They found that the redshirted kids performed worse on 10th-grade tests, were twice as likely to drop out of school, and were less likely to graduate from college the only advantage to redshirting was that redshirted kids were marginally more likely to play varsity sports in high school. They compared what became of kids who had been redshirted to what became of kids who had been young for their class but not redshirted. In 2006, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California analyzed national data collected over many years from 15,000 26-year-olds. And even if redshirting might not be beneficial when effects are averaged, there could be a subset of kids who really benefit from the extra “gift of time.” But before I get into that, let me summarize some of the studies. That’s because the impact of redshirting is very difficult to evaluate, as kids who are held back are fundamentally different in many ways from kids who go to kindergarten on time, so the conclusions of some studies might be flawed. Yet some experts say that redshirting can be extremely appropriate and helpful for certain kids, and they aren’t convinced by the research pooh-poohing the practice. Gaming the system this way, of course, puts other kids at a disadvantage. If little Delia is the star of kindergarten, they scheme, maybe she’ll ride the wave all the way to Harvard. The practice has become even more controversial in recent years over claims that some parents do it for the wrong reasons: They redshirt their kids not because their kids aren’t ready for school, but because, in the age of parenting as competitive sport, holding them out might give them an academic, social and athletic edge over their peers. The National Association of Early Childhood Specialists and the National Association for the Education of Young Children fiercely oppose it, saying that redshirting “labels children as failures at the outset of their school experience.” Studies that have evaluated how well redshirted kids fare compared to their schooled-on-time peers conclude that redshirting provides no long-term academic or social advantages and can even put kids at a disadvantage. This so-called “academic redshirting,” a nod to the practice of keeping young athletes on the bench until they are bigger and more skilled, is highly controversial. They wait a year so that their savvy 6-year-olds can better handle the curriculum. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that an estimated 9 percent of parents don’t send their 5-year-olds to kindergarten anymore. As many experts I spoke to for this column told me, kindergarten is the new first grade. Many schools have ditched play-based exploratory programs in favor of direct instruction and regular testing, in part thanks to the pressure to improve grade-school test scores. I look back fondly on kindergarten - I remember soaring around the playground as an eagle with my friend Kathleen - but kindergarten today is a vastly different beast than it was 30 years ago. The families were excited but also mildly terrified. Recently two of my neighbors sent their 5-year-olds on the school bus for the first time.
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