Atlantic Article Re- Redshirting Boys (@@)

[Bad Dingo]

I admit I have an almost visceral reaction to redshirting discussions but I thought this article would make for interesting discussion.

Being a woman with a November bday and having a December daughter; seeing how the world is set up for (white) men to succeed and lead, I'm still vehemently antiredshirting.

"It’s hard for some people to get their head around the idea that in many areas of life, and above all in education, boys and men are now the ones who need the most help. We have a National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, but no equivalent for men. Thousands of academic scholarships are aimed at young women, almost none at young men. This lag is understandable, given the dizzying speed with which the gender gap has reversed. But we can start to address this new gap—right now, at the very beginning of the educational journey—simply by giving boys an extra year to mature."

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/boys-delayed-entry-school-start-redshirting/671238/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3PE0J9xxraRzOqW5StjSwW4n1yk4iCpGUxYsu0dVaT4HH7wuQ5fXsLSkg

[abs]

I will read the article but boys and men? need the most help now? What? I am not sure I am ready for the rage reading this will bring.

[erbear]

Still reading but I want to state outright that I also hate redshirting. I understand it (and, as a teacher, support it in many cases) if a child is really immature or on the cusp but the decision to hold your boy back a full year reeks of privilege and the kind of competitive parenting I loathe. And I’m really struggling to get behind the idea that wealthy white boys need a leg up 🙄🙄🙄

Also, I ain’t mad about the idea of a world run more prominently by better educated women 🤷‍♀️

Ok, now that Ive finished. I see the argument about brain development and do actually agree that girls too would benefit from having more mature peers. But the solution isn’t box every boy in — it’s look at schools and how we’re measuring what it means to be great or successful or whatever. And you can (and many of us do) work with kids on building the same skills we see quicker in many girls.

[seeyalater52]

The article annoys the shit out of me. Boys, especially white ones, truly do not need whatever imagined or real leg up this is supposed to give them.

But as someone with a very late august birthday who passed the cutoff by 5 days and went “on time” only to be painfully socially behind as the youngest in the class by several months, I was relieved when my own kid decided to pop out mid-Sept. I will be doing absolutely no additional legwork or research about how to get him into Kindergarten early (which paradoxically to the redshirting craze, is apparently an unpopular opinion where I live.)

ETA: the “reversal of the gender gap” in schools/colleges is based on such a stunningly narrow perspective on broader social dynamics. Girls and women are succeeding in school according to some very basic, top-level statistics showing increased enrollment but as far as I can tell, not in ways that would meaningfully impact broader challenges faced by women like the gender pay gap and representation in certain STEM fields.

[pixy0stix]

As the youngest in my class by several weeks, it didn't bother me a bit.

My kid has a late June birthday, and so far has been moved up with the rest of his peers because he becomes a holy terror when with the younger kids.

Everyone is different. We can't compare our own experiences and extrapolate them to our children. Sometimes redshirting is right, sometimes it's wrong.

[gretchenindisguise]

I was the youngest in my class and was fine. Thrived and had great friends.

My eldest is now the youngest in her class and is fine academically, but struggles with social enough that I wonder now if we should have held her back.

But we couldn’t afford it. We planned our kids spacing so she was in K when we had our youngest, we simply could not afford two in daycare. So it never entered into our discussions.

I am happy our son was born in November.

[seeyalater52]

Sept 17, 2022 9:40:55 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

As the youngest in my class by several weeks, it didn't bother me a bit.

My kid has a late June birthday, and so far has been moved up with the rest of his peers because he becomes a holy terror when with the younger kids.

Everyone is different. We can't compare our own experiences and extrapolate them to our children. Sometimes redshirting is right, sometimes it's wrong.

To be fair I’d have never proactively redshirted him. But I’m happy not to have to grapple with any sort of proactive decision-making on this topic.

[tacokick]

I agree there should be public pre-k (there is where I live) but I don’t see how that really helps low income families. You still are keeping kids home until they are five or sending them in to class full of kids a full year older. Universal free or subsidized day care would make more sense.


