On "Red-shirting" Kindergarteners

Several readers had some thoughts on this practice of holding back a child to enter kindergarten much later than at age five.

I came across a couple of good articles on this topic I wanted to pass along.
From the Bright blog, Everything You Need to Know about "Redshirting"

Kindergarten’s role as “the new first grade” was further cemented when — beginning in the mid-1970s — many states began to raise their cutoff dates, resulting in a consistently older pool of students, and consequently raising teachers’ expectations for behavior and learning skills.

Is redshirting effective?

Researchers have found varied results. While some studies assert that younger students are more likely to underperform on standardized tests, and that older students may fare better academically or take on more leadership roles, a number of other studies have demonstrated the opposite. In 2006, one comprehensive study noted that adult students who had been redshirted were actually slightly less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree, and earned less in the workforce on average. The only benefit their slightly older age seemed to offer them, researchers noted, was an enhanced ability in organized sports. Other studies have shown that older students demonstrate a lack of motivation in class, and might even have lower IQ scores than their non-redshirted peers.

What’s next for redshirting?

Most school districts do not track or officially encourage or discourage redshirting. However, the nation’s largest school district, New York City, has adopted policies that make the practice much more difficult for parents.

I note that this blog is funded by the Gates Foundation but this is one of the more straight-forward blogs I have seen.

The second article is from Slate - The Downside of Redshirting

At what age should children go to kindergarten? 
At what age should your child go to kindergarten? 
What if these questions appear to have different answers?

A new study suggests that the effects of kindergarten redshirting are more serious and long-term than one might have thought.

As Elizabeth Weil noted in a great piece on redshirting in the New York Times Magazine last year, almost half the states have pushed back their birthday cutoffs since 1975, several of them fairly recently.

It's easy to see what the states are up to: They're worried about test scores, and they figure that older kids plus academic kindergarten will produce better ones.  

If this delay did help, we could expect to see a cheery rise in the scores of 17-year-olds along with the rise in the number of 6-year-old kindergartners. Instead, the basic level of proficiency of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Education Progress "has not risen at a rate that would suggest the majority of students are learning at a grade level higher than they were 20 years ago," Deming and Dynarski write.

But guess what?  It's probably not good for lower-income students whose parents can't do this and

There is substantial evidence that entering school later reduces educational attainment (by increasing high school drop out rates) and depresses lifetime earnings (by delaying entry into the job market)," the authors write. Also, "recent stagnation in the high school and college completion rates of young people is partly explained by their later start in primary school."

No evidence of a lasting redshirting benefit, though, isn't the same as convincing evidence of no benefit. What a lot of parents really want to know is whether redshirting improves a kid's chances of grabbing the brass ring—admission to an elite college. Deming and Dynarski say they are "exploring whether age effects persist in this competitive arena."

Historically,

This does not mean that redshirting upper-middle-class kids turns them into high-school drop-outs. Deming and Dynarski show that in 1968, 96 percent of 6-year-olds were enrolled in first grade or higher. In 2005, the rate was 84 percent.

Redshirting explains two-thirds of the change, the authors find, and changes in state laws explain the rest.

The kids who start later because of the legal changes—a group that is socio-economically broad—are probably fueling the second trend that Deming and Dynarski point to: fewer 17-year-olds in 12^th grade or in college, which translates to fewer years of school for more kids. Laws in the United States (as opposed to some European countries) mandate that kids stay in school, not for a requisite number of years but until they are 18. "Poor kids are disproportionately likely to drop out as soon as they can, when they turn 18," Dynarski explains. "If they start at 6 instead of 5, that's one year less of school."

 Last,

The place where redshirting is a proven advantage is the sports field. For example, 60 percent more Major League Baseball players are born in August than in July, and the birthday cutoff for youth baseball is July 31. But athletics, Dynarski points out, isn't academics.