Why is redshirting so rare if it's so advantageous?

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It is more than your belief, it is what research has shown :slightly_smiling_face:

Red shirting for kids who do not have disabilities is most common in White boys from upper SES.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373713482764

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858415590800

Yet, as all the research on the matter has demonstrated, this is not the case.

Furthermore, as @msdynamite85 wrote, low SES families cannot really afford to keep their kid at home, rather than send them to free kindergarten.

I am sorry, but obsessing over which college a kid will attend when that kid has not started kindergarten is not something that low SES families do. For families in the bottom 40% by income, college is barely even on the radar, and if their kid will attend college, it is almost certainly going to be open enrollment 4 year or 2 year college, a for-profit college, or a college with admission rates of over 50%. Fewer than 1% of them are attending an “elite” college.

Furthermore, part of being low SES is not having the luxury of spending money at the present, in order to save money at some future date. Even if they are actually thinking of their pre-K kid’s college career, keeping their kid at home rather than sending them to free kindergarten is simply not an option. We’re not talking about keeping a car for two more years, or giving up an expensive summer vacation, we’re talking about having enough money to keep their only car or, in many cases, being able to pay rent.

Few low SES families are going to pay for another year of child care and reduce their family income by 50% so that, in 12 years, that kid MAYBE be able to get a scholarship to go to an “elite” college.

As for mid-income families? They too have the same considerations - pay for another year of daycare, for the really small chance that this delay will somehow allow their kid to continue excelling in sports or academics in high school?

Basic math - the average student debt from public universities per student, is around $25,500 (for private universities it’s over $30,000). The median annual individual income for the mid 40% is around $45,000, and annual daycare costs are around $17,000.

Any way you cut it, for a mid-income family, it is more affordable to start a kid at kindergarten on time and pay the median cost of college in the future, including taking loans than it is to redshirt that kid.

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@MWolf’s framing seems pretty helpful. We live in an affluent area with a very good public HS and several very good/tony private high schools. Both of our kids attended public elementary schools and private middle schools. One went back to the public HS and the other attended a private HS.

Our observation. ShawD was at the younger part of her grade and the elementary school principal pressured us to send her rather than red-shirt when ShawWife asked. At her private HS, she was often two full years younger than many of her classmates and a year younger than the majority of the rest. This was boys and girls. It included kids on scholarships as well as kids paying full freight. She did well but might have had more confidence had she been red-shirted. We saw her confidence really flourish in college and then on her job. It would have been nice if she had felt that sooner.

ShawSon was bored to tears in pretty much every grade. Holding him back would have just increased the pain.

I was bored to tears in school and the school did what they did back in those days (per @FallGirl @kiddie and @coffeefeet), they skipped me and did it again later on. I was the shortest boy in my high school freshman class, although I was 6’1" by graduation and grew another inch as a college freshman. When I got to college, I was one to two years younger than my peers. Intellectually, I had no problems in college. Indeed, I learned many years later that people I don’t remember knew that I was this extremely smart kid who was young. I don’t remember feeling young.

Now, the schools have alternate ways to deal with kids who are not challenged by their curricula. The Deputy Superintendent of Schools suggested that we create a partial homeschooling program for my son. He could do certain subjects in school and get social interaction and focus on areas where he was not challenged by the honors curriculum or needed help (as a severely dyslexic kid, we had to get his writing up to speed before he got to college). We did and he was much happier and better educated for it.

Socially, skipping did me a disservice. I didn’t really have the same social skills (partly from age and partly from my family) that others in my grade had. I didn’t get my drivers license until after HS graduation, so if I had had thoughts about going out on dates, I could not even have driven. Overall, just not being at the same physical or social maturity level as my grade was a problem in HS. Not having any experiences made my entry into college social life a lot more stressful than it could have been.

Physically, I grew into it. I played a minor varsity sport in HS and would have been better with the additional size. I played a minor varsity sport in college. I don’t think the lack of physical maturity was a big handicap in college.

