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

speaking of brain development, i talked to a neighbor who teaches K at our local public school. Her kids were remote till november, and 100% in person starting in mid-january.

She mentioned that her students are on level a or slightly behind. But she mentioned the 1st & 2nd graders at her school are the ones who are struggling the most after missing so much in 2020. they are expected to do the work as normal, but havent been consistently taught. I can only imagine how hard this would be for a kid who’s very young for their grade.

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Or @bgbg4us , for a kid who would have been better off in school, learning, than maturing in a less stimulating environment (like remote learning).

At a public near us that has half day K, there is a full day K program for kids who appear at risk. This always made me wonder why we would delay school for kids who may need more support-- who may be the ones who seem least ready.

So again, it may come back to what the options look like as well as who the kid is at that time.

This is a conversation we just had with our S and DIL. GS’s birthday is in mid-November and they live in NYC and will send him to public schools. NYC has a 12/31 cutoff for kindergarten, so he would be among the youngest in his class. NYC is not terribly amenable to red-shirting, apparently. Independent schools have September 1 cutoffs and many areas in the rest of the state have 12/1 cutoffs. Right now I think he’ll be fine, but time will tell. My D, an October baby, started kindergarten at 4 and college at 17. It hasn’t impaired her academic and professional success.

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And that varies by kid. Sometimes by a lot. It’s not uncommon for kids to be several years ahead or behind in different aspects compared to their age baseline. Sometimes within the same kid.

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@runnersmom, most of the NYC privates I know like the kids to be older. In fact, when I mentioned upthread that there are places where redshirting is so common that normal feels accelerated, this was one of the places that came to mind. Of course, it depends on the schools, but this was certainly our experience and that of our friends.

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It probably does help their college admissions numbers. Kids who are wise for their age tend to do well in the process. Obviously more likely for 13th graders to be wiser compared to 12th graders.

@gardenstategal, that has been our and their experience, as well. Since they are committed to public school, it won’t be an issue unless they move to the suburbs - which I highly doubt.

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That was our experience as well. I said no thank you and sent her to a good public with a strong GT program.

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yep; when i worked in the all-day K magnet classroom for 2 years, the differences were really big in the kids. The school wasn’t allowed to hold back any kid; and there were some who truly needed another year, but hands were tied if a parent wouldn’t agree. Kids start 1st grade with expectation of knowing 100+ sight words, reading & writing skills etc.

This district quit all teaching last march; then remote all fall; so those K learners who were behind to begin with were at a huge disadvantage when first grd started remote this year as their expectations were to be on target. (NOT that this has anything to do with redshirting!)

but it’s a good question: for the kids who need the push the most, those without parents who can not help with their education (like we had esl children and a sweet kid with an imprisoned parent) is it better to start earlier? sure, if PRE-K is available; but for brain development without support, not sure about K.

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I’ve been working with a family with 4 kids. I was most worried about the 6 year old who was in 1st grade this year after attending 3 different schools for K, and basically no K at all from March on. She is so far behind, like she doesn’t know the letters in her name, doesn’t really understand the concepts of numbers, doesn’t know all her colors. But you know what? Neither do the other kids in her class. I was going to suggest she repeat K but that might create a problem come high school and not finishing if she is older than her classmates and friends. She’s really very bright and I think can catch up if the school pushes them.

Her sister started this year at a charter school (public) and she was put into 3rd grade but the charter school immediately put her back to 2nd (with parent’s permission). For her, that was the right decision as she had missed a lot of school in K-1, and last year was just catching up as a 2nd grader. In Nov, she changed schools to the public school. Absolutely the right decision to put her in 2nd grade again. She’s also quite bright, but she needed the confidence of learning how to read.

I think if a child went ahead and started K at age 4 or just turning 5 last year, I’d consider having them redo K again next year. My sister is a 4th grade teacher and they had so many disruptions, stops and starts this year and even with only doing the basics (all specials were online only, on their own), her kids did not cover everything. Her class has been back in person since Feb, but have had 3 or 4 times they’ve had to be quarantined and go online. Two weeks ago they were online, went back to school for 4 days, and then quarantined again for another 10 days. I’m sure some K kids had parents walking them through the courses online every day but others were on their own, just trying to click through the lessons and keep up with the teachers. The few lessons I observed the first grader was just doing what she wanted to do, working on letters while the teacher was having them write sentences, talking, singing, petting the cat.

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I’m sure the pandemic year was catastrophic for early childhood education. My kids are in high school and adapted readily to Zoom classes, but Zoom kindergarten or first grade is an absurdity. I think that red-shirting or not, a lot of kids are just going to start next year behind where they would have been. Maybe there’s still a way to catch up if you are realistic about the starting point (just thinking out loud; I don’t have any ideas).

