Does ‘redshirting’ benefit kids? Kindergarten decision looms

The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — Lisa Larney started researching college when her daughter was 3. She wanted to know everything she could about the long-term impacts of delaying kindergarten enrollment for her daughter, born just a week before her school district’s enrollment cutoff date.

Would she benefit from going to college a year later? What if she’s too tall for her grade? Would she perform better academically if held back?

After two years of studying her daughter’s social interactions and researching her options, Ms. Larney decided to “redshirt” her, the term used for keeping children in prekindergarten instead of enrolling them when they’re first eligible at age 5.

Redshirting was originally popularized in college sports: Coaches would keep athletes out of competition for a year to develop their skills and extend eligibility. When it comes to kindergarten readiness, the hotly debated practice is most common among parents of kids with summer birthdays — locally Sept. 1 is typically the cutoff date — because it decides the difference between being the youngest in their class or the oldest, with all the advantages that come with age.

Some parents who redshirt say their child isn’t ready for a classroom setting. Others admit they want to give their kid a leg up by enrolling them in kindergarten at age 6, instead. And even others do it in an attempt to mitigate existing disadvantages — whether perceived or very real. The thinking is they’ll always be a year ahead academically, physically, socially.

Ms. Larney, 44, of Bala Cynwyd, in the end waited to enroll her daughter, and made sure she was challenged academically in her second year of preschool to avoid boredom. The decision, ultimately, was because Ms. Larney thought her daughter could use time to mature, and wanted to protect her sensitive child from the impending “girl drama.” Ms. Larney said her now 9-year-old, who is headed to third grade, still struggles from time to time with self-confidence, but in that extra year, she learned to better stand up for herself.

“I knew that this would be the best thing for her,” Larney said, “and I 100 percent do not regret it, and I can’t imagine I ever will.”

A handful of studies show that while children who are redshirted experience academic and social advantages while in kindergarten, that can dissipate by middle school. Some researchers argue redshirting can harm children’s development over the years if they aren’t challenged enough, and others suggest it’s actually the youngest kids who perform better academically over time.

But the redshirt-or-not stress remains, particularly among highly educated parents in high-income areas where the conversation has become a point of contention on playgrounds and in preschools. Parents say they’ve lost sleep over the decision, worried that the wrong choice could irreparably damage their child’s development. Even after the fact, parents say they still think about it years later, wondering what social or academic milestone could have gone differently.

“It’s a very tricky and conflicting decision,” said Jen Cohen, 41, a mother of two from Wynnewood who enrolled both of her summerbirthday boys, now 13 and 6, in kindergarten when they were first eligible.

Only about 6 percent of children are redshirted, a number that’s been relatively consistent for the last 15 years or so, according to Diane Schanzenbach, an economist who coauthored a 2017 study on redshirting.

But among boys and those with educated parents, the rate is higher. College graduates are almost twice as likely as high school graduates to redshirt their sons. Ms. Schanzenbach’s study showed nearly one in five boys with summer birthdays and college-educated parents were redshirted in 2010.

Dominic Gullo, a professor of early childhood education at Drexel University who studies the long-range effectiveness of prekindergarten and kindergarten programs, said that for some parents, it isn’t an academic “readiness” issue, but rather they are trying to right personality traits they believe are obstacles to success.

“It’s an ‘I want my child to be older, smarter, more ahead of everybody else,’ and that’s why you see it in that particular demographic,” said Mr. Gullo, who added that in most cases, “if they are 5 by the cutoff date, then your child is ready to enter kindergarten.”