@MWolf, there is an alternative to red-shirting before Kindergarten. We had one friend whose kid repeated kindergarten. I don’t remember the circumstances, but I think parents and school agreed that he was not emotionally ready for 1st grade. That eliminates the major financial cost for the family.

I’m a big believer in gap years. I would have loved to have taken a gap year, but back in the dark ages, we didn’t know about them. I convinced ShawSon to take a gap year and, per @shellreflex’s comment, he thinks it helped in terms of his maturity and focus when he entered college. I failed to convince ShawD.

@1NJParent, I think there is a tradeoff between the positive benefit in terms of ability to focus and cognitive development on the one hand and the potential for boredom on the other. I’m sure my kids would have found first grade easier if we’d redshirted them for five years, but they would have been bored to tears and likely become behavior problems.

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Of course, it is often not predictable at age 4-6 which of the beneficial or detrimental effects of redshirting over the next several years will be the larger effects.

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Did we talk about driving on this thread? I wonder what effect a drivers license would have on the popularity/maturity of the red shirted kid. Would parents let their kids ride with him?

My two sons started school on time with winter birthdays. They got licenses not asap but in a timely fashion so were driving junior year. I have to say, it did enhance their standing with their peers, particularly girls. Their HS had off campus lunch. My oldest would pack his car with friends (all girls) and go out to eat. (Younger did the same but, I learned later, smuggled some out. Off campus diners had to meet certain grade and attendance criteria. Son2’s friends were more diverse.)

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CA doesn’t let you take other kids in the car for a year after passing your test. I assume many other states now do likewise. So that limits the ability to drive friends around. And pre-pandemic Uber was the expected means of transportation in our area for parties etc (kids were surprisingly good about not drinking and driving, in many cases more responsible than their parents).

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Probably true, but in my sample of two kids, one would have benefitted from redshirting and one would have found it torture. Both kids are doing well as young adults, so I’m not sure what the effect might have been.

But ShawD, who I think would have benefitted from redshirting, saw the holistic admissions process as very scary. I think she was afraid of the judgment. So she went to school in Canada but then transferred at the end of the semester.

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Cognitive development obviously varies from child to child. Any benefit from redshirting dissipates quickly over time. I don’t believe there’s any evidence that redshirted kids do better in high school or college. In fact, the opposite may be true. Academically, few redshirted kids are in the top of their classes from my observations. Overall, the downside of redshirting seems to be much more enduring. S/he will lose a year of a more productive life.

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When my S (June bday) was 2, we applied for a really neat private preschool for him. He was still in diapers during the admissions process, and they said everyone absolutely has to be toilet trained before school starts in August. They suggested trying again next year, and we were slightly offended, because you know, your own kid is so smart and quick to learn, right? (He really was). But we loved the program and did apply again the next year and and he attended. This set him up for starting K at age 6. He was very shy so it was likely a good idea anyway.

In the local public school at the time, they had a program of half day K for summer bday kids. You went to K with this group and then at the end of the year, you and the teacher decided whether the child would move to K again or Grade 1. Most were boy parents who chose this. Most went on to repeat K, but full day, or Spanish Immersion. Lots of parents wanting the immersion experience who had summer bday kids loved this program because their kid got a year of English K before the Spanish K. We did not use this program because we kept him at the private preschool for Preschool and Pre K. I am not sure if the local district still has this option for K.

Another anecdote - we had a family move to our current private school from a foreign country. Their kids had all started school super early there and were academically way ahead. They started in their academic grades that first year (5th grader was 9). Socially it was a disaster and all the kids repeated the next year. I don’t understand the posters here who think it’s no big deal just to NEVER fit in with your peers because you are so much younger. Just go find some other younger friends somewhere else? That really isn’t how it works. I felt sad for the kids at the time dealing with it. I think social and emotional development can be a lot harder than academic development. Of course, this anecdote deals with starting younger rather than redshirting. I think it’s hard enough to grow up through your teen years and I wouldn’t want to make it harder.

Finally, I remember a friend I had in college who started at 17. She really struggled, could not BELIEVE people were DRINKING in the dorms! It took her a couple years to really find her groove, even though she was academically advanced enough to graduate high school at barely 17. Everyone is different, but I would be reluctant to send a 17 year old to live in a college dorm.

