Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Academic "red shirting" - are they really gifted?

He's probably wondering why he should bother with coloring pages if the teacher will just do it for him...

My goodness I might laugh if someone said that to me about my kids. Coloring scmoloring. I remember being chastised for my coloring outside the lines in K (one of my few K memories) and it had no impact on my life whatsoever (yeah, I have bad handwriting but so what; I think that ds6's handwrighting is now better than mine after finishing OT, LOL - he writes in cursive thanks to his montessori K teacher).

The idea of redshirting really gets under my skin, though it doesn't seem to be a big deal where we live so it hasn't had a direct impact on us at this point. And sometimes I get concerned for the few cases in which it might sound reasonable that those particular ones were not checked for LDs. But mainly I feel that it overemphasizes "social" skills (which means so many different things to different people) since that seems to be the primary reason kids get redshirted, leaving academics playing second fiddle. I read random posts on various websites about people worried about their child's skills as compared to a kindergartener when they may have six months or a year before K would even start, which doesn't seem very fair to the child (talk about the "gift of time").

Maybe the biggest reason it gets under my skin is that my ds6 (just turned 6) could possibly have been the poster child for redshirting, looking prospectively from preschool. He had serious speech and fine motor delays - could not write or hold a pencil correctly. He was ahead in math in preschool but reading was a distant dream - he didn't even know the sounds of all the letters. He had no friends and was very, very introverted. He has trouble with transitions. He is very small (38 lbs). But he got the help he needed in K and is now achieving above grade level, including in reading/language, despite the fact that he still has speech issues significant enough to continue therapy for another year. What if I didn't know any better? What if his teacher hadn't shared my faith in him? What if I listened to those chattering voices on the internet and I wanted to be trendy? omg, the idea of him being in preschool and starting K this fall, instead of first grade as he will be, would be heartbreaking - he's quite the late bloomer but all morning he was working on a supposed first-grade language arts workbook just for fun (until he noticed that the cover said something about grade 1, at which point he started erasing, saying he would have to wait till August lol). I hate to think what it would have done to his love of learning, which seems to be accelerating a little more every day. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but holding him back from K would have made no sense looking at where he is now.

Wow! That is really crazy. When I was in kindergarten, my teacher was concerned because I couldn't skip well. This is still a running joke in my family. And I do have a summer birthday and was a younger child. I also survived elementary school by chronic underachievement and putting all my energy into my OE's.

MIA
My fault I was not clear - our school relies soley on a single teacher survey k-2. Basically a "can he sit still in circle time" inventory. They use the highly unreliable Otis-Lenon to test for the gifted program that starts in third grade. Our gifted program has become a status thing. It's sickening but funny to listen to these moms go on and on about how smart little Joey is and how great the one day per week pull out program is. I just keep my mouth shut. For my son a one day a week gifted program is not going to cut it - just one of the many reasons he won't be going to that ps anymore. We aren't even going to wait around for 2nd grade testing. No point, really.

I've read of a few cases at various places where academic redshirting was an issue. The parent would complain that the child was bored, the teacher would look at the child's file and notice the child should be in 1st grade rather than K. A friend held her DD back b/c w/ an August bday, she'd be the youngest by several months due to wide-scale red-shirting. Parents are basically balancing the more academic nature of K compared to a few years ago, by delaying entry into K.

Ahhh. That's different, maybe I read it wrong! Well then, yes, that's bang out of order. I don't know anything about the Otis-Lenon -- can anyone share?

My ds would have easily qualified for GT with achievement testing even as a younger student against red-shirted kids, but a teacher survey? He was defiant and disengaged -- he certainly wouldn't have made the cut if his teacher were judging on "sitting in circle time," though he desperately needed something more.

FWIW, we didn't hang our ds's public school until second-grade GT testing either -- the school's attitude was more than enough to drive us away. And a one-day-weekly pull-out wouldn't have done anything for my ds, either. It's frustrating to hear about "great gifted programs" that consist of once-weekly "enrichment."

My son's Kindergarten experience was similar. He was 5 with a May birthday and one of the youngest in the class. Academic red shirting is very popular here and most of the boys in my son's class were a year older than my son. None of the other kids were reading or doing math at the beginning of the Kindergarten year. It didn't matter that my son was reading at a 5th grade level and able to do some multiplication and division and had made up his own way of doing subtraction with negative numbers. All the teacher cared about was that he couldn't color in the lines. He wanted to learn and they wanted him to color. He told me that school was not very educational.

I was told that I needed to homeschool my son. I can't put my son back in public school because they still list crayons on their 6th grade supplies list at the beginning of the school year and my sons friends tell me that they still make kids color in 6th grade and it better be in the lines.

Trying to research private school acceleration and would the grade placement be honored if we move to the public school or would we be stuck with the age requirement... I stumbled across this article which fits into this conversation.

http://www.pacificoaks.edu/PDFFiles/ChildrenSchoolPA/When%20should%20a%20kid%20start%20k.pdf

This was my problem.
What do you do with a child that is gifted and ahead academically, BUT who still desperately needs that creative side that Kindergarten USED to have. Now, it is just a focus on academics.

My daughter has a September birthday,and technically misses the cut-off, has an articulation delay, and is very creative... the sort asking questions about death/God at a young age, but no interest in letters until 4.

I put her in a play-based pre-k program instead, and she started K when she was almost six. She is in a gifted program this year.

There has never been a question in my mind as to whether she is gifted or not... I didn't delay her so she could 'seem' to be gifted. We waited because being she needed a bit more maturity to sit through any classroom with more of an academic focus.

On the flip, my other daughter, I wish she could have gone to K this year.

Yes, sometimes parents that are waiting are trying to give their child some sort of age, but many parents are balancing that academic nature of K. For some, it is to give them that academic age, while for some like me, it is because their is no passion/interest in what "schools choose to call academics".

Tammy

What bothers me most about redshirting is that parents have the ability to do it here, no questions asked. Yet I cannot test my kid for early entrance (without jumping major hoops, calling the local TV people, getting lawyers involved, etc <--note a lil' sarcasm). I do not think it's fair that a parent can hold their child back without being evaluated by the school or another professional. I hear the "don't want my kid to be the youngest in the class" excuse. To me that is no excuse at all. I think if they allow redshirting, they should at least offer tests for early entrance as well.