![]() After all, widely-cited research has shown a modest but significant correlation between initial age differences in children have long-lasting effects on student performance across many developed countries. This finding is unsurprising, given that the choice to redshirt may mean sending your child to preschool or daycare one additional year before kindergarten, which could be financially prohibitive among some low-income families.Īs to whether redshirting pays off, there’s a popular notion that it does. Redshirting also appears to be a bit of a luxury item: redshirting is nearly twice as prevalent in schools serving affluent student bodies as it is among those whose mean household income was close to the poverty line. It is also significantly more common among white students-roughly 6 percent of white students are redshirted compared to less than 3 percent of Asian students, and 2 percent or less among black and Hispanic children. Over 70 percent of redshirted children were born in the summer months and it is twice as common among boys as among girls. Depending on the data, estimates of redshirting rates range between 3.5-5.5 percent of children eligible to enroll in kindergarten based on their age. ![]() It’s worth taking a moment to first talk about the prevalence of redshirting and who is doing it. Rather, children who are redshirted temporarily delay enrollment and thus start kindergarten one year older than they otherwise would have been. If we were holding this conversation at a social gathering, my mention of both a male preschooler and a late summer birthday in the same sentence might lead you to a follow-up question I’ve heard in these settings: “Are you going to redshirt him?” And knowing that I conduct education policy research professionally, you might press me further, “Does it actually pay off?” Allow me to use this space to answer this question that many parents have faced.Īcademic redshirting is the practice where a five-year-old child’s caretaker chooses not to enroll her or, more commonly, him in kindergarten even though he is of appropriate age by the state’s cut-off date for enrollment. And for my preschooler, he will be celebrating a late summer birthday. The next couple of months for them will be filled with athletic camps, swimming parties, barbecues, and stays at Grandma’s house. To the delight of many school kids, including my own, summer is finally upon us.
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