Our S who started at 6 never seemed out of place in his class.

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In Outlier, Malcolm Gladwell illustrated a relative age effect in hockey. The kids born early in the year got were more developed, got notice, got coaching and I think better results all the way through.

Wikipedia calls this a relative age effect. Relative age effect - Wikipedia. One striking study shows that month of birth affects probability of admission to Oxford (I am pretty sure that is what this graph is intended to show).

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So, I’m not sure if your anectodal observation holds. It looks to me that there is considerable evidence that the benefits of being a little bit older may be lasting.

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Yet redshirting does not seem to have any effect on success at all.

Either the effects are not related to age, or, for a kid of the same level of talent, age provides a benefit.

However, even if age provides a benefit, in most cases, redshirting is random in regards to, say, talent in hockey. When kids are redshirted it is way too early to know whether they have this or that talent, so they are much more likely to be just average in sports or academics. That means that their age may give them an advantage over other average players, but won’t give them enough of an advantage that they will be able to compete with younger players who actually have talent.

There is also a high likelihood that the advantage of age starts diminishing as the age difference increases. So being 1/2 a year above the average age may have benefits, but being, say, more than a year older may not provide any additional benefit, and, in fact, can start hurting.

Then there are the kids who are accelerated, who do very well, even though their relative age is far lower than the youngest non accelerated kids in the class. Effects of relative age, if they exist, likely do not exist in gifted programs.

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My brother works on a “World Series” program for kids for 13 year olds. Some of them turn 14 during that year so are actually 14 when they play the games over the 4th of July weekend. These really are the best athletes for that age group. Some are 5’1", some are 6’3", some weigh about 90 pounds, some over 200. Some are heading into 7th grade while others are heading into 9th. They are all getting great coaching and they are all in high SES families.

There is no way to say, at age 5, which of these kids were going to excel in sports or school by 13 years old, or by 18.

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People become more experienced as they grow older, but they don’t become “smarter” if they’re with people who are less exprienced and/or less cognitively developed. If an older kid is togehter with a younger kid, the older kid may start with more experience but s/he likely won’t gain new experience as fast as others who are with their own age group. Moreover, the experience gap with the younger kid is likely to shrink quickly as younger kid climb the experience ladder faster. The best way to become “smarter” is to be with people as “smart” as or “smarter” than you.

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@MWolf, what is the basis for your assertion that there is no effect on success at all?

It seems highly likely that talent is distributed randomly over birth months. So, why would we get the results cited in wikipedia: " Studies have found an over-representation of people born just after the school entry cut-off date in a range of leadership positions. Such an over-representation starts in high-school leadership activities such as sports team captain or club president.[14] In the adult life, this over-representation has been observed in top managerial positions (CEOs of S&P 500 companies),[15] and in top political positions, both in the USA (senators and representatives),[16] and in Finland (MPs).[17]"

And, to the extent that being admitted to Oxbridge advantages folks later on in life, the graph I copied in my earlier post would suggest a correlation between relative age and success.

Your argument seems flawed. Assuming talent is distributed randomly, if kids born in September (or January) get a boost, then on average, wouldn’t the most talented kids with the boost do better than those of equal talent with no boost? Unless you are asserting that the attention, coaching, training, going to Oxford, etc. have no effect on the outcomes in question, wouldn’t one expect that, on average, the kids who got a boost due to relative age do better than comparable gets without the boost?

What am I missing?

I don’t think anyone is arguing that relative age is the only thing that affects outcomes. But, what I have observed is that the relatively older kids develop a sense of confidence that often persists even when one might expect any relative age advantage to have dissipated. To the extent that one’s own expectations and confidence affect the outcome, it is plausible that this would affect things like attainment of leadership positions (where confidence itself is no small part of what gets people positions).

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If Redshirting was a significant advantage then there should be an over representation of those with Mid spring/ Summer birthdays ie the ones who are redshirted. The fact that the oldest side of the “ normal “ academic calendar cutoff are the ones excelling means than the redshirted kids aren’t beating them for those opportunities.

