Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Kindergarten redshirting on 60 minutes tonight

There's a link on the 60 Minutes site to the full segment. The research on the "pro" side was Malcolm Gladwell's incremental / snowball advantage theory and a paper by a woman researcher (forgot her name). An academic on the other side scoffed and said that the research is split.

Monetfan- sorry if I got so upset but I live in the great football state of Texas too so I understand the prolific red shirting for sports! I guess I have given up on expecting the school to provide any serious acceleration academics for my son- because I really believe a public school's only job is require a basic education- those parents on this board that are able to get more out fo them are lucky. My school does the best they can- the rest is up to me. When my child in the beginning of 3rd grades tests in the 87th percentile of 10th graders for Science knowledge- there is nothing that school can do- and he is not ready to attend high school or middle school- it would be the worst thing i could do for him. The principal just looked at me shocked in his 504(for PANDAS) when I talked about how can you manage the academic needs when she looked at his scores. We go to an exemplary school too.

My son is a good athlete and I get pressure all the time- why isn't he playing sports any more you know "Johnny" really wants him to play.( I also never let him play footall- even before he got sick). My head wants to spin around and say don't you remember he has that autoimmune issue and we lived through hell and it just has not worked and his health is too important??? Instead I say- he's just going to be a different kid- he'd rather have his nose in a book( I leave out it is a high school biology book). Parents probably think I push him academically because we do an outside math class(common in our school district- especially for the Asian and Indian children) and by the books he reads- but it has nothing to do with pushing it's finding the way to challenge him and his interests- granted I do push him some because as smart as he is- he would play video games or turn into a slug in front of the TV if I let him. If I let him just do the class work he would be in a world of trouble every day since he needs more than his typical school work.
Regarding the 15% it does not sound off to me- there are so many preemies these days that survive when in the past they would not have and normally their academic development needs to be counted from when they should of been born not when they were born- many of them need to be redshirted too.
In a class of 20- 15% would mean 3 kids need to be redshirted- that really does not seem off to me. My daughter was 1 of those kids, the preemie twins add the other 2- there is your 15%.
I wish you luck if grade acceleration is what you want and WOW! If your child can socially handle!!!!

I had a child who fell right on the school date cut-off for K enrollment and red-shirting is very prevalent in our district. When I was deliberating the issue, there was only a few bits of advice that I could find:

1) You won't know if you made the right choice until 3rd or 4th grade.
2) If you don't red-shirt, your child will be going to school with many children who are 16 and 17 months older than she is.


The impression I got was that there was no "downside" in holding them back, which knowing what I know now about bright/gifted kids is absolutely ridiculous.

Anytime I hear of someone thinking about red-shirting, I try to remember to send them "What a Child Doesn't Learn".

Yes. Whatever wisdom there may be to redshirting kindergartners doesn't apply in the same way to gifted kids, and applies even less to highly gifted kids. Acceleration is often the best choice overall despite the emotional/physical age mismatch. For kids past a certain threshold, the argument about being seen as one of the smarter ones just doesn't apply-- that's not any extra benefit.

I agree with what Austin wrote in a different thread, that high intellectual activity in younger grades can be seen as emotional immaturity. That's often more of a problem than making sure that HG+ kids get attention; they're often already getting it, but sometimes the wrong kind.

Nor do I think that redshirting would be good for the HG+ kid who likes to fly under the radar; that sort will just be a physically more mature average-seeming kid, and may even run the risk of appearing below average to a teacher! It's the rare HG+ kid who will tend to appear moderately highly achieving.

It boils down to this: I'd rather have an intellectually engaged kid who's learning, and sort out the rest as necessary, than a dulled kid who's assertive because he's one of the biggest in his grade. The reason that "A Nation Deceived" etc. exist is because normal thinking doesn't apply to HG+ children.

I agree with MonetFan. There are definitely appropriate reasons to hold a child back, but I doubt that most who redshirt their kindergartners have what I'd consider to be valid reasons. To hold a child back to put others at a disadvantage is inequitable, and if everyone were able to do it would merely result in retarding academic progress for all, with no benefit to any. It's just not based on good social sense, whether it works to some children's advantage or not.

My 5th birthday fell right before the first day of K, and I come from a long line of late bloomers, so as a male with some of these physical disadvantages that redshirting is supposed to prevent, I have some perspective.

Bullying was a BIG problem up 'til the end of 7th grade. After that, not it tapered off. I only had one fight with someone who picked on me in 9th (and I won), in 10th I had a guy bothering me all year but it never got to a physical exchange, and 11th on there were no issues.

Fitting in socially was also a problem... til the end of 7th grade. Noticing a pattern?

Sports were not really a problem. I played football outside of school, in Pop Warner. They group people by age and weight, so grade isn't a factor. After I quit that, I didn't have any further interest in organized sports, because I was doing other things. I played informally with my friends, and did well enough.

Probably the most important indicator is who I hung out with in high school. Everyone I hung out with was older than me, often by more than one year. As I moved through the years, I became more exposed to kids younger than me, and I just had no interest whatsoever in them. So, take that and factor in what a sheer torture the slow pace of school was for me in elementary school, and there's no question that redshirting would have been the wrong choice for me.

Oh, we had a lot of experience with this topic! Our son's birthday is in the last few days of August, with a September cutoff. It never occurred to me to hold him back, and his preschool teacher didn't recommend holding him back. Then I found out that EVERY boy at his school--through even March & April--was staying back. The school director showed me the birth dates of the kids going into the 2 kindgergarten classes, and the closest boy in age to him was going to be 6 months older than him, and the oldest would have been 18 months. He was a preemie (he was due to be born in mid-October), but healthy. He is/was gifted, and was showing all the signs, but I wasn't really picking up on them yet, despite things his teachers were saying (I thought they were just being "nice"). HIs pediatrician convinced me to hold him back, saying that he was really due in mid-October, in which case I wouldn't have been allowed to send him to K. I ended up falling for the "there's no downside to staying back and doing the pre-K class", so that's what we did.

