"Redshirting" Kindergartners - what the studies tell us

It is an increasingly popular trend to delay entry to the public school system - particularly in more affluent households (and particularly with boys). The thinking is, roughly, to gain social and physical advantage. Many school systems don't discourage this practice because these older students often test slightly better than their more age-appropriate classmates. This reflects thinking of short term advantages for school status as opposed to long term benefit to our children.

It turns out that there are significant downsides to this practice. In Indiana, these are more pronounced.

The birthday cutoffs span six months, from Indiana, where a child must turn 5 by July 1 of the year he enters kindergarten, to Connecticut, where he must turn 5 by Jan. 1 of his kindergarten year. Children can start school a year late, but in general they cannot start a year early. As a result, when the 22 kindergartners entered Jane Andersen's class at the Glen Arden Elementary School near Asheville, N.C., one warm April morning, each brought with her or him a snack and a unique set of gifts and challenges, which included for some what's referred to in education circles as ''the gift of time.'' ( from the New York Times )

From a recent Harvard study (by David Deming and Susan Dynarski), we note changes in Kindergarten composition:

Forty years ago, 96% of six-year-old children were enrolled in first grade or above. As of 2005, the figure was just 84%. The school attendance rate of six-year-olds has not decreased; rather, they are increasingly likely to be enrolled in kindergarten rather than first grade. This paper documents this historical shift. We show that only about a quarter of the change can be proximately explained by changes in school entry laws; the rest reflects "academic redshirting," the practice of enrolling a child in a grade lower than the one for which he is eligible. We show that the decreased grade attainment of six-year-olds reverberates well beyond the kindergarten classroom. Recent stagnation in the high school and college completion rates of young people is partly explained by their later start in primary school. The relatively late start of boys in primary school explains a small but significant portion of the rising gender gaps in high school graduation and college completion. Increases in the age of legal school entry intensify socioeconomic differences in educational attainment, since lower-income children are at greater risk of dropping out of school when they reach the legal age of school exit.

OK, you wonder, what are the downsides? Also from the Harvard paper - the conclusion:

First, increases in the age of legal school entry intensify socioeconomic differences in educational attainment. Lower-income children are at greater risk of dropping out of school when they reach the legal age of school exit; increases in age at school entry therefore disproportionately decrease their completed education. Further, young children who enter school later spend more time in unequal environments. Whether at home or in formal care, children who start school later linger in settings whose quality is positively correlated with parents’ human capital. This point is exactly the one made by advocates of early childhood interventions: insofar as home environments are unequal, delaying public schooling increases the likelihood of unequal outcomes (Kirp, 2007; Heckman and Masterov, 2007).

Second, red-shirting disadvantages children who enter school on time. In kindergarten, the most advantaged children are the oldest in the class, reinforcing socioeconomic gaps in school readiness: “[C]hildren who may be at academic risk from factors associated with poverty face the additional hurdle of being compared to advantaged children 12 to 15 months older. . . . the youngest children may appear to be immature and unready to tackle the tasks their significantly older classmates find challenging and intriguing” (Crosser, 1998). Younger children in the classroom are more likely to be labeled as
learning disabled (Elder and Lubotsky, forthcoming). Ironically, the racial and socioeconomic segregation of the United States softens this dynamic, since in our school districts the most advantaged and least advantaged children rarely share a classroom. But the standardized test scores of children of the same grade are compared across districts and states, and the relative ages of these children will contribute to the distance between the scores of rich and poor districts.

(much more source material is linked in the left margin of the blog)

As Dr. Robert Zimmerman put it, the most challenging aspect we face is creating successful outcomes for our most disadvantaged children. Optional Kindergarten and delayed entry don't seem to work towards overcoming this hurdle. Maybe we should try something else.