<p>“California is now changing the cutoff date to 9/1 which they will phase in over the next few years - this coming school year the date will be 11/1.”</p>
<p>^ Do you know the idea behind the change? My school district is suffering mightily with planning a July budget with possible major cutbacks in the fall. Won’t this mean more kids in the same number of classrooms?</p>
<p>I know you’re asking Ready2010, but as a Californian I think its the opposite. There will be fewer kids in K now, and more in 12th grade 13 years from now. I think its a way to help balance budgets for the time being. I also heard some rationale that since K curriculum has ramped up, kids should be older. Personally, I would rather they just chill with the kindergarten.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I think the reason is to be in line with other parts of the country. With DS3 who had a September 1 birthday, I checked out a private school with a cutoff of 8/31 I believe. They were strict and said he would have to be in kindergarten as the oldest. This was the kid who’d been reading since four and there was no way I was going to make him wait a year or give them an extra year’s tuition. He got into the school we wanted (public) and his first grade teacher (who had my older three kids) told me there was no choice but to put him in young. As I said earlier, it worked out. But I think these arbitrary cutoff days are a bit silly. Some kids really do need to be in young and some really do need some extra time.</p>
<p>Our cut-off is Dec 31. My oldest with an early March birthday learned to read before he was three and was so bored all through elementary school and middle school. He really would have benefited from being allowed an early start. My younger with a July birthday, was right on target age-wise, but always seemed about six months behind the program. He really wasn’t reading till second grade. He did catch up eventually although I think some mild LDs caused issues in high school and continue to make some aspects of college more difficult than I would like. </p>
<p>I skipped first grade and always enjoyed being the youngest in the class. I really wish the public schools would be more flexible about judging which kids are ready. </p>
<p>I think in school districts where a lot of red-shirting goes on end up having kindergartens that are teaching what used to be first grade material.</p>
<p>I didn’t feel I missed out on childhood, I felt like I gained the ability to have a gap year without losing time.</p>
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<p>A policy I heard about - maybe from the Pacific NW somewhere - sounded appealing. For any child born 2 months before or after the cut-off date, let the parent decide whether to put the child in with the older or younger class. Figure the parent knows the child best.</p>
<p>But…frustrating for the child born 2-months-plus-1-day from the cut-off date whose parents beg to differ. Nothing’s perfect.</p>
<p>Our school system has since changed the cutoff date from 12/31 (when my kids were young) to 9/1. The previous superintendent found data about younger kids not passing assessments at the same rate as older kids within a grade, so decided to “use the data” to have an older cohort…and therefore better scores.</p>
<p>We never told the middle school and HS about the gradeskip. S had a toxic 3rd grade teacher who would not let it go – and that included in front of other students and other parents.</p>
<p>I was a late December bday with a 9/1 cutoff in Chicago. Nuns would not budge, even though I had been reading for a couple of years. Moved to Kansas a year later, and I would have made their cutoff. They recommended a grade skip, parents refused. Moved to Utah the next year, they skipped me from 1st to 3rd, then we moved to Texas and the new school put me back to 2nd.</p>
<p>I hated being the oldest. I was always the tallest girl, though, whether I was skipped or not.</p>
<p>In most of my family and neighbors in my old neighborhood, there was actually an effort to avoid “redshirting” unless it couldn’t be avoided due to developmental delays or extreme immaturity. </p>
<p>The one exception in my extended family who was redshirted and was a month older than me ended up being two years behind in college because he had such issues with doing decently on the SATs(struggling to break 1000 on pre-1995 SATs) and college admissions that he ended up taking a gap year to improve on both. </p>
<p>Coming from NYC…we have a December 31 cutoff which meant even though I was a late November baby…I started first grade with others who turned 6 in my year. Other than being among the shortest kids in my class and a dash of immaturity from K-10^…there really weren’t any issues that really came about from being among the youngest.*</p>
<p>One thing which continues to benefit me was my ability to easily make friends with a wider age range than others my age. This way, I had younger** friends to goof/joke around with and older** friends to discuss serious intellectual/adult topics of interest that most classmates my age or younger weren’t interested in or felt was “too serious” for them. </p>
