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Redshirting

Started by Chief, November 02, 2018, 07:43:55 AM

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Chief

This isn't directly related to finances, but there are certainly financial impacts to redshirting children in early school years. Redshirting (taken from college athletics) is the practice of delaying kindergarten or an elementary school year for one year in order for a child to further develop. Typically the child has a summer birthday near the cutoff birth date for enrollment. This wasn't something that I had seriously considered until this week during my son's pre-school's parent-teacher conference.

My wife brought up the subject to the teacher in part because she was held back herself. She believes it was one of the best things that ever happened to her. I have a summer birthday myself and was always one of the youngest in my class. I never really thought much of it and performed well in school, and so I never really considered holding our child back until the conference. Our teacher shared some thoughts about redshirting our son and we decided to see how things progress throughout the year. She also mentioned that it was fairly common and that other parents were considering the same thing.

Since then, I have researched a decent amount about the practice and am now much more open to it. It seems more likely that our son would perform better in school and socially by redshirting and at the very least any benefits would simply wash out by high school or college. The downside is of course that you would be unnecessarily delaying education. There is also the chance a child becomes more mature than their classmates and there are social problems that way.

On the financial side, there is the cost of an extra year of pre-school and theoretically a year less of wages (since his education would likely last for a year longer), but there would be an extra year to save for college and theoretically he may be better prepared for a career.

Ultimately, I think we will see where our son is at the end of the year compared with his classmates and then go from there. Then in two years we get to make the decision all over again with our daughter, who also has a summer birthday.

Anyway, was just curious whether anyone else has thought about this and thought it was interesting to think about the financial impacts of such a decision.

deific

I have held back my 2 daughters both with December birthdays, so they were turning 6. We made this decision based on their social maturity, although my 2nd daughter was more mature, holding her was probably more a decision of kid spacing and the additional time we gave to our oldest. My son is now 4, having 2 older sisters he may go to Kindergarten at 5 (August B-Day) but it will probably be a decision in May - June time frame based on how he is doing, and his maturity.

polama

#2
Eventual star athletes skew old for there grade. There's a small bump in college attendance and SAT scores. Although I always take longitudinal studies like this with a grain of salt: Redshirting a child shows an active parent, which definitely improves outcomes. So perhaps the 'young for their age' cohort is under-performing because the children-with-active-parents is smaller in that group.

As a once young-for-my-grade student, I wonder if small handicaps don't provide their own benefit. Not being picked for the little league team decreased my star athlete potential, but might have helped with grit. Being young in elementary school made socialization harder, but I think I came away with a better understanding of human nature for it.

If we take the effect as real and at face value, redshirting helps a great deal at the margins. If your son ends up in that 1% cusp of maybe-or-maybe-not attending college, or big-athletic-scholarship-or-none, the redshirt year might be a big deal. If they're solidly college bound it might not have any impact, in which case they've lost a year of earning potential (plus preschool costs). So it's trading off a definite cost, for a possible large benefit.

In cases like this, where the effect is small and there may be unknown countervailing factors (and there's always going to be some students who are the youngest), I think you just do what seems right with your particular child and situation. If they particulary immature, that's an argument for holding them back. If money is tight, that's an argument for sending them along. If they're exceptionally intelligent, that's an argument for sending them (to slightly reduce the boredom of too easy content)


Sir Aaron

Personally, I think there is a HUGE advantage to being older in the same grade level. You are usually more advanced physically, emotionally, and in your ability to grasp difficult concepts.

The advantage I see is that my kids are able to learn concepts more quickly and are able to easily maintain above grade level work. This means reduced homework time and makes life easier when we go on vacation or take a day off from school because their schoolwork is easy to makeup.

Alternatively, you could argue I've made life too easy for kids and they've not had to struggle. I have them in sports and no matter what level they're at or how good they are, they still have to challenge themselves to get better.

Recovering Engineer

Quote from: Sir Aaron on November 24, 2018, 09:53:18 AM
Personally, I think there is a HUGE advantage to being older in the same grade level. You are usually more advanced physically, emotionally, and in your ability to grasp difficult concepts.

The advantage I see is that my kids are able to learn concepts more quickly and are able to easily maintain above grade level work. This means reduced homework time and makes life easier when we go on vacation or take a day off from school because their schoolwork is easy to makeup.

Alternatively, you could argue I've made life too easy for kids and they've not had to struggle. I have them in sports and no matter what level they're at or how good they are, they still have to challenge themselves to get better.
On the negative side, have you noticed any issues with boredom? My son is a late summer birthday so we will be making this decision eventually. When I look back at middle-school/high school I struggled in some classes where the concepts came easily because I would get bored and stop paying attention. I can see this as being a potential issue if there is a wide gap in learning speed but have no personal experience with it either way.

ethanscott

I was supposed to be held back but my parents said no as they didn't want me to waste a year studying more. I never thought of it in the way u did. But I don't think it really makes that much of a difference.
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