Yes, it’s an Americanism from college sports which have all sorts of arcane rules for student athletes. As far as I know the etymology has nothing to do with Star Trek.
Right, but that 1/12th is developmentally much more likely to be ready. Take it the other way–if you switched the cut off back a month, are the ones who are no longer the youngest now MORE ready learn to read? More able to sit still for however long Kinder teachers expect? As long as the class expectations stay the same, relative age does not have a steady relationship to achievement–if anything, that’s Gladstone’s mistake. I think his observations about height and basketball are relevant here: past a certain point, height becomes irrelevant. I’d argue the same is true for age.
I don’t think we are too far apart on this, but I guess I don’t think the individual reasons have to be THAT good. For example, half the country seems to start kids at 4 if their birthdays are before Jan first, and half the country puts the cut-off all the way back to September or August first. It seems to me if there’s that much variation within the official ranges, it’s just not that big of a deal. So if a kid is in that range, I’m pretty comfortable with parents making the call on either side–I’m just not convinced it’s a dramatic issue. And there are a ton of factors to consider: if you can afford really excellent pre-K and have great schools with lots of very good academics at the top end, where even the most advanced student will be fine, I think it’s really a different situation than if you are in the middle of nowhere with crappy rural schools and no local university.
I do think it’s important to be willing to reassess if and when it’s needed: for example, being willing to repeat kindergarten if it doesn’t take–or skip 1st.
I’m also a little sensitive about this because I still see a lot of parents who believe rushing their kids through school is inherently an admirable thing–and I’ve seen that put a lot of pressure on kids who would have been much better off with another year. I’ve also seen kids pulled out of advanced academic courses so they could graduate high school and start at a crappy local college a year earlier. There’s times where that makes sense–if there’s an issue with temperament–but it’s not best for the kid in many other cases. Probably half the kids I teach could have easily handled college at 14. But there’s precious few who would have been better off that way.
Sure, but that’s the reality parents face right now, so when they are making this choice it’s what they have to think about–not what would have been best for anyone a generation or more ago.
I take this subject seriously enough to have timed my pregnancy so that my daughter would be born in September, so she’d be one among the oldest in her cohort.
If a kid is average or above average developmentally, I don’t think the disadvantage that comes with being the youngest is going be significant. But I could see how a younger kid who also is extra immature for his/her age will be at risk for struggling a lot. It is sensible to take steps to mitigate that risk if you’re able to do so.
I have no idea where my daughter will fall on the immature-to-mature continuum, but I’d rather her be a little bored smarty-pants because she’s older than be a flailing and floundering half pint.
I started kindergarten at 4 1/2 and graduated HS and started college as a minor, at 17. Worked for me!
but still had to have your parents sign all your legal documents because you were considered a minor ?
How many legal documents do you think there are ? Both of my fall birthday kids started college at 17 and the only thing I remember signing was the tuition checks for their first semester. I suppose I might have signed the application , and if they applied for financial aid I would have had to sign those applications until they were over 24. But I didn’t have to sign anything when they registered for their first semester - if the bill wasn’t paid on time, the registration would simply have been cancelled.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I experienced the opposite of redshirting, and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
My experience was made worse by the timing. I skipped from 6th to 7th grade at mid-year. So went in to middle school (we called it Jr. High back then) after everyone had a half a year head start to establish cliques, pecking order, etc. It didn’t help at all that puberty came very late…it was the era of communal locker rooms.
Being a full year younger than my classmates was a severe social disadvantage, perhaps more so to my perception than in reality, but to a large extent believing oneself inferior is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Being a year older would, conversely, be a bit of a social edge, I suspect. I can’t really blame parents. So much socialization happens in the school years, and it is next to impossible to overcome a bad start by the time you are 20. Yes, I can fake confidence, even convincingly at times, but it induces a huge level of anxiety to do so.
Is that because you intend to toss them out on their own the next day? Serious question: some people believe in the “sink or swim” model.
I think I am beginning to understand better how we are talking past each other here. Your concern is being “ready” for the current KG curriculum but to me, and I think to most who are considering whether or not to hold their kids back, KG itself is not issue; the entire school career is.
These parents are not concerned so much about whether or not their kids can learn what is being presented in KG; the concern is whether or not over the years being the relatively oldest in their grade will give them a competitive advantage, as Gladstone says it will. And to that perspective whether or not everyone is “ready” for KG upon entry or not is immaterial to the relative age advantage throughout (if one believes that such matters over the long term). Shift it all one month and any possible relative age competitive advantage would stay the same. Some 10% will still be the youngest 10% and some 10% the highest.