I went to school when the cut off was December 30th (and that has only changed fairly recently) so hearing of kids graduating high school at 19 who didn’t repeat a grade always seems very strange to me. Many of my classmates were 13 the whole first semester of HS and started college at 17.


When I taught public pre-k some of the kids started the year off still 3. It was fine and by October they were pretty caught up. We had one kid that started school a year late (as I recall, due to illness) and it was a huge gap socially and academically between him at almost 6 and the little ones who were barely 4 as the year went on. Obviously we accommodated that but it was lot of work and effort for everyone involved, including the students.



Either start all kids late or none of them. IMO and experience reshirting is creating a lot the gaps that are constantly being discussed because you are ending up with a wild range of ages in each classroom. Your “late birthday” near cut off kid should be in a class with other children who are in the same position. September is the most popular month for US births and has been for a long time.

All widespread redshirting does is change standards and leave lower income families further and further behind.

Isn’t it easier and more equitable to expect the teachers to differentiate in the classrooms to meet all their students and give them the resources to do so?

ETA: There are always going to be kids who thrive socially and academically and those who struggle. It’s strange to me that age has become such a focus of this vs other factors. So much of academic life is affected by school culture and the random nature of life. I don’t know if a kid who struggles socially is going to do better with another year at home or daycare and then popping them in with potentially much younger children when they do get to school. Age gaps make such a big difference in the early years. I think adults forget that. I do not even want to get into the grossness that is redshirting for sports.

[kitty]

I redshirted my boys mainly because our state still has very late cutoffs but the K curriculum does not reflect this. I wasn’t trying to give my kids a leg up on the competition but I don’t think it is always developmentally appropriate to ask 4 year olds to be sitting at a table writing stories. I wanted them to be able to still play at that age. Our schools do use a lot of manipulatives and hands on learning but that’s not the unstructured play that imo they need.

I am a late Dec baby who started at 4 and thrived but I feel like my 80s K and today’s K are apples and oranges. Even my DS2’s private PK5 (that we chose specifically because it was less intense than the other programs we toured) was significantly more academic and “work” focused than my K experience. We were very lucky that we had family who offered to fund PK5 (a former teacher!) because the additional cost would have been tough for us to absorb. I definitely recognize my privilege to have that option and my main regret is that I have contributed to making life more difficult for the K teachers who have too large of a spread in their classrooms. On the broader scale my boys started “on time” compared to their peers in 48 or 49 other states so idk if this is only red-shirting lite?
.

[cherryvalance]

We redshirted our son, which I never thought I'd do (being a teacher). I agonized over the decision and literally everyone told me I wouldn't regret holding him back, but would regret sending him early.

He has an August birthday and our state's cutoff is September 30th. Granted, we have some possible neurodivergence at play, but there's no way he would be ready to be in a rigorous academic program from 9:30-4 (our school day). He did do a summer transitional K program and they felt giving him another year to mature was, in their words, "a gift." Interestingly, my son seems more academically advanced than other 5 year olds I know because of the type of work he does in Montessori, but he does not have th stamina for the K curriculum in my district.

But I also don't think the answer is expecting teachers to differentiate for vastly different levels in one class and increase their workload.

IMO, we need universal, all day public pre-K that students can graduate out of when they're ready to pass to K, play-based kindergarten, and year round school. That would eliminate a lot of the issues with kids just not being mature or developmentally able to sit for such a long day.

[jlt19]

First of all, every state, maybe even district has different cutoffs. And they’ve changed over the years. When I was a kid, it was Oct 1 and my mom fought for me (Oct 12) to go a year early and lost. I was fine and the “normal” age for my class.

Our district now has an Aug 1 cut off. DD is June 23 and DS July 2. I relied on their daycare/pre-K teachers experience and recommendations. In fact, I was concerned about DS and his yet officially dx ADHD but the psychiatrist I took him to told me it would be WORSE for him if I held him back because he wouldn’t be as challenged. Lack of a challenge would lead him to be bored and disruptive.

Kind of the opposite of what the article seems to be implying (though I didn’t read it because I don’t feel like getting angry just yet today).

