.</p>
<p>I have a late birthday (October) and my parents didn't hold me back, and I am now one of the youngest people in my grade. Although I'm only a sophmore, I have done very well in school, and so have many of my friends who also have late birthdays (one in September, three in October, and one in November - all of these people were also not held back) and they all have straight A's in school and are extremely mature. So I guess it just depends on the kid. Who knows, it may just be that my friends and I are exceptions.</p>
<p>Of course it depends on the kid. I have a late August birthday, and today my parents might have been encouraged to hold me back a year, but it never prevented me from being the top boy in my grade. My wife has a November birthday, and she graduated from high school a year early and was VERY successful academically (as well as preternaturally mature). I'm not suggesting that this practice is necessary -- just reporting that, in fact, it happens frequently, mainly with boys, and mainly at the suggestion of the schools, not necessarily the parents. But it is always a boy-by-boy decision. Using an early cut-off date for grade assignment is also a school-generated policy. By and large, I think parents tend to want their kids to start school, and it's an economic issue for many parents. (I have also heard about, but never witnessed, sports-motivated holding back of 5 year-old boys by their parents.)</p>
<p><a href="tokenadult:">quote</a>
Not in my household. We don't grade-skip (we homeschool so that we can have acceleration without grade-skipping) but we don't redshirt either.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If the homeschoolers are accelerated and thus are academically at their college-entrance level a year or more ahead of schedule (i.e. the level they would have reached upon completing a regular school), is it not "holding them back until they are ready" to postpone college entrance until they are older?</p>
<p>Well here in India kids start kindergarten at 4...some hold back till 5.</p>
<p>My children, with late summer birthdays, are among the three to five youngest in their respective grades, and go to school with kids who are 11-15 months older than they are, routinely.</p>
<p>They have done extremely well, both socially and academically. </p>
<p>Routinely either sending or holding kids is the problem. Each situation/particular child requires an individual decision.</p>
<p>On the other hand, school seems to be more demanding now than it was 30 years ago.</p>
<p>For example, when I went to elementary school in the 70s, you didn't start learning about letters, reading, and writing, until 1st grade. Kindergarden was completely non-academic and ended at 1:00 every day. 1st grade ended at 1:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays; 3:00 on other days.</p>
<p>Now that my kids are in elementary school, classes run until 3:00 every day, even for kindergardeners. And kindergardeners are taught letters, reading and writing. (Not to mention all the educational computer games that teach them reading even earlier.)</p>
<p>So there may be more reason to hold kids back nowadays.</p>
<p>I think dwelling on a few months difference in age by the time kids are in high school is kind of silly. Maybe in preschool or the first few years of elementary, but by high school it really shouldn't be an issue any more for parents.</p>
<p>I agree with you mammall. The val and sal I know - as well as my own son - were very young for their grade - Oct. to Dec. birthdays. BTW- Private school for two of them.
It's an individual decision in the early years but kind of a moot point by HS.</p>
<p>Birthday cut-offs for every state are different. Those who are youngest for their grade level in one state could very well be one of the older students at same grade level in another state.</p>
<p>Our state cut-off is Oct. 17. A child must be 5 years old by Oct. 17th to start kindergarten at the end of Aug. (while still 4 years old).
So while the kid with an Oct. 15 b-day is the youngest kid in the class in my state, he would be one of the oldest kids in the class in a state with a Sept. 1 cut-off.</p>
<p>In our state kids with late Oct. to Dec. b-days are the oldest in the class.</p>
<p>As a preschool teacher I have seen quite a few parents hold boys back with late birthdays because they don't feel they are ready for all day kindergarten when they will still be 4 years old when school starts.</p>