And I also don’t particularly care how they do in KG as I do not believe that such is very predictive of future academics. I think being “ready” for KG is over-rated. Because cognitive development is often so nonlinear. Let me illustrate with an anecdote of my eldest. He was not age on the cusp at all but looking back he was not developmentally ready for an academically focussed KG upon entry. (And trust me our neighborhood school was academically focussed and full of parents constantly worried that their gifted children were not being challenged enough or correctly as they did the igloo project for the kids.) In fact he finished KG a bit frustrated as he still could not read at all while all his friends were all reading well. About two months into first grade though it clicked. Not sure if the best metaphor is that it was as if someone snuck in at night opened his hood and installed a new chip, or an Amish house-raising, but overnight he suddenly could pick up any book, up through fifth grade level and read it easily. He is now, with an after-college detour teaching in Japan for a few years and then going back to take the science classes he did not take undergrad, doing well in Med School. Like me never gifted but smart enough to do well with good habits of mind, intellectual curiosity, and a decent work ethic. Readiness at age 5 was of no predictive value.
I do not think being the relative outlier in a class cohort in either direction serves a student well and that applies to the larger groups who are neither significantly delayed or gifted. Always having school be relatively easier is at least as much a problem as having it be difficult. I am biased perhaps in thinking that giftedness or even “intelligence” is less important than habits of mind, including learning to apply oneself and having intellectual curiosity. My own personal story some more: the very same parents who were pretty sure I was slow at KG entry later became convinced I was exceptionally bright and that I was doing well in school because I was naturally so smart … whereas my brother did well because he “worked hard” … managing to insult both of us. Hello! Applying myself here! My parents were no idiots and they did their honest best to love and look out for their kids. If they were that bad at figuring out where we were each cognitively at and where we’d be then I cannot believe too many others would be much better.
I agree completely on the non-linear nature of intellectual advancement, which is exactly why I don’t see why it’s such a problem if each cohort spans 18 months instead of 12 months, and I don’t feel like those older kids are going to have a meaningful advantage over the younger kids. On one hand, you’re arguing that those kids don’t have better outcomes, because academic readiness is so non-linear (which I agree with), but on the other hand, you’re arguing that those kids have a comparative advantage, and so are finagling the system to gain an unfair advantage over less ready kids. But if it isn’t doing them any good, how is it doing the other kids any harm?
Why does it need to be an extraordinary reason? There are million decisions parents make that seem to me to potentially have a greater impact than this. You say “it’s not good for school to be too easy”, but where is the evidence that delaying a year makes it much easier, especially over the course of all 12 grades?
Gladstone’s argument was very specifically about sports, and about a situation where highly successful players received massively disproportionate resources, leveraging their accidental advantage. I don’t think that’s the case in k-12 education.
Huh. Odd that we each see the same thing as reasons to come to opposite conclusions! 
I see 12 months at five years of age as already a wide spread that will contain children of very wide cognitive and social levels. I am not an educator but one of many reasons I have great admiration for KG and first grade teachers is the challenge they face teaching to such a wide berth of abilities. There is some possibility over the years that some of the oldest will have issues exacerbated by being among the very oldest and some possibility that some of the youngest will. I see increasing that spread as a increasing those risks to both sides, increasing the risk that the redshirted child will be a greater outlier, and increasing the same risk to the child who was not redshirted as well. It was of some risk of being an outlier standing out already to be a child who is in the youngest two weeks of your grade cut off; if now there are less than half as many like you in the grade because many of those at your birthdate and even older were held back (for the perceived competitive advantage) and you are in a classroom that has some significant number more who are 13 plus months older than you, then you are made more different and relatively younger (to the mean or median of the class) than you were.
Let’s try to separate the different components of the discussion.
On average, over the course of at least the grade school years, will a child who is in the top twelfth of any twelve month spread of kids be developmentally (physically, cognitively, socio-emotionally) advanced of one who is the bottom twelfth? Yes. Of course.
IF development was completely linear then parents and educators could look at a child at five who was within a month or so of the age cut-off and say: “Is relatively immature for age, will stay immature for age, should be placed in the group that is more in accordance with his or her (and more commonly this is his) developmental age than chronological age.” IF this was the case and was what was done then redshirting could hypothetically decrease the number of outlier kids in a classroom, to the benefit of both the individual child and the entire class. Of course it is not. Given that development is, we agree, not so linear, that assessment is pretty worthless. Age is a better predictor of where the child will be developmentally in a year or two years time than a spot assessment by parents in July or August.
You are correct that I believe the evidence shows that parents are mistaken to believe that redshirting gives their children a competitive advantage academically. It may harm the child and of course it does come with some costs. (That link is a decent read btw.)
If I had to choose a birth date for my kids for academic outcomes I’d choose the middle of the academic year.
MandaJO, a GQ related to this thread that I hope you may be able to help answer. Thanks.
Exactly. This was over 35 years ago, but I don’t recall my mother having to sign any legal documents related to my college application and acceptance, or relating to me moving into the dorms - I went to college about 150 miles away. I know she had to sign forms for my financial aid but that would not have changed if I were over 18.
MandaJO, are you ever asked by parents of kids due to enter KG for your opinion about whether or not they should hold their kid back?
If you are what factors do you use to formulate your response and why?
No, I’m at the other end of the process. Anyone who asks me that is asking as a friend, not a professional. And my answer depends on the kid–but, again, my strongest advice would be to not stress too much but be open to being flexible. If finances allow, I think private K is a good compromise, because you can repeat public K or go to first. But that’s a 1% thing.
