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Most parents redshirt their children because they want them to succeed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do think that a parent who redshirts their child is probably doing many other things to help that child be successful. In comparison to other parents, perhaps they are more driven than the average.
This is also a parent who has the resources for an additional year of preschool or to stay home and forgo the income. It's probably safe to say that these redshirted kids, are for the most part, very lucky children who have parents with high expectations of them. These are the kids with the private tutors, violin lessons, and one-on-one coaching sessions in the off season. I would guess (again, I have absolutely no research), that these children are advantaged by much more than just their age.
It's not surprising to me, then, that the statistics would show that redshirted kids do better at one thing or another than their average younger peers when no other variables are controlled. How they compare to gifted younger peers, equally advantaged younger peers, younger peers with parents as involved with and invested in their education, may be another matter altogether.
Yes, agree. We have many teacher fams and wealthy fams that redshirt boys with summer b-days. Aside from the gain in maturity to handle all day kindy and the academic tutoring in elementary, the other big reasons to redshirt are to gain the extra year of playing time in Varsity sports (7&8th graders can play Varsity) & to stay with the same cohort in little league baseball (LLB cutoff July 31, District Dec 1). Fortunately LLB changed their cutoff in 2006(to Dec 31) so the latter isn't a big reason to redshirt anymore.
ReplyDelete>>How they compare to gifted younger peers, equally advantaged younger peers, younger peers with parents as involved with and invested in their education, may be another matter altogether.
The answer can be seen in the state test results. Our district let us see the answer by inference as they publicly handed out certificates to the '4's (we are so unrigorous that only about 5% max will get a 4 on ELA).