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You wouldn’t see that effect in Oxford admissions because redshirting is not allowed in England, you go to school strictly on the basis of age. Formal schooling starts a year earlier than the US, you start in the year you turn 5 (ie you must be 4 on or before August 31).

However one confounding factor is that over the last generation many school districts have used multiple start dates, with those who turn 5 in Sep-Dec starting in Sep, those who turn 5 in Jan-Mar starting in Jan and those who turn 5 in Apr-Aug starting in Apr. Thus those with late birthdays could miss out on up to two thirds of a year of schooling. That may have effects on their level of preparation for subsequent school years.

However I do generally agree with @shawbridge that the confidence factor due to being older may help some students, and I’d expect that to be of benefit in an admission process where you need to succeed in a daunting interview.

With regard to redshirting in the US, most of those held back are kids deemed less ready for school. That could well be correlated with them being less talented and/or studious throughout their academic career. So it seems unlikely you’d see those kids being stronger academically as opposed to physically.

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I don’t think this is necessarily true, is there data supporting this? In my neck of the woods, many redshirted kids are school ready, but the parents see a potential advantage for sports and/or greater maturity (but maturity is still at the school ready level for a senior kindergartner).

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I assume you mean any benefit that is measurable in a research study of large numbers of kids, redshirted for a wide variety of reasons.

But redshirting is an individual decision made for reasons specific to individual children. For any specific child, there very well could be measurable benefits which persist over time.

When I made the decision to redshirt my son, I was not thinking of society’s definition of success, his earning potential, or college. I was thinking of the boy in front of me, his abilities and his development. Rather than dissipating, the benefits of this decision have accumulated over time.

The question posed by this thread is:
Why is redshirting so rare if it’s so advantageous?

My answer would be:
Because it is only so advantageous for a small minority of kids.

If you think your child might be one of the rare kids who could benefit, gather as much information as you can. Talk to their pre-school teacher, OT, PT, therapist, and other parents with similar children. Feel free to PM me. My son has dyslexia, and his phonemic awareness at four was at the bottom of the chart. He also had speech impediments, and large and small motor challenges. He is a sophomore in high school now, and would happily tell you that he’s exactly where he belongs and thriving.

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Yes, I mean more generally. By benefit, I also mean the perceived advantage a family hopes to gain by redshirting. That advantage dissipates.

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It is common in my affluent area, but it does vary by school and by district. It’s also common for families to skip a kid ahead a grade because they aren’t being challenged in their current grade.

D has a November birthday and we had her start kindergarten at 5 and a half. I think it was best for her. In the district we were in at the time, redshirting was very common and she would’ve been quite a bit younger then the rest of the class if she started Kindergarten at 4 turning 5. She would’ve hated always being the youngest.

For S, his birthday usually falls on the first day of spring, so the whole redshirting didn’t apply to him…and they had moved the cutoff date which meant that it was harder to enter Kindergarten if you hadn’t turned 5 yet.

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@Twoin18, the question I was trying to address to help us think about redshirting was whether there was an advantage to being older or younger or whether there is no effect of being a older student rater than a younger one. So, in the Oxford data, there is no redshirting possible, but there certainly appears to be an advantage to being a little bit older.

@MWolf’s assertion is that this does not lead to any effect on future outcomes. @1NJParent’s contention is that there might be an advantage but it dissipates quickly. I think the studies cited in wikipedia seem to conflict with these assertions. That’s why I was asking @MWolf the basis for his/her assertion.

@twoinanddone seems to be arguing that because we can’t predict who is going to have great talent or great physical prowess a few years later, there can’t be any relative age effect. Again, this is about averages for a group. If on average, there is a boost for older kids, then on average older kids will be advantaged even if the there is randomness among older kids. So, if older kids on average tend to be bigger or more coordinated in baseball, some will be small and others large. But on average they will be bigger or more coordinated than those kids born later. I don’t think there is much question that kids get bigger as they age and or that they develop intellectually as they age. There are differences between kids of any age cohort, but the main effect still remains.