In addition to screen time, the type of school to attend, the content children consume and the food they eat, a new concern cropped up for parents over the last few years: Whether to keep their children back a year from entering kindergarten.
“Redshirting,” a reference to collegiate sports in which the athlete sits out a year to boost their skills, has crept into the decision making process for parents with children on the cusp of the age cut-off in kindergarten, usually age 6 in most states. Parents can either have the student as one of the oldest in their grade or among the youngest, with some believing holding their child back can help academic achievement.
But according to a new report, the practice is not becoming more widespread. It has hovered steady at around 5 percent, since the the 1990s and 2010s, The number reached 6.4 percent during the pandemic.
“One of the reasons we wanted to look into it is because we felt like everyone talks about it, but only 1 in 20 students actually do it,” says Megan Kuhfeld, director of modeling and data analytics at NWEA, an education research firm. “So why does it feel like everyone was considering it for their children?”
Kuhfeld hypothesizes the smaller, more vocal group of parents considering redshirting was amplified on social media, but when it came time to make the decision, outside factors – like paying for an extra year of child care, which is becoming more costly than ever — played a large role.
“It might seem that this is a good idea but it’s, ‘We’re on the hook for an extra $15,000 in child-care costs,’ which may not be practical for a lot of families,” Kuhfeld says, adding she expects redshirting to stay steady. “The types to consider it will likely continue to, but a lot of people consider it then decide it’s not practical for a lot of reasons.”
The NWEA study did find more young boys were likely to be kept back than girls, with white students more often than nonwhite students. In the 2021 year, there were also upticks in rural areas, jumping from 6.2 percent to 9 percent, and high poverty areas, jumping from 2.2 to 4.7 percent. That could be because child care is more affordable in smaller towns, or easier to find with a friend, family or neighbor.
Proponents of redshirting say it gives the child an academic and social advantage being an older kindergartner. However, the benefits generally are short-lived, according to the NWEA report. While children initially saw higher reading and math scores, equating to about 20 percent to 30 percent of a year of learning, those results evened out by third grade, when the children who entered kindergarten early catch up to the redshirters.
While children who started kindergarten later initially saw a large academic advantage in math and reading scores, by third grades, those gaps were filled.
Source: NWEA
There is at least one strong reason not to redshirt, according to the American Economic Association: Children who started kindergarten after 5 years old are more likely to drop out later on.
“People often focus on the short-term gains, but it’s important to keep in mind the perspective of what it means to be the older kid in class, where you turn 18 your junior year of high school,” Kuhfeld says. “It’s just keeping in mind these longer term outcomes and making the best decision for your child.”
Some states have begun pushing toward a forced redshirting of sorts. North Carolina public schools shifted its age cut off in 2007, requiring students to be 5 years old or older on Aug. 31, upping the date from a previous mid-October cut off.
Jade Jenkins, an associate professor of education at University of California, Irvine, found in a report that forced redshirting brought pros and cons. It helped math and reading scores in third through fifth grades, and students with forced delays into kindergarten also had a 4 percent increase of being identified as academically gifted. However, the same report found students had a 6 percent drop in disability identification. According to Jenkins’ research, it benefitted lower-income, white students but brought no benefit to Hispanic students.
“Is the valuation of the academic benefits of delayed entry higher than the costs of the hold-out year and the public costs of increased racial-ethnic achievement gaps? Future research can provide a more precise estimate of this calculation, but we find this unlikely,” Jenkins says in the report.
The latest redshirt debate is one of several parents surrounding kindergarten. Some state legislators are pushing for it to become mandatory across the nation, with others concerned about the dipping levels for kindergarten readiness. It has also become more academic-focused than ever, which in part spurred the latest NWEA study.
“We wanted to get this information out in an accessible way to have both the advantages and disadvantages, and not get caught up in blanket guidance,” Kuhfeld says.
“Especially in high socio-economic status schools and districts, there’s already an arms race by preschool to get situated for college, which is where a lot of this comes from,” she adds. “There’s this attitude of, ‘We have to take every avenue to get ahead’ and I don’t think that is healthy.”