<p>Also, contrary to the somewhat popular stereotype of the youngest kids being quiet followers…I tended to be very extroverted and ended up being trusted with leadership positions from childhood till the present. </p>
<p>In fact, one odd thing which sticks out in my mind is how often it was that OLDER classmates or friends would come to me to ask for advice or to take the lead on something…sometimes to the point of irritation. </p>
<p>^ Had a growth spurt at 15 between sophomore and junior year of high school which caused me to vault from being among the shortest kids in my grade to being one of the tallest. Several dozen classmates…including some girls asked me “What did you eat?” </p>
<ul>
<li>Academic issues in HS were mainly a combination of being placed in an academically intense/cutthroat high school with an academically elite group and early onset teenage rebellion at 13-14…the same types I’ve commonly observed occurred among 15-18+ year olds.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Younger/Older in terms of age or maturity.</p>
<p>“redshirting”: holding your 5-year-old back from kindergarten 'til he’s 6 so he’ll be among the oldest and smartest kids in class. Parents of a 5-year-old with a late birthday despair that little Johnny will forever be a failure if he has to compete with kids six or eight months older so they put the fix in; hold him back a year so he has the edge in class and ultimately an edge in life.</p>
<p>[Redshirting:</a> Holding kids back from kindergarten - 60 Minutes - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400898n&tag=contentMain;contentAux]Redshirting:”>http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400898n&tag=contentMain;contentAux)</p>
<p>[Redshirting:</a> Holding kids back from kindergarten - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390128/]Redshirting:”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390128/)</p>
<p>cobrat, aren’t you from a different culture? </p>
<p>This has been done for years, and way before the Outliers, which probably got its idea from reading about history.</p>
<p>It was done for boys - never girls, as I remember it - and it was done for “social” reasons primarily, not for a sports’ advantages. Redshirting is an athletic reference and really has nothing to do with why kids are encouraged to start school later.</p>
<p>I did it - my kid went to three years of pre-school - and so did all the other parents of boys. If you didn’t, your child was at a greater disadvantage. An occasional parent didn’t, and they were always sorry. Many had their child repeat an extra year in middle school when it became obvious how much of a disadvantage the child was.</p>
<p>An experience at a private or parochial school is different than at a public (sorry, nuns aren’t the best educators, in my observations).</p>
<p>As the show emphasized, it is definitely a practice that the wealthy or very concerned parent can do.</p>
<p>One thing I found interesting in the 60 Minutes report is that someone commented that there is a higher dropout rate among the red-shirted kids. That piqued my interest because I know a kid like that – the kid who was the oldest & tallest in my son’s K class, clearly one of the brightest – but went off the rails in high school. I don’t know the source of those statistics, but I can see a number of reasons – for one thing, the older kids will simply hit the age at which they can legally quit school a year sooner than many of their peers. So if they are unhappy or frustrated in high school, there’s just that much more incentive to leave. </p>
<p>I personally didn’t pay much attention other than that, because my kids (and grandson) conveniently have April birthdays, so personally it wasn’t an issue. I had grown up being the youngest in my own grade, a situation that was exacerbated when I skipped a year of high school – it’s not something I would particularly advocate for social reasons, but I was one of those kids who was also bored & frustrated by lack of challenge in school. I actually chose a school for my kids that had multiple combined, mixed-age grades and emphasized mixed grade/age activities-- part of the issue is that segregation strictly by age doesn’t work in any case, because kids come in all sizes & a wide range of intellectual abilities and developmental readiness.</p>
<p>Clearly, it’s so arbitrary. In one school district it’s a Sept 1 cutoff, in another it’s Dec 31 and each kid is different. Especially at the age of 5.</p>
<p>I have a nephew who is French and he says they can surge ahead one year and fall back another year. In the US it seems shameful to be held back.</p>
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<p>Maybe…if that’s defined as growing up as one of the few Chinese/Asian-American kids in what was a predominantly White/Latino working-class NYC neighborhood.</p>
