Redshirting in preschool

[tgia413]

Hi there,

I was curious to see if there is any research-based backing for "redshirting"/having children repeat a year of preschool. This is something I've been thinking a lot about after an interesting and somewhat disheartening preschool observation experience for my child (he will be 4 at the end of this month - May).

For context, the kindergarten cutoff in my state is September 1. Our state also offers optional PreK-4 (partially funded hours) for children who turn 4 by September 1. My son has been attending a local preschool since he was 1. This preschool has a good reputation, seems to be a healthy blend of developmentally appropriate play and academics, and is located in a unique setting (I won't give a lot of details so as not to out myself!). The waiting list is generally lengthy. The area where we live has long waiting lists for most preschools, so my son has been on another waiting list as well. We were offered a spot there for this year (3/4s class) but declined it to stay at our current school. They reached out again to offer us a spot for the final PreK-4 year, so we decided to try out the observation day (which was presented to us as a "fun" day to see the classroom and meet some of the teachers with the current class).

After the observation (about 2.5 hours), the teacher told me that based on my son's late May birthday, she would recommend repeating the 3/4s class. She shared that most children in their school who are born in April or later are "redshirted" so they will get an extra year and be the oldest in their Kindergarten classes. I believe part of this is to give an advantage for private school admissions (of which we have several in our area). My son's current school has suggested nothing to this effect and he is on track to move up to PreK-4 in August with his cohort. He is on the younger side of his class now with a lot of the children having turned 4 in the winter, but in the other 3/4s class there are several children younger than him who won't be 4 until the summer. I feel this is very typical.

I teach Kindergarten very locally to the school where he went for the observation and in a typical year, may have 1 or 2 students who repeat PreK because their birthdays are extremely close to the cutoff (I'm talking August or even after the first day of school closer to September). It does not seem to be the norm to redshirt any birthdays starting in April. It sounded very absurd to me, tbh.

Is there any research out there that supports this mass redshirting of preschoolers? I know lots of parents want to give their child "the gift of time" or a leg up as being older in the class, but at this point I feel deciding to have my child graduate high school at 19 based solely on his birthday is a bit extreme.

The director of the school will be reaching out to me to discuss enrollment, and at this point I feel it is likely they will be pushing us to repeat 3/4s if they are wanting us to enroll there. I'd like to have some solid research to back my position (aside from just "he's a May born boy!")

Also curious to hear any similar experiences or opinions!

 

[susienaps]

@tgia413 I have a summer birthday kiddo. He's currently 4, and will turn 5 over the summer. He's going to start Kindergarten in the fall. (For context I also have an October birthday current Kindergartener)

Everyone has really strong opinions about red-shirting, it seems. And I guess I'm no exception. We considered red shirting for 4, especially because he was having social-emotional issues at school. I'll admit that some of the articles about red-shirting make it sound like a great idea. We gotta give those young kids (especially boys!) a chance to catch up, right?!

But I don't know if the articles match with reality. The reality is that 4 is more complex than his social-emotional difficulties. He's at a 1st grade level for mathematics skills right now. He's reading skills match end of kindergarten goals, too. All of the education professionals and child psychologists we've met with told me NOT to red-shirt. They are all worried that if he's bored with the curriculum (which is likely already the case), he's going to have even more behavioral struggles.

I also worry about the effects of a kindergarten class with kids as much as 18 months (or more) apart in age. Age makes a huge difference for young kids. My two kids are 20 months apart in age and I witness first hand, daily, how much those 20 months matter. My two do NOT belong in the same educational group. The expectations that are set for 6 are just not appropriate for 4, and the expectations we set for 4 are insufficient for 6. When kids are red shirted, I think it can create a poor experience for the entire group. Yes, teachers do try to address individual student needs, but students are also part of a classroom community, so there is some uniformity in expectations.

Of course, I am sure there are some kids that truly need the extra year. I imagine they would not be ready in most or all areas of development (motor skills, social-emotional, self-regulation, academics) and I don't think if it would solely be summer birthday kids. But, I don't think this is most students. Most students should be with their same age cohort.

