redshirting & "tournament settings"

Competition between Parents

Red-shirting parents appear to believe that relative age matters for children’s performance. There is no evidence of a lasting benefit to education or earnings from being older than one’s classmates. [maybe, maybe not] There is, however, evidence of a lasting competitive advantage in sports. In Europe and the United States, children on elite youth soccer, hockey, swimming, and tennis teams are disproportionately born just after the age cutoff for those leagues—that is, they are the oldest of their peers. This early advantage persists, with 60 percent more Major League Baseball players born in August than in July, mirroring the near-universal age cutoff of July 31 in youth baseball....Relative age effects could plausibly persist in other tournament settings. Admission to the most elite colleges is a rank-order tournament, for example. We are exploring whether age effects persist in this competitive arena.

[snip]

Two recent papers appear to contradict this extensive literature on the negative impact of later entry on educational attainment. Bedard and Dhuey (2006) find that those who enter later are more likely to attend a university track in British Columbia and more likely to take exams required for admission to a selective college and to attend a four-year college in the United States. Puhani and Weber (2007) (pdf file) similarly find that those who enter school later are more likely to follow the Gymnasium university-preparatory track in Germany. But these studies show no positive impact of age at school entry on years of completed education. Their results, like the research on competitive athletes, is consistent with the idea that relative age provides an advantage in rank-order tournament competitions, which characterizes admission to elite schooling tracks, selective universities, and competitive sports teams.

The Lengthening of Childhood (pdf file)
David Deming
Susan Dynarski
Working Paper 14124
June 2008
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

This is exactly what we're seeing here.

Exactly.

My district's middle school -- and, from what I hear, the high school, too -- are "tournament settings." The school creates artificial scarcity for highly valued resources (Honors courses at the high school, accelerated courses in the middle school) and the kids are on their own. I've always called it Darwinian gatekeeping, but tournament setting does nicely as well.

I don't know how things work for girls, and I don't know how things are going in other classes. What I've seen in my own kid's class, broadly speaking, is that the older kids win.

They'd almost have to, given the Harry Potter divide.

This is one of the reasons we're changing schools, as a matter of fact. C's new school isn't a tournament setting. At least, it doesn't appear to be.


relative age effect
high school leadership, wages, and relative age
redshirting kids
redshirting & tournament settings