What am I missing? What do school birthday cutoffs have to do with internet users?
I’m used to districts being able to set their own cut off date and I’ve lived where it’s September and December. My oldest has an end of August birthday and started K a week before her 5th birthday. There were boys in her class that were 15 months older than her. The “redshirting” seemed to be getting out of control, as no one wanted their child to be the youngest, so even a May birthday became worrisome for some parents. At one point, the school district started encouraging everyone to send their child the year they were eligible to start K. I have to wonder if having a kid turn 7 at the end of K was a factor in that.
I’m very surprised there are people saying any part of NY has cut offs later than 12/1. I remember researching it in the past and the NY state education department was very clear that it is on or before 12/1. The only way around it was to send a child with a later birthday to a private kindergarten, where they don’t have to follow the state rules about age, and then to public school for 1st grade if they choose. I can’t get the NYSED page to load to confirm that it changed. I wonder when it did.
“The “redshirting” seemed to be getting out of control, as no one wanted their child to be the youngest, so even a May birthday became worrisome for some parents.” I know someone’s whose tony private CT school had pushy parents who were concerned about their children with MARCH birthdays being on the young end of the grade and therefore disadvantaged. I say that students shouldn’t be 19 when they graduate from high school.
@My3Kiddos – yep, i was one of those parents - holding back 5 1/2 yr olds! May birth date for my #1 S (in college now) - and paranoid first time mom. He turned 7 at the end of K. In hindsight, it would have been fine to send him on time. We had our #4 kid start K when she was 4. In hindsight, maybe should have held her; she’s the youngest facing the social issues in Jr High now. Oh well - they are both turning out fine. I’ll never judge parents either way!
My birthday is in the middle of July. The K cutoff was September 1. My parents didn’t hold me back and I kind of wish they had! I did fine academically, but I think socially I was behind. My sister’s birthday is in the middle of October. My parents put her in a private school for first grade before she turned 6 so that she could start public school in second grade before she turned 7. I think that was a little hard on her.
When my kids were in elementary school our town’s cutoff was December 31. No one redshirted their kids. Daycare is expensive. They also hadn’t yet turned the kindergarten curriculum into first grade.
Our district is Dec. 1. I had a Dec. 2 baby that was ready to go, but it was “no go”…they took that deadline seriously. I in my area. I looked at privates and charters that were within daily driving range and they, too, at that time “stuck” to the district dates. All in all, in hindsight it made him one of the oldest (males) in his class and also saw him heading off to college almost 19. which is not generally a bad thing.
“I did fine academically, but I think socially I was behind.”
Although no one wants their child to suffer socially, being in the midst of the social scene can come with negatives, at least in my public school district. The kids at the top of the social circles in the “popular crowd” tended too be a little too fast to grow up IMO - earlier to experiment with alcohol, drugs, sexual activity especially starting in the middle school years. Many of these were the older kids because they did mature earlier on average.
My two were on the younger side (did just fine socially). One unexpected benefit later on was that both kids decided to defer their college acceptance for a year and do a some experiential learning and traveling. I don’t know if we would have felt as comfortable with that delay if they were already on the older side.
^Good point! I was definitely a square in high school. Never thought about that being a good thing!
My daughter is mid-August and is nearly always the youngest person in her class (cut-off is September 1).
The problem with red-shirting is that you make the choice well before you have any data to back it up. My daughter is pretty smart. But she swears that her cousin is one of the smartest people she’s ever met. The cousin was born in April, but was redshirted. So he’s 4-months older than my daughter, but is a year behind her. My daughter will graduate high school as a 17-year old. The cousin will start his senior year as an 18-year old.
@CTTC in CT - in our small fairly affluent town, my kids went to a cooperative nursery school and literally it catered to kids who had at home parents - it was a few hours a day a couple days a week.
I should say TWO of my kids went there - my eldest who was born Sept 24, and my middle who was born July 23. The public school cut off was 12/31 (as was the nursery school cut off date). So my youngest is only 14 months younger than the middle (all are girls) - at age 3 (the first year she could go to this coop nursery school) she had been potty trained for over a year, and did almost everything the 4 year old did (because they were so close in age). Let’s just say that being the 3rd of 3 close girls she was ready for a couple days a week of nursery school.
As luck would have it, the coop nursery school decided they were going to change the cut off date to enroll 3 year olds to Oct 1 (my daughter was Oct 5) an no longer align with the public school in our town. As it was a coop there was a parent meeting and discussion and a vote.
A good number of parents said they HAD to vote to change the date because these ‘younger kids’ were going to hold their ‘older kids’ back in the ‘classroom’. It was freaking play school for god sake. But these parents were adamant that having these kids in with their kid was some big deal. OYE
Ours was Sept 30 and we had an Oct child…she went to school “on time” and was one of the older ones. Quite handy to be able to drive 2 years in HS. We also had an Aug child and she wen to school on time and thrived.
When I started, our district outside Phila was February. I’m a Nov birthday. Yes, I think it was a stretch.
But I don’t think I would have sailed through some 2nd grade family issues any better if I’d been in 1st grade then.
When mine were young, it wasn’t unheard of to have kids repeat K. Their two friends who did this could both voice their disappointment and frustration. For one, humiliation.
Imo, it needs to be a kid-centered decision, at the time. Not parents trying to look 12 years down the road.
Our district had a cut-off sometime in December, but my child with an end of June birthday was still one of the two or three youngest in the class.
@mom2twogirls - http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/2296/public-school-eligibility
So, still December 31. Which is what it was when I went.
Wisconsin was at least Dec 1st in my day- neighbor had a Nov birthday. Did not affect her socially or academically. Recent times has been September 1st. Gifted son with fall birthday did early kindergarten admission- after school psychologist testing. Another boy in his K class share a birthday(one year older), my kid was at least as mature et al.Last part of the K year he did with first graders, he was delighted to do so. He then did multigrade classrooms and compressed a year. Socially had a circle of friends but knowing his parents any awkwardness was due more to him than relative age- I doubt he would have been different with a different cohort. The gifted are different.
H’s relatives in Indiana had a firm June 1st cutoff, despite preschool rec their D start early (Dec birthday). She did the grade skip later.
I remember a second grade teacher at a summer class who was due in August and already planned to wait for her son’s kindergarten experience. Of course the teachers appreciate the maturity of older kids in a given grade- who wouldn’t. I’m sure her kid was and remained more average than not. One elementary year we had 4 neighbor boys in the same multigrade class whose birthdays fell within 11 months of each other. If one slid their birthdays ahead equal amounts they all would have qualified for being in the same grade.
I also do not get any link with internet usage and cutoff dates. The only correlation would be that the states have the largest populations and hence the largest use of the internet.
Yes, thanks @OHMomof2 I’ve seen since I posted that it gets decided by school districts. It surprised me because all of the districts I’ve lived in and that of people I’ve known in other districts, have been on or before Dec 1. I never realized it was different in other parts of NY. I think perhaps it’s mostly just NYC?
Could be. NYC is a pretty big chunk of kids in NYS though, about half I think.
As for the question “Why” maybe a lot of us are from NY? I doubt that having a late start date should otherwise correlate with joining CC.
I didn’t think socially being a bit young in high school was a big deal. I made friends with the intellectual crowd instead of the chasing after boys crowd (which was hard to do at a single sex school!) I took a gap year before starting college - and felt like I wasn’t losing a year when I did so.