Anyway, kids are in 7th and 5th now. Both academically and socially doing just fine.

It’ll probably suck to be the last to drive or drink in college (legally) assuming they go that route, but that was definitely not a part of my decision making process when they were 5.

[penguingrrl]

It’s interesting. I grew up with the unconscious assumption that girls were smarter and better students. The valedictorians for both my 8th grade and HS classes were girls/women, as were salutations for both. It took until adulthood to realize how outside the standard that all was.

I don’t think separating kids by gender/age is the answer, nor do I think boys/men need a leg up in todays world. I think schools might need to continue to consider the age-appropriate factors in the curriculum and make sure that as a society we’re factoring in what’s age appropriate, not just what can possibly be learned.

[tacokick]

Sept 17, 2022 11:23:24 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

It’s interesting. I grew up with the unconscious assumption that girls were smarter and better students. The valedictorians for both my 8th grade and HS classes were girls/women, as were salutations for both. It took until adulthood to realize how outside the standard that all was.

I think they largely are/were at the k-12 level, they just weren’t continuing on to college so scholarships and programs sprung up to encourage women/girls to do more academically.

Now women are the majority at the college level and this guy thinks we’ve gone too far and men need help. Apparently ignoring huge gap between men and women in many industries and levels of leadership in the post-college world. It’s not enough men are still overrepresented there, he wants a return to their being overrepresented and catered to from kindergarten.

[abs]

I do think it's all very interesting. I am not actually anti red-shirt. I think there are valid reasons and when you are on the cusp it may make sense to consider. Not all 4/young 5 year old's are ready for Kindergarten. What I can't get behind is redshirting just because it's a boy with a summer birthday (or whatever is near your cutoff). What's popular here is redshirting for sports reasons. That also gets a nope for me. Someone has to be the oldest, youngest, biggest, and smallest.

I also think a lot more play needs to be returned to Kindergarten but that's a whole different conversation.

[goldengirlz]

Sept 17, 2022 11:35:04 GMT -5 tacokick said:

Sept 17, 2022 11:23:24 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

It’s interesting. I grew up with the unconscious assumption that girls were smarter and better students. The valedictorians for both my 8th grade and HS classes were girls/women, as were salutations for both. It took until adulthood to realize how outside the standard that all was.

I think they largely are/were at the k-12 level, they just weren’t continuing on to college so scholarships and programs sprung up to encourage women/girls to do more academically.

Now women are the majority at the college level and this guy thinks we’ve gone too far and men need help. Apparently ignoring huge gap between men and women in many industries and levels of leadership in the post-college world. It’s not enough men are still overrepresented there, he wants a return to their being overrepresented and catered to from kindergarten.

I think that’s why I struggle with feeling sympathy. Girls are still graduating into a world that’s heavily stacked against them — but now that they’re over-performing in an educational system that was largely designed by men, suddenly there’s a problem and we need to re-level the playing field.

Also, I’m not denying research that the brains of boys and girls might develop at different rates. But a lot of that research is based on brain scans, and that’s still a relatively nascent field of study. There’s a limit to how much we can extrapolate in terms of how much those differences impact learning. And most of the practical differences tend to be seen in lower-income and non-white boys — which begs the question of how much of the difference in outcomes can be attributed to “science” and how much is social-cultural factors like racism? For instance, Black boys are less likely to be diagnosed with and treated for ADHD — and more likely to be disciplined (and disciplined more harshly) for behavioral problems.

And then there’s the question of how much gender is a social construct anyway: how much is nature and how much is nurture. Interestingly, The Atlantic also had an article this week about doing away with gender-based sports: www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-gender-sex-segregation-coed/671460/

[lessel]

I’m pretty anti-redshirting. And I started kindergarten when I was 4, so I was always the youngest in all of my classes. Made worse in college by starting a year early. But it never really bothered me tbh.

My older DS started K on time (March birthday). He’s struggling with school given dyslexia and ADHD, but I don’t think redshirting would have helped any of that.

