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

I am curious- how many of the parents that want to deny Redshirted children access to GT programs have children born within the first 6 months of the school year according to their districts deadlines? Or is it more the parents of the younger kids that did not redshirt that have an issue with it?
I would also love to hear someone give me a really good answer as to how a child born Sept 1 should qualify and a child born say Aug 15- 2 weeks earlier and was redshirted should be denied access? All of us spend a lot of time figuring out how to get the most out of schools for our kids- whether it is subject acceleration, grade skips etc.... So why would you spend you time and focus on a policy restricting other children? I just don't get it. If there is one thing I learned from this board it is all of our kids are different, different strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities- so who is convinced that a school adminstrator can make an exclusionary policy with accuracy when all of our gifted kids present so differently? Can anyone that wants restrictive policies think they can determine who deserves the services and who doesn't?
The way I want to focus on my children's development is what can I do for them and not take away from others. I know life provides challenges and if you are young for your grade- you will deal with that the rest of your academic career-I did and hated it- regardless what I academically was capable of.

JonA- why exclude 19 year olds from competing in high school ball- if your child is good it won't matter. I played 2 college sports- was asked to graduate high school early to play for the top team in the nation in college(did not do it b/c my Mom did not want me going to college at just turning 17- so I went the next year)- I could compete with the college athletes early into my high school career. Once again I feel like people only want the system to benefit their children. Colleges are the one who started the practice of athletic redshirting -they commonly redshirt male Freshman. The fish rots from the head down- all of the athletic redshirting is filtering down from the colleges.
Generally redshirting is then kids whose birthdays fall in then last 3 months of the schoo year- not Sept birthdays. Y'all are trying to restrict kids a few months older than the "age right" kids. It is no different than a Jan birthday upset because a Sept birthday child has an advantAge by 3 months. I live in a heavy redshirt school district and I have yet to meet a child born before March that was redshirted. The norm is June, July and Aug.

I see redshirting in NJ for summer birthdays. They have an Oct 1st cut-off for K so people redshirt earlier. I think redshirting is dependent on the K cut-off. Hence you have a kid with a fall birthday, like mine in a place where redshirting is not allowed, NYC) who will be going to college with kids sometimes 2 years older. I think there is a significant sexual maturity difference between a 19 year old and a 16 year old, even though both are freshman in college.

Ren

I agree with you, but I also think some parents are redshirting for poor reasons, and they may only realize this when their children are bored in elementary school. Schools should create grade-skipping guidelines for elementary school that enable parents of normal kids to undo redshirting and parents of gifted children to accelerate.

Our school district absolutely won't grade-skip, I guess because they have an excellent full-time G/T program that starts in 4th grade.
I noticed on the high school website that kids in high school here can only take one college course during high school that can "count" for their GPA. Our local public school offers something like 22 AP courses, so I guess they don't want kids also taking a million university or community college course that will "count" to raise their GPA.
The redshirters I've met did it only for boys born within 3 months of the start deadline. I haven't met anyone who redshirted more than that. I do think it is a good idea for many boys, who frankly tend to be in the first few grades more immature emotionally and have poorer fine motor control. IMHO.

If anything being younger is probably a strike against a candidate. But, younger students can absolutely be highly ranked and have great test scores - in fact most of them probably do or they wouldn't have been skipped in the first place.

Valedictorian status doesn't typically factor into college admissions as the results aren't available until after college decisions are made anyway.

The class rank is available to colleges when you apply. For most top colleges, they use some (unknown) formula with grades and test scores playing a major role. Unfortunately, if your child doesn't exceed whatever those scores are, they will probably be rejected- unless they are a star lacrosse play or something like that.