‘Redshirt’ debate
BEDFORD, Texas — When Griffin Hunt was 2 years old, his mother was already worried that sending him to kindergarten when he turned 5 would be a mistake.
Griffin, who turns 5 in August, would be among the youngest students in his class.
“Boys are not ready,” Jennifer Hunt said. She and her husband have opted to hold Griffin back for a year.
Watching Griffin, who likes to move around, touch things and pick them up, Hunt believes they have made the right decision for the long-term education of her son. They are seeking a “structured pre-kindergarten” program for him to attend next year.
“We don’t want him to start out having a negative experience,” she said. “We don’t want to set him up to fail.”
It’s a decision many parents of 5-year-olds will be wrestling with in the next few months as kindergarten registration begins.
About 9 percent of 5-year-olds nationwide are “academically redshirted,” or held out of kindergarten for a year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Parents have different reasons for holding a child back, ranging from the child being immature or suffering separation anxiety, to hopes that their son will be the biggest kid on his high school football team, said Karin Carter, director of early childhood programs in the Central Valley School District in Spokane Valley.
School officials say, however, there is always a range of academic abilities among pupils.
“Some 4-year-olds are starting to read words, and there are kids who don’t know how to hold a book properly,” Carter said. “Some can write their names, and others can’t hold a pencil.”
According to a survey released in November, Washington state kindergarten teachers report that 44 percent of incoming students were not prepared for kindergarten.
But there’s little research supporting academic redshirting.
“Recent research said it (academic redshirting) wasn’t proving to make much of a difference,” Carter said. “If a child is the appropriate age, generally, even if they come in a little behind their peers, they tend to catch up. With most who don’t do well, when they are age appropriate, there are other issues.”
Academic redshirting may be in response to higher expectations for young students. Kindergarten used to be a program to transition children from family to school, said Lynn Buffington, lower-school director at St. Vincent’s Cathedral School in Bedford, Texas, and a career early childhood educator. But the demand that schools produce high test scores has prompted a more strenuous kindergarten curriculum.
Academic redshirting has become common for students with birthdays in the latter half of the year, and particularly for Anglo boys. It’s found more often in wealthier communities and private schools, according to Lilian G. Katz, co-director of the Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Some educators support parents’ decisions to redshirt their children.
A child’s readiness for school, Buffington said, is often based on a number of intangibles, like the ability to cooperate with classmates or follow directions. “If everything is just right, a kindergartner soars,” Buffington said. “But innately, parents can sense whether that child is not ready to go on.”