K was fine; he loved school and his friends. Then in October of 1st grade, his teacher and the enrichment teacher called us in and wanted him to skip to 2nd grade. This is not common in our school district--he's the only kid who had skipped a grade in the past 5 years--but they really thought it was for the best. It was stressful to do it mid-year (it didn't happen until Thanksgiving time), and we worried about what other kids would say, since it was a pretty obvious switch. But it was totally fine. And I was kicking myself for technically "redshirting" him in the first place--we could have avoided this whole situation.

Fast forward to 7th grade. Now I have mixed feelings. Yes, he has continued to excel academically, and is going to be going to the high school for math next year in 8th grade, so it has not been a problem academically. On the other hand, I don't think it has been a huge benefit academically--the next grade really isn't all that much harder, so once you make the adjustment, for truly gifted kids, school is STILL way too easy, and skipping one grade doesn't solve that. Even skipping 2 grades doesn't turn regular school work into a challenge. Fortunately, he is a polite but social child, so I try to appreciate a lot of the social elements of school, and know that he is more challenged by things like Science Olympiad, MathCounts team, his writing assignments, reading exceptional literature, etc.

But there IS a downside to skipping ahead, and to me it rears itself in middle school. Puberty, etc. Fortunately, he is a taller kid, and there is SUCH a range of sizes in 7th grade, that he doesn't look out of place physically. But I do think he will be a later bloomer puberty-wise, and the things I am hearing that the kids are into absolutely SHOCK me. I really have no wish to have him spending all of his time with boys who are 12-18 months older than he is--I'd prefer to let him be a little kid a little bit longer. So while I wasn't concerned during elementary school, now I have some regrets about him being the youngest.

But SOMEBODY has to be the youngest!!!! And logically, if the August people keep their kids back, then the Julys will want to, then the Junes, then the Mays....until you have 9 year olds going to K.

My wish: that just like we can't choose to skip our kids into K early, I wish you couldn't hold them back unless there has been some sort of evaluation that determines they need to be kept back (obviously the medical issue mentioned above would qualify). I also agree that if you redshirt for no other reason than to "give your kid a leg up", then they shouldn't be in g/t programs in K, 1st, or 2nd grade--if they are academically ready, they should go to school! I never would have tried keeping him back if all those other summer & spring people didn't do it. I don't mind him being the youngest, but I just wish it was within a 12 month band, with some other boys his age, or near his age, in his grade.

I admit, I'd rather see ability grouping happen than skipping grades--my son would learn so much more in a high-ability 6th grade class than in a heterogenous 7th grade class. I have not found skipping to be a fantastic solution :-(

I was going to say the same. I do wish that they'd interviewed the lady who wrote this article. She said in the article that the research mostly pointed toward no lasting benefit from being older.

I, too, have late summer/early fall kids who started young. My youngest had a child in her K class who was on his second year of full-day K and who was very advanced academically (as a result of the two years of K or b/c he was very able, I don't know). She has friends who turned 7 in K b/c they were redshirted. She was six weeks shy of five at the start of K.

The main areas where I find that this bothers me are related to:

1) Teachers (at least ones I've met) often confuse high achievement with giftedness. Having kids who are this much older in the early grades exacerbates this problem IMHO and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Six and half year old kindergarteners may be better readers or appear much more mature. They are tracked into high achieving groups, chosen for enrichment pull outs, etc. like the 60 minutes segment mentioned. At the elementary where dds started, those early pull outs consisted of essentially test prep for the tests used for GT ids later. Not surprisingly, this increases the odds that these kids will be placed in GT placement later which increases the problem with the GT classes not being designed for gifted kids b/c they are filled with so many kids who have learning needs that are not quite the same as those of gifted kids. See this article on the difference btwn the needs of gifted kids and high achievers for what I'm getting at.

2) My dds are being, probably fairly, compared to kids who are older than they. However, there are parents who get around this too. For instance, my oldest who was 12 at the start of 9th (late bd combined with grade skip), has entered contests like writing contests where she is compared with much older kids b/c they are based on grade. When she did talent search, she registered using her actual grade. There are parents, though, whose kids are either in their appropriate grade or redshirted and then subject accelerated in many subjects (and sometimes by more than one grade in math) and whose kids participate in things like talent search or contests by the younger grade they are in although they are enrolled in similar classes to kids in the older grade.

As I've said before, though if the choice is being compared to much older students and being placed appropriately educationally or appearing even more advanced because dd is placed inappropriately, I'll take the former over later.

My kids are both midwinter birthdays, so this isn't a question for us. However, I have always thought the whole redshirting trend was not a good one, and have seen it cause issues in DD's class. That said, there were two studies recently showing that simply being young for grade dramatically increases a child's chance of being diagnosed with ADHD. That's a huge problem, and if I had a squirrelly child who was going to be young for grade, I'd feel forced to consider the possibility that someone was going to try to slap on that label even when not warranted.

Yes.

The district adjacent to ours has great GT programming. It is common knowledge that parents hold their kids back so they can "get into the GT program".

Those children aren't gifted. They're OLD.

Very interesting topic. You'd think people would be intelligent enough to see a child who is "advanced" for his grade due to redshirting is not actually advanced at all. Like herenow said... they aren't gifted, just "old".

If standardized tests were scored based on age norms rather than grade norms, academic red shirting wouldn't happen. Of course, the grade norms serve a purpose... *sigh*