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I think as others have said, the answer depends on the kid. I get asked this somewhat frequently in my practice. First, it helps to know what “norms” are in the area so you can assess whether the decision will make your kid very far away from the average age. Some parents cannot tolerate a large age discrepancy. In our area, may-sept boys commonly redshirt(start K when already 6), while probably around half of girls do, more than half once you get to Aug and Sept (cutoff 9/30 here).
The main reasons (to redshirt) from early childhood experts are emotional and social immaturity. The main reasons to go ahead are good-enough maturity plus academically advanced. So a “young” august kid who is fully reading in preK and has an ok maturity would go, while a young august kid who is average academically but way behind emotionally would be held back.
However, as others have said, the advice varies. We had “heard” that our k-12 school of choice liked to recommend redshirting for the summer birthdays. We asked the preschool on our summer girl. They said if the test-in school recommends redshirting it is ridiculous and they are wrong because she is ready, so find another k-12(!!). The kindergarten assessment agreed and recommended she start, so our decision was easy. So she gets “lapped” every year by a handful of kids who have birthdays before her and turn a year older before she does. She also is a very late bloomer physically(can’t predict that in preschool), so has looked even younger for many years. Then the school recommended math acceleration before junior high …not us…the school. Another teacher said not to , because of her birthday and she won’t have friends and will feel ostracized and awkward. Others said do it because she is bored and she is likely the type who is brainy and somewhat awkward until much later anyway. So our young kid is a year ahead of the advanced math track, so has kids 1.5-3 years older in her math(and science) classes and it is fine for her. She is currently VAL of her class, is a leader in her own introverted way (an extra year would never have changed her introverted nature), and has been honored with awards by the school and outside of school.
We have friends who did not redshirt(but they were told to do it by preschool) and their child has had an awful time for years upon years–his extreme immaturity has continued to be an issue and inhibited him from getting to take the gifted classes he later qualified for.
So my point is, the birthday and youngness is not nearly as important as how the preschool has assessed maturity and emotional readiness. Trust the experts who know your kid now, and if you do not have experts you can certainly get an educational psychologist to evaluate and make a recommendation.

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For the specific case of a kid who would have started kindergarten in fall 2020, redshirting may have made more sense because of the COVID-19 disruption.

But was it actually more common for that year versus other years?

Sorry, but this made me chuckle, though I am male. I am “somewhat awkward” at age 55 and I don’t think any amount of redshirting would fix it. Seriously, I think the correct call to make in a case like that is if she feels comfortable. And I hope she stays brainy and perhaps even a little awkward. Fitting in is overrated.

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In my observation of kids over almost 20 years as a parent I am of the opinion that “it all comes out in the wash”. I have seen December babies become valedictorians and January babies fail. Very hard to predict the future.

Here in NY the cutoff date is December 31. I have always abided by that rule, and not actually even sure if it is possible here to not adhere to it???

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Considering that the Finns don’t even start formal schooling until age 7 yet Finland does fine technologically and economically, it may not be a big deal if the pandemic disrupts a grade.
Though I suppose it could exacerbate inequality even more (richer/more educated households would educate their kids more at home).

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I have cousins who are sisters who each had boys on the same day in Sept. One sister moved to Florida before school, the other stayed in NY. The NY boy started school at 4 turning 5 a few weeks later. The Florida boy had to wait a year. It worked out well for both. The Florida cousin was thankful for that because the cousins’ mother was one to compare kids. The NY boy grew faster earlier, did well in school. While the FL boy struggled for awhile. If they had been in the same town, Grandma would have made FL boy feel awful about himself.

I also have a friend with a November baby in NY. They were undecided whether to send or not at 4. They enrolled the child in parochial for kindergarten with the plan of transferring to public school the following year. They just didn’t know if it would be for K or First grade. The child did end up repeating kindergarten but without the stigma of being held back among the public school kids.

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My SIL put her son in K, even though his preschool teacher told her to wait (birthday close to cutoff). She went back to teaching that year, so had the benefit of full-day K instead of any daycare. And then the next year he went into a transitional 1st grade class (remember those?), and then the year after that into a regular 1st grade class. The transitional 1st grade option allowed him to mature and her to get an extra year of NOT having to pay for daycare when he went to K at age 4.

I also wanted to comment on the issue of some private schools encouraging redshirting. I remember reading some years back on another message board how one private preschool in a ritzy NYC metro area suburb encouraged parents whose children had birthdays after MARCH or was it from March on?) to redshirt them, no matter the maturity of the child.

I don’t think there is as much stigma of this as there was generations ago (although when I was in school, a LOT of boys were held back in 3rd grade, usually for maturity reasons, and none of us thought anything of it either).

A boy I was a nanny for has a Dec birthday, but he was really, really smart and was accepted to a gifted program at a public school for K. He did great in the program, but the next year they moved the program to a very low income area. The mom didn’t feel safe with that arrangement so enrolled him in a Country Day program. That school made NO exceptions for kids entering in the wrong age group, so since he was 5, he was in K. No problem. He went on to be an NMF, Yale, Georgetown law…no issue repeating a grade.

Privates get a double benefit from redshirting:
More mature college applicants
And
1 more year of tuition (granted, the top NYC privates aren’t exactly short of applicants).

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