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

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My mother said if she had it to do all over again she would hold my brothers back a year instead of sending them to kindergarten when she did. They, like me, had fall birthdays and started kindergarten at 4. She didn’t say she would have held me back, but I think she should have. I was fine academically and wasn’t athletic at all so that wasn’t a factor. But from about sixth grade on I was playing catch-up socially. I think I would have benefitted from a later start.

My own daughter was born in July and our district had an August 31st cut-off for kindergarten. We could have tested her in but we decided to keep her in pre-K another year and that worked out fine.

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Our November kiddo did a post grad year in preschool. When he was a freshman in college, he remarked that he always wondered why we did that, but it was absolutely the right thing…because he felt he wouldn’t have been successful in college the previous year.

Our March birthday kid started on time.

I should add…the November kid was a reader and was very verbal. But he was a premie who shouldn’t have been born until March. That preschool post grad year was terrific for him.

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So is your son 2 or 3 now? I think it’s far too early to say if that’s the case. Is he in preschool? How is he doing there? It really depends on the individual and his cohort. Are you planning to move at any point? Most states require kids to be 5 when they start K. Seems like your state or district is the odd one out.

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Interesting. Perhaps you have an atypical sample. The research suggests it is just the opposite, that the affluent are more likely to redshirt. For example this Stanford study

Male, White, and high-SES children are most likely to delay kindergarten, and schools serving larger proportions of White and high-income children have far higher rates of delayed entry.
"Academic Redshirting" in Kindergarten Prevalence, Patterns, and Implications | Center for Education Policy Analysis

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California eventually moved it to 5 by September 1, which makes sense, but when my kids were little it was December 1 and they have fall birthdays. So today the issue would have been moot. They would have had to wait a year and we would not have had the option to start them at 4 as we did. I wonder if this has had an effect on redshirting. Some parents might still wait a year even with the new cutoff.

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The study at https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/bassok%20reardon%20redshirting%20final%20prepub%20version%202013.pdf indicates that while high SES parents are more likely to redshirt their kindergarteners, the overall percentage of redshirting is still small (4% to 5.5%) and a minority even among high SES born within a month of the cutoff date (figure 4 on page 23).

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@Sweetgum as I said above…my son commented on this when he was in college…so he clearly is older than 2 or 3.

He has his bachelors and masters degrees.

My sons birthday was in November. He could have started K in September before his fifth birthday. Our state (CT) has a December 31 cutoff for K enrollment.

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That’s very preemie. Mine was a 24 weeker but she was born in Jan so starting school early wasn’t an issue or a problem - she started with her correct cohort but she was very average in all skills, and was always very small. Still wore a 6X in 4th grade. I think one or two of her preemie friends did hang out an extra year in preK because they had so much catching up to do.

My adopted child was the one who started early but at least one in her adoption group took and extra year before starting K.

All good choices.

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Here’s a different perspective regarding red-shirting of gifted kids (agree with @RichInPitt, it’s not necessarily beneficial).

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I don’t have any regrets sending my daughter with a late July birthday and a September cutoff. She’d had lots of preschool, was mature, and needed the academics. All our friends thought she was crazy. She will complete Algebra I while 11 so the academics worked out. She is also the tallest in her class.

I do think she is less mature than her class, still firmly in childhood. And when she goes to high school she may well repeat a year if there is a school change.

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I started watching it, and I don’t need any persuasion. Though I will trust parents who made their own call based on maturity, both my kids started as early as possible with fall birthdays, and they did OK. I mean, my son was immature in kindergarten, but putting him in a one year holding pattern just sounds like an extreme remedy.

I think the big problem is synchronized delivery of education. Realistically speaking, it’s understandable, but kids do not become school-ready right on schedule either this Fall or next Fall. My thought at the time is that a first grader who isn’t doing all the work consistently and has a little trouble adjusting because they’re young is still probably a better reader and better thinker overall than the identical kid who was held back a year and is in kindergarten, though they may appear to be a model kindergartener. I mean, which do I care about more, my child’s actual cognitive development or how it is scored?

I can understand parents who sincerely judge that their child is going to be unhappy or just not ready socially or academically. That’s totally reasonable. The concept of “redshirting” though suggests a strategic move to hold back in order to improve nominal performance. I do not support that at all.

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Sorry thumper1, didn’t mean to reply to you. Meant to reply to the original poster.

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Qfwb, I think if your son has another year or two of pre-k there’s no rush to decide now. If your state/district starts kids in K when they are 4 I think that is out of step with most of the country where kids usually need to be 5 to start K. Don’t take my word for it, though. I haven’t done thorough research on that. Look it up and see what you find. Seems reasonable to wait until he’s 5 to me.

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My daughter is also on the younger side of her classmates, with a mid-June birthday. She will graduate next week at age 17. I never considered holding her back. Until hitting high school, she had always been one of the tallest in her class. If I had held her back a year, she would have looked like Gulliver with the Lilliputians :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: The only time she complained was when she was one of the last to get her learner’s permit & driver’s license.

Some of the popular private schools in our area have a spring cut off, so redshirting for mid-spring & summer birthdays is built in, if you decide to go that route.

The only time I think “what-if” is when I think about how academically competitive her graduating class is, compared to the one below her (she goes to a school with a close-knit community where most kids have been together since elementary & middle school and families have known each other for years) - and I wonder whether she would have had different college options, with a potentially higher ranking in the class below. But there’s no way any of that could have been assessed 12 years ago, nor would it have had a bearing on my decision back then. It’s just something I’ve casually wondered about.