 

[rphoenix3d]

@susienaps I’ve tried explaining this to people before and you explained it SO well. Thank you!

 

[tgia413]

@susienaps You summed up a lot of my feelings in a much better way! As a Kindergarten teacher I haven’t yet experienced a huge age gap like that on a wide scale, but I have had some years where there are kids who are 4 on the first day of school with classmates who turn 6 a few weeks later. It usually evens out by the middle of the year in terms of maturity levels unless there is an extenuating circumstance. I can’t imagine a class with kids who are 4 and other kids who are 6 on the first day of school.

 

[goldielocks]

@susienaps I’m not sure the age-inappropriate expectations can be explained as just due to redshirting, though. There may be a vicious cycle element to it now, but I’ve heard some theorize that it’s more the other way around (redshirting increased because we made kindergarten inappropriate for younger kids).

FWIW anecdotal but I live in a December cutoff state where I don’t think redshirting is super common, and I’ve still heard parents complain that kindergarten has too little play/too high expectations of how long kids can sit still.

 

[daisym]

@tgia413 I did my master’s thesis on redshirting years ago. At the time, the overwhelming consensus of the literature was that there are short term advantages that disappear by late grade school, and by high school redshirted kids actually have worse outcomes.

I also put my money where my mouth is. I have a 6 year old son with significant ADHD a late July birthday. He’s about to finish 1st grade, and did just fine academically and socially.

 

[holywave21]

@tgia413 This sounds absurd to me. It’s just delaying school entry by a year. There’s a bunch of research on redshirting and the answer isn’t totally clear, but that research is usually done with kids born, as your mentioned, in the late summer or fall. Never heard of holding back a kid with a May birthday because of their birthday. I see absolutely no advantages to making your kid older than everyone else in his grade, some by almost 2 years. (Think of all the kids who aren’t redshirted who have fall birthdays and will graduate high school at 17!)

If there are concerns about your son developmentally, talk to a school psychologist for an assessment, not a preschool that wants your money. He will also grow and mature a lot between now and the fall. I was a preschool teacher for a bit and worked with a kid with a September birthday who was in the 3-4 class for the third year in a row. He was so bored and just talked to adults (and showed off his reading skills). If your kid is typical, I’d imagine he’d be even more bored.

 

[tgia413]

@holywave21 Thanks for your comment! I feel the same as you, especially coming from a Kindergarten teaching background where it can be really, really difficult to have an age span of a year and a half in the same class. There is a big difference between a child who just turned 5 and one who will be turning 7 soon. I also don't consider May to really be a "late" birthday. His birthday will always fall at the very end of the school year, but I'm used to knowing a lot of kids with summer birthdays and they mostly seem to keep up just fine.

I kind of feel the same way that a lot of this could be financially driven. Instead of getting one year of tuition out of us, it could potentially be two and they'd be preying on us wanting to give our son an advantage of being older when he moves on to elementary school. It felt a little icky to me, especially after only meeting him for 2.5 hours. These weren't teachers who have known him all year. We have no concerns about him developmentally - he's articulate, social, starting to be interested in learning letter sounds/phonics, etc. His fine motor skills could use some refining but I know this is something they focus on even more in PreK-4 in preparation for K. I'm sure if he repeated his current PreK-3 class he'd likely be really solid in all of the skills taught this year, but also run the risk of feeling a lot "older" than the young 3s who will be moving up to that class next year.

 

[peterjjj]

@tgia413 The financial incentive was my first thought, too.

 

[vanerahelson]

@holywave21

(Think of all the kids who aren’t redshirted who have fall birthdays and will graduate high school at 17!)

That was me! Undiagnosed ASD and ADHD too. Finished college in 3 years so I graduated that at 20. As a little kid it was decided I was 'ready' to go to school, and although school was its own special kind of hell, I am so glad I was never held back and had to spend any extra time in any school setting. Kids need supports in the form of therapy, life skills, and OT in my opinion. It's easier to learn how to navigate life and self-advocate with those supports than by letting them flounder in any grade year without them.