I more often get kids who want to graduate early. I generally recommend against it unless there is a plan beyond “go to college early”. If they really hate high school, I am happy to talk about alternatives, but it pride is not enough. And it is often pride at work.
If nothing else, graduating early makes college admissions tricky, especially depending on when you decide to do it. I can generally get a kid into a better school with better funding if they go through the traditional cycle. Part of that is just taking the big tests later, after more schooling.
Does the shift in expectations for kindergarten change your advice to parents?
Me? No not at all. Being “ready for KG” is to me not such a big deal as I think most who are old enough but “not ready for KG” will be ready for first grade just fine anyway.
I’m asked but usually I just serve as a sounding board for what the parents are considering and mostly parse anything I say with qualifying it as just my personal opinion. The one input I will sometimes offer is in regards to the kids I can tell are highly likely going to hit puberty on the early or late side (you can tell from the combination of where the kid is on height percentiles compared to the parent’s height percentiles coupled with a family history, not hard). Sexist as it might sound socio-emotionally a girl who is likely to hit puberty early may want to avoid also being one of the oldest in her grade, and a boy who is likely to hit it late, especially one who is from shorter parents, may want to avoid being the very youngest. They are IMHO at least factors worth including in the decision mix.
What are your thoughts about gap years?
I think gap years make sense if and only if you have a reason for taking one and a concrete plan for what you are going to do. If you vaguely think you “aren’t ready” or “need a break” and vaguely plan to get a job, that’s a recipe for picking up bad habits: living with your folks and having way too much disposable income from a part time job and no expenses can too easily lead to smoking way too much dope and watching too much South Park. But if the lab you’ve been interning at has a year-long project they’d like you to work on, or if you want to go to Paris and work as an au pair and polish your French, or if you have an aunt who runs a homeless shelter in Atlanta and you want to go live with her and volunteer there for a year–those can be good uses of a year. But opportunities like that are few and far between and are mostly, honestly, going to be available only to the very affluent.
This is even more true with the kids I work with: virtually all my students are high-achieving, but at the same time, virtually all are some combination of low-income, first-generation college student and immigrant/first-generation American. With kids like that, we know that they are vastly more likely to finish college, and to finish it more quickly, if we get them into a residential 4-year school as quickly as possible. We also try real hard to make sure none of them are so burned out or disillusioned by school that they feel like they need a break.
Very interesting discussion. Redshirting doesn’t really happen in the UK, and is more likely, in fact, to come up in secondary school (11-16 age group; after 16 it’s more flexible anyway) than primary, but it has been proposed by the current govt that summer-born children are allowed to start school later.
They are already allowed to start school later in a sense, in that the law only says that children must be in year 1 or the equivalent for homeschooling, etc, in the September after they turn 5, but in practice local authorities and schools have a policy of starting school in the September after they turn 4, which is called Reception year. Allowing your child to start school later thus only means missing out Reception year - and that year of school is governed in a different way to the numbered years: it’s much more play-based and includes a lot of “this is how to cope with school” stuff. Year 1 kids are already expected to know that. So starting your kid a year late is not a huge advantage. Especially since you could just homeschool your kid or send them to a Montessori school for as long as you think is appropriate anyway. In essence, the kid starting state school later does not actually finish school older than his peers.
(The link about the "school admissions code makes it sound like a Summer-born kid can actually start in reception, but in reality that’s extremely unusual and really only applies to special/non-mainstream schools).
The change would mean that a child born (like mine) at or near the cut-off would be able to defer for a year and then start in Reception.
For her, I think it might have worked out well and I did actually have a brief look into it (she has special needs and is very young for her age), but OTOH I would have had to pay for childcare myself for another year - childcare that wasn’t easily available for a kid that age. In reality, the only people it would affect would be children where childcare costs weren’t a factor, and, at age 4/5, that’s not many kids. In reality most parents breathe a sigh of relief when they finally don’t have to pay for full-time childcare.
How does it work in the areas in the States where it’s offered, re wealth of parents? I don’t suppose there’d be any easily-available had data on that but I have a strong suspicion that wealthier areas tend to choose redshirting more than non-wealthy ones.
FWIW my daughter has the fortune to be gifted at art so able to have at least one year in between school and uni where she goes to an art foundation course, since that’s the usual route for people wanting to study her subject in the UK. She’s on that course now and is, still, slightly alienated because we live in London and the majority of the students are actually rich overseas students a fair bit older than her and developmentally far ahead (you don’t send a kid to study abroad at 18 if they’re very young for their age, generally), but at least she has a year where she’s doing something that is actually the norm for her subject, and the course has requirements to support her that don’t apply to university-level courses. For example, they’re supporting her with applying to uni; even if she then defers for a year she will have the place in hand (this is usually allowed).
No way could my daughter have coped with university this year and she can’t do the kind of jobs kids her age usually do, like working in retail or waitressing, so a gap year without her happening to be good at art would have been a year of pretty much hanging around and failing to get work.
Sometimes a gap year is just that, a great, gaping gap. Kids who are behind enough at age 4 that their parents are willing to admit that their kid is behind rather than crow that little Johnny is brilliant are more likely to fall into that gap.