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As a parent of a fall born child, who I did not hold back, and an early childhood teacher, I cannot agree with this more.

You have to do what is best for your family. Will you be able to explain to your child why they were not ready for school as they get older? We felt we could not.

It would not have been the right choice for our family to hold him back. S21 has been at the top of his class throughout school even with being the youngest. Although he was tiny entering K, is huge now, and would have towered over the kids in middle school if he stayed back.

It is very common where we live, but if your child is ready… send them! I have seen many students who are the youngest in the class excel and be top of the class. Chances are if your child will succeed, they will do so no matter what. Be involved in your child’s education, read them varied books (even things above their level) and most important talk to them!

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Kids generally will adapt, whether they’re with others who are slightly older or younger. Holding them back for a few months or a year isn’t going to make a difference over a long horizon, IMO. Why make them lose a productive year in their adult lives?

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There are so many considerations! And the reality is you can only do it one way for one kid, so how do you ever really know if what you did was best? You only know how that turned out! Some thoughts, many conflicting, from various approaches.

If you live in a place where people regularly hold back their kids, the older starting age becomes the norm and a very typical 5 year old is disadvantaged because classmates are all typical 6 year Olds and that much older, more mature, etc. In this kind of community, there are often well developed programs for that extra year of preK, so kindergarten expectations are a bit higher. Choosing not to redshirt was almost the same as choosing to accelerate in this community.

A friend whose D was on the younger side noted that in middle school, the D’s friends were mostly interested in hanging out and meeting up with boys. The D, being younger, had no interest in that at that point. Her mom felt that her relative immaturity got her another year or so of less distraction in school and more interest in academics. The D really got a bit more invested in school at that point and became a more committed student. Her mom felt that her relative immaturity was a gift.

Our LPS likes kids to start early so that if there’s any kind of issue, they can repeat K, often with additional support, and not have a huge age differential going forward - just the one that redshirting would have given them.

A friend whose D ended up starting at the normal age in a community where everyone held kids back felt her D didn’t have much gas left in the tank for ECs at the end of the day. Another who started at the normal age was persuaded to repeat because the D regularly fell asleep. Both felt that their kids were physically not quite up for it although in other ways they were. Both were absolutely fine later in their schooling.

If you are supposed to be doing everything possible to take advantage of your child’s natural ability to learn at this age, what do your extra year options look like if you take away that stimulatingyear of kindergarten? We had a single Focus on Five program available but few other good options beyond kindergarten. We chose the latter for a boy with a summer birthday. It worked out fine. But I suspect that if we’d held him back, we’d be saying the same.

It’s hard to imagine now, but if you want to add a year anywhere along the way, (repeat 9th and apply to BS, PG year for sports, gap year), consider how that would align age with peers. A friend’s S who redshirt for K and did a PG year for recruiting succeeded in the latter but really felt out of whack his freshman year. He was the age and maturity of most juniors but “stuck” with the freshmen. Like everything, he found his way, but it was hard. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have been recruited any other way…

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We have an adopted Grandson and Granddaughter. The GS was in Kindergarten when my DD and DSIL became his foster parents. The child’s birthday is August 31st with a September 1st cut off. He was still with his parents when he turned 5 and then started school. He had no preschool to speak of, even though Florida has free preK for all kids. His mother was also lax about sending him to school. When he came to my DD in March he had been in 5 different places in 4 months. He really needed to be held back but he couldn’t be held back without his parent’s permission. He has always lacked maturity. He is a smart child, but I worry about him starting high school next year. He blows off assignments and really doesn’t try as he should.

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@pbcparent yes, that’s exactly what we did. We looked at the characteristics other than academic readiness. We also had a fabulous preschool. And we parents enriched on our own for areas that needed it.

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Age matters a lot. If it doesn’t, why not start school at 4? Or 3?Because there’s a time when they’re ready and a time when they’re not.

But it doesn’t just matter when the decision is being made to kindergarten. Brain development continues right throughout their school careers. There is research that has shown that students can’t master subjects requiring more abstract thinking until their brains have ached a level of development that allows them to do that. This is especially important in math when students get to algebra and beyond. These days schools have pushed the math curriculum down into 8th grade. Why? Because they say that students can handle it. Well, some can, but what about those who can’t? Thy get sidetracked. Is it ability or development? In many cases, it’s development. And there are a whole series of courses to follow that on when you started the sequence. Regardless of readiness for school at age 5, a bright child still might not be ready to start abstract math in 8th grade - especially if that child is a boy.

States vary with start dates, so when you project ahead to college, kids from states with younger start dates are competing with others who are a full year older or more. This definitely matters in sports, but sports isn’t the only area in which it matters.

Birth date isn’t the only measure of age. Development starts at gestation. When a child comes out of the womb varies. It’s normally 9 months, but it varies. Some are late and some are early. One of my grandsons is an example. He lives in a state where the cut off for school entry is January 1. He was born in December, a month early; his due date was in January. There is no way he should have started school in September just because our state said he could. And he didn’t. Given that he’s a boy, this mattered even more. Girls are 6 months ahead of the boys in the developmental process anyway. Much less risk to start a younger girl than a younger boy.

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