My younger DS (June birthday) is in pre-K and has a presumptive ASD diagnosis, so we’re exploring what the best option is for him, but redshirting might be something we consider.

Off to read the article and continue feeling conflicted…

[Velar Fricative]

I did read this article with an open mind even though I am vehemently anti-redshirting. The goal posts have been moved so now younger kids who may have been just fine are being compared to the older kids, which may influence even professional advice to redshirt a child.

I do think it’s fascinating despite rolling my eyes at the whole thing about “won’t someone think of our boys?!?!” The proposal is that even with the suggestion of having boys automatically start school a year later UNLESS their parents opt into an earlier start, wouldn’t parents of girls want that option too? Seems unfair to only make that option available to boys.

I do think maybe the better solution would be to strategically assign kids to classes based on the different ages of boys and girls but that would require, well, money to have the ability to have multiple teachers per grade.

I mostly can’t wrap my head around a significant amount of boys being nearly 20 years old in some cases before they graduate HS. So it will take years to see the full K-12 consequences (good or bad) of widespread redshirting in many communities.

[Jalapeñomel]

I think there’s a different between holding a child back so they are able to function in the kindergarten setting and holding a kid back so they can be the the oldest in the grade/get a leg up/be a better athlete.

My son is the youngest in his grade (October), and sometimes it’s painfully obvious, other times it’s not. Regardless, I think he will be just fine. My daughter will likely be one of the youngest in her grade as well (November), but as of right now, I have no plans to hold her out a year (which is really hard to do here unless there’s an educational or medical reason).

[cap]

My son has a mid October birthday. He started K as a 4 year old, as we were in NY at the time, and their cutoff was 5 by December 1. The school district we were in there was unfortunately not that good. When we moved to MI, we ended up in a really great district, and the cutoff in MI the year he started K was October 1 (they were slowly moving it earlier in the year by that point). We made the decision to bump him back a grade, and for him, that was the best thing we could have done. He has ADHD, is very small for his age, and is a bit immature.

Conversely, I have a late August birthday, so was always among the youngest in my class. I did more than fine.

It really just depends on the kid.

[joy]

My daughter’s birthday is Aug 27th with a Sept 1st cut off.

She went on time and I feel like I have to *defend* my decision sometimes. Anything isn’t quite right? “Well, she’s so young…”

But… she’s the right age!

[plutosmoon]

DD has a September birthday and is one of the oldest in her grade, redshirting irritates the heck out of me. Mostly because I as the parent of a child that missed the cutoff by days didn't have the option to push my child forward, so why do other parents get to keep their kids back? Unless there is a reason, we should be sticking with the cutoffs. Perhaps I'm just still pissed off at the district for telling me DD could start K early, and then changing their mind at the last minute because "rules". The same rules parents of August kids don't have to follow?

I have an October birthday and was always the youngest growing up, the area I grew up in was super pro redshirting, to the point they even had an extra grade between k and first called readiness. You had to be 6 by the cutoff to attend readiness, so there were a bunch of kids 2 years older than me in my grade, 19 when they graduated high school. My brother was 2 grades behind me and had friends in his class older than me due to this readiness grade. I was shy and a bit socially awkward, but staying back a year wouldn't have changed that for me.

I'm having trouble getting through the article because it's pissing me off. ETA- I don't think boys need any extra educational support via forcing extra time/maturity, men seem to still be doing just fine out earning women and making up the ranks of executives. I don't think any sort of mandatory redshirting is a good idea. Redshirting is not a new trend, I'm almost 44 and the concept I mentioned regarding the readiness grade is from the early 80s, the boys who attended readiness and were 19 at graduation didn't have markedly different outcomes than their 17 and 18 year old classmates.

[macmars45]

I still think about my BFF telling me she was going to red shirt her DD and laugh. (Her DD has an early April birthday for a August 30th cut off date). She said this when our kids were babies. I was WTF about it at the time and sure enough she sent her DD on time because not doing so was ridiculous.