 

[nhule8805]

@tgia413 I agree that this seems absurd. I remember when my brother was a kid my mom was trying to figure out what to do (he was born Sept 17th and the cut off was the end of Sept.) in the end he went to school and was the youngest. He did well academically and socially.

Moms I know now are talking about red shirting their kids who were born in May and June because they aren’t “ready”. One mom was basing her decision for her second child based only off of the fact that her older daughter had a hard time in school until HS.

I understand if a kid is genuinely a hard time and born in September or August, but keeping you kid back just so they will have an advantage seems wrong/unethical.

This is all opinion/anecdotal and not actual science.

 

[tgia413]

@nhule8805 Thanks for sharing!

I am of the mindset that SOMEONE is always going to be the youngest in the class. Where is the line drawn? If we start having kids born 6 months before the cutoff repeat, PreK suddenly is Kindergarten, and so on. Plus you'll always have the kids whose parents don't have the means to pay for an additional year of preschool and now we have a Kindergarten class with several 6.5 year olds and a few 4 year olds.

It would be interesting to see if some of the children repeating PreK would've naturally done the same maturing during their Kindergarten year if they would've gone on with their original cohort.

 

[petrasophie]

@tgia413 You (and the poster above you) have hit the nail on the head. There will always be people who cannot afford to redshirt. Typical 4 year olds and 6.5 year olds are not in the same place developmentally. It is not fair to the 4s/low 5s to put a bunch of >6s in their class. The 4s’ behavior will seem challenging by comparison, their skills will seem to be lacking by comparison, and we run the risk of expecting even more from the 4s than we already do.

Imo, it is unethical to redshirt your kid for no reason other than a vague feeling that it will help them get ahead. If actual professionals have decided the child will be unlikely to succeed with their cohort, then fine, redshirt away. Otherwise, that’s a no from me.

 

[tgia413]

@petrasophie I agree with you 100%. I think a big part of this "not ready" trend is the fact that we are expecting more of 5 year olds in their first year of elementary school and the expectations are probably better suited for 6 year olds now. So in order to have your child be "ready," you're told to wait until they're 6. Then the older child excels because they have had 2 years of preschool that is more like Kindergarten and Kindergarten is easy after that. The children who follow the normal trajectory are likely to struggle more because they're being compared to children a lot older than them in all aspects.

I see a lot of parents arguing that they don't want their 17 year old going to college, but even with a June/July birthday, that 17 year old would still turn 18 before starting college. It's kind of a flimsy argument to me. I have no idea who in my graduating high school class was still 17 when we graduated and I doubt it really matters now.

 

[daisym]

@tgia413 I skipped a grade, so I was 17 for all but a month of my freshman year. It was fine. An extra year wouldn’t have improved my academic performance.

 

[goldielocks]

@tgia413 Yeah I’ve never understood the big deal about 17-year-olds in college. I was 17 for my entire first semester of college and it was fine. Not turning 21 until halfway through senior year was probably the most annoying part, but I lived lol.

 

[edwinoel]

@petrasophie Those reasons are why the public school system in my city doesn't allow redshirting. (You can of course go to private schools, but that's on your own dime)

 

[nhule8805]

@tgia413 Exactly. I would be in support of some sort of rule limited redshirting to kids who were born a few weeks within the deadline and had some sort of note from their doctor or teacher in support of holding them back.

 

[brennansb]

@tgia413 Our daughter is the youngest in her 1st grade class, she turned 6 when everyone else was turning 7, and they have two 8 year olds in their midsts. We have seen the 8 year olds interacting with the younger kids and you can tell they get annoyed. They definitely act more composed than the rest of the class, their vocabulary is wider and I’m sure they’re performing better than the younger kids but we worry about their social development as much as we worry about our daughter’s role as the youngest and at least we can hold our daughter back if she doesn’t socially perform but I don’t think you can skip grades because of social struggles.

 

[olivemcr]

@tgia413 Just anecdotally, I have a summer birthday and was 17 when I graduated from high school. I can’t imagine being 19.