"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.

Opportunity lost - but we must perservere

Recently, Maureen McFadden, news anchor of WNDU television, conducted a forty-five minute interview with former South Bend School Corporation Superintendent Dr. Robert Zimmerman.

Ms. McFadden did a very nice job of drawing Dr. Zimmerman out. In early part of the interview, Dr. Zimmerman was quite reserved and diplomatic in his responses to questions about how he and the SBSC Board got along. Later on, he was much more animated when asked about his accomplishments and the challenges we still face.

"If you look at the 20 months we were here, we implemented an awful lot of initiatives, we did our study and brought the community involved in the Career and Technical Education and created a five year plan for that," he explains.

Last year saw some improvement in South Bend's graduation rate and ISTEP, but Zimmerman says the biggest issue facing South Bend Schools is not the teachers, the board, or the superintendent.

When Ms. McFadden asked this question, we got a pretty clear view of opportunity lost for our children.

McFadden: "Now that you've distanced yourself, what do you think is needed for South Bend schools to succeed?"

Zimmerman: "I continue to think that it's got to be an initiative of the entire community. We really have got to get our hands around how we deal with children of poverty. Generational poverty continues to be the number one difficult issue that any large urban district is dealing with. Most of the kids that struggled in our system were kids who came out of generational poverty."

He says a lack of education affects the whole community, and we can all make a difference."You can do your part by stepping in there and being a mentor and reading to a child and helping to make a difference in that one child's life," he says.

And he's proud of what he did in 18 short months on the job.

"I feel that I can walk away, in the short time that I was here, and not second-guess my reasons for making the decisions I did. My decisions were always around what was best for the kids."

full video at: http://www.wndu.com/specialfeatures/headlines/27156489.html#

Dr. Zimmerman described in great detail the challenges of engaging students from multi-generation poverty households, and what it takes to turn them around. The link above with take you to the site where you can watch the entire interview. It's well worth your time.

As I watched the interview, I saw someone who probably knows as much about the impact of generational poverty on childrens' futures as anyone I've come across. His recounting of conversations with students in this trap was revealing and amplified that his awareness comes not just from study - but from practical experience as well.

It was also helpful to me as a School Board candidate, that an expert identified the single biggest challenge to our success, as what I've always felt it was. That, and the fact he was positive that steady progress was attainable, energizes me as I try to make my case to my fellow citizens.