<h1>50 - only if school is the only place educating your child!</h1>
<p>I know this is controversial but in a lot of cases, especially with boys, it can be beneficial. It isn’t so much that they need the time academically but more so socially. I’ve seen this with many kids, our oldest included. He has a late summer birthday and would have benefited tremendously from waiting another year. If his preschool teachers had suggested holding him back we would have. Academically he was fine, but by about 4th grade you could tell that he was behind socially and it caused a lot of issues through the rest of his school career.</p>
<p>Now, we know a lot of people that hold their kids back for sports which I don’t agree with. I know several kids with Dec, Jan, Feb birthdays that were held back (with a Sept cut off for kindergarten). These kids turn 19 their senior year in high school. Of the kids we know personally, it has not helped them athletically at all–and they have lost their eligibility for spring sports because of our state high school league rules. Their parents were not aware of that until it was too late.</p>
<p>I didn’t hold my son back at 4 (Oct birthday) and although the Kindergartin teacher did with her son and encouraged it, she had to agree, second half of the year, he would have been bored academically (he was reading with first grade children) and wasn’t that young among his peers, although there were a few that were 6 that year. He was always on the shorter side and that wouldn’t have mattered much more than an inch and he stilled played basketball well since he was fast.
I think it is very individual but you have to know your child and to do it just to give a perceived boost seems wrong.
My son’s social issues were more that he was more mature than his classmates in high school, they were more risk-takers and impulsive, but again, that is individual. Who was shaving or having a growth spurt also had a wide range, you really can’t predict.</p>
<p>Someone posted about this on the main parents thread but I will add my reply here as well. We have a 9/1 cut off and a S with a late summer birthday. Hindsight, we should have held him back. Academically he was just fine, it was the social issues and physical maturity that really stood out. Physical maturity not for sports, he is pretty athletic and did run varsity track as a 9th grader in a top track program but really hated sports so he stopped after 9th grade. </p>
<p>Starting around 4th grade you could see a big difference in the boys with summer birthdays. It was pretty common in that town to hold kids back and had we lived there when S was starting school, we probably would have held him back.</p>
<p>We did know many people that held kids back for sports, kids that had Dec, Jan, Feb birthdays with a 9/1 cut-off. It hasn’t helped any of them excel in sports however.</p>
<p>There was a story years ago about this in relation to football in Texas.</p>
<p>In my public school in Chicago, a new K class started every semester, so it wasn’t a problem.</p>
<p>When my kids went, I didn’t notice until they started in the 4th grade pull out G/T program. They were no longer in the middle, but were the youngest.</p>
<p>I am a supporter of redshirting… I wish my mother had done it for me… I am an end of December year birthday. My DD14 is a late September birthday and we decided to keep her in nursery school another year…and it was one of the best decisions I ever made… she is a leader, mature, has ALWAYS been a motivated and responsible/straight A student… even from a young age…she is an outlier… and always has been… </p>
<p>My son, who is four years older and has a July birthday went to Kindergarten at the age of five. I still wish to this day that he had gone to school at six. He is in college and a great kid… but I can see where his immaturity got in the way on many occasions. </p>
<p>Just my 0.02.</p>
<p>Obviously depends on the abilities and maturity of the child. Our S has a late summer b’day but we did not hold him back. This made him one of the youngest in his class. As he got older, he took that as a challenge (younger kid wins over older kids) and to this day, as a college freshman, he’s glad that he’s essentially got a year on most everyone else. Doesn’t always work that way but it did in our case.</p>
<p>My sister has 2 sons - the older with an August birthday and the younger with a June birthday. The August birthday boy was quiet and did’t want to leave home to go to school, she thought he wasn’t socially ready and held him back. I never thought of this until now, but the past year she’s been fighting the system to have him jumped ahead in math and science. If he’s just started with his grade and been the youngest he wight have been fine. He’s now in junior high and bored.
S2 couldn’t wit to go to school and was a bit socially immature, but such an active learner that she couldn’t have held him if she wanted to.
Looking back it would likely have been best not to wait for S1.</p>