My parents were always eager for me to get ahead. As a kid, that meant signing me up for tons of after-school activities and sending me to kindergarten at four — a year younger than my classmates.
At the time, their decision seemed justified. After all, op-eds and research from the 2000s warned parents against holding their children back from school — a process referred to as “redshirting.”
In a New York Times article titled “Delay Kindergarten at Your Child’s Peril” from 2008, a neuroscience professor and a former editor-in-chief of Nature Neuroscience co-authored an op-ed arguing against redshirting. They write, “In high school, redshirted children are less motivated and perform less well. By adulthood, they are no better off in wages or educational attainment — in fact, their lifetime earnings are reduced by one year.”
That wasn’t the only article that advocated against delayed enrollment from kindergarten either. According to research done in 2002 by the dean of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, Deborah Spitek cited similar studies that redshirted children were found to both not learn more than their younger peers and have more behavioral problems than their classmates.
But much of the research done on redshirting relies on data from the ’70s and ’80s. Education has changed significantly since then. What should parents do now?
In a 2013 interview for Valley News, Stipek slightly reversed her stance, advising parents to send their children to kindergarten if they feel their child is personally ready for that transition.
Children whose parents were affected enough by anti-redshirting research to send their children to school early are still reaping the consequences. Which is to say, new research on redshirting has come to vastly different conclusions on the pros and cons of sending children to school older.
According to a 2017 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, succeeding academically in school is more likely for older children. By examining the Sept. 1 enrollment cutoff in Florida, they found that “August-born children are less likely to attend or complete college, or to complete college at a selective institution.”
During an interview with NPR, David Figlio, one of the researchers involved in the Bureau’s study, pointed to SAT scores as evidence of this. Figlio said there is about a 40 point achievement gap between redshirted and non-redshirted students. Part of this comes from a level of stress and anxiety associated with learning too much too soon — effects I still feel to this day.
Luckily, now that recent research examining the long-term effects of redshirting is available, we must apply it accordingly to the next generation of students. Which is to say, sending your child to kindergarten early may seem like a sweet deal on the surface, but if you can wait, do.