[Saudade]

We live on the border of two states. In one state the cutoff is 8/31. So we started my DS3 who is a late Aug bday in preschool. We moved across the border when he was going to be in K. That side has a cutoff of July 31. To start early you have to be in 95%tile. He did the testing and only hit 91%tile so they wouldn't let him start K. So we paid 8k to enroll him across the border. Once that school year was over, he transferred back to our school district. It's the stupidest thing and he has been just fine, despite being the youngest in the class

[Velar Fricative]

Also I feel like redshirting in many areas is no longer a true choice. It’s probably done now mostly because it’s been normalized and it’s not about wanting boys to be the oldest and biggest but about not wanting them to fall behind because everyone else will be older.

I always felt like school districts should have nipped this in the bud far sooner but the suburban districts where this is most pervasive would likely prefer families to remain in their schools for more years to keep voting to approve school budgets. That plus lower-income families needing to send kids to school sooner are probably why it’s barely a thing in many large city school districts.

[AJL]

I hate these kinds of articles. First, I'd like to see the studies that the author reviewed to back up his claims. Second, he states that he's talking about " children were much more likely to be held back than others: specifically, those with affluent or well-educated parents, and who were white, young for their year, and male."  These are NOT the boys who need a leg up. They were going to be successful anyway.

Also, if you didn't hold your back for a delayed start to kindergarten, how would you know if they would have been better off being held back? How do you know that their, arguably subjective, success would have been impacted for the better if they had been held back?

On the other hand, we see evidence from the top 10 countries with the highest literacy rates (>98%) start children in formal school at 6 or 7 years old. So wouldn't it be fair to say that ALL children may benefit from starting school when it is more developmentally appropriate (not just when boys are more "mature"?)

I don't see red-shirting as an inherently bad or good practice. I don't really even care that much about it, but this article brings up far more questions than anything else and doesn't give any substantive evidence in favor of the practice.

[hermione]

Pardon me if I have difficulty being concerned about rich, white, males whose parents will make sure they succeed no matter what.

[eddy]

Our youngest son has a June 1 bday. We agonized over this decision but decided to send him on time. Now as a 5th grader we realize he would have been a menace to society if we held him back lol. Academically and socially he is thriving. Absolutely no regrets. 

Now sports or body maturity wise I could maybe admit he is “behind” but that is not holding him back. I hate redshirting because it is the reason he seems behind in this category. He has males in his class a legit year older than him. Now ai don’t know the reasons why, but that is the only reason he seems he is behind physically. 

[rupertpenny]

This whole article is annoying and I hate redshirting so much. I am so happy to live in a district where it is not tolerated.

I will never understand concerns about being “not ready” but then denying a child a year of experience in a school system where they can potentially receive diagnoses and treatments if they do actually have learning difference.

And maybe I missed it, but this author didn’t seem to consider the difference in socialization between boys and girls. Little girls are conditioned to be quiet, orderly, deferential to authority figures from BIRTH. Boys are praised and laughed at for being rough and physical and resistant to authority. It isn’t exactly shocking that girls develop executive functioning earlier than their male counterparts? They’ve already been practicing for years before boys are told to be quiet and sit still.

[pixy0stix]

Sept 17, 2022 14:54:46 GMT -5 joy said:

My daughter’s birthday is Aug 27th with a Sept 1st cut off.

She went on time and I feel like I have to *defend* my decision sometimes. Anything isn’t quite right? “Well, she’s so young…”

But… she’s the right age!

Fyi, she has the best birthday ever.

[erbear]

Sept 17, 2022 15:29:23 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Also I feel like redshirting in many areas is no longer a true choice. It’s probably done now mostly because it’s been normalized and it’s not about wanting boys to be the oldest and biggest but about not wanting them to fall behind because everyone else will be older.

I always felt like school districts should have nipped this in the bud far sooner but the suburban districts where this is most pervasive would likely prefer families to remain in their schools for more years to keep voting to approve school budgets. That plus lower-income families needing to send kids to school sooner are probably why it’s barely a thing in many large city school districts.

There’s something to this too. Somehow, both of my daughters who are February babies are among the youngest in their classes.