Kindergarten 'redshirting' is a hot topic

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 14, 2006 | by Janine DeFao San Francisco Chronicle

When other kids their age started kindergarten this fall, 5-year- old Caitlin and Jackson Pilisuk just waited on the sidelines.

The Oakland, Calif., twins were eligible, but their parents and preschool teachers decided they weren't ready "emotionally to deal with the rigors of kindergarten," said their mother, Philippa Barron. So the twins will stay in preschool and start kindergarten at age 6.

Evan Swihart, on the other hand, is happily plugging away in his Walnut Creek, Calif., kindergarten class at age 4.

"After a few days, we got the sense that he's in the right spot after a whole year of worrying and fretting about it," said his mother, Christine.

An estimated 9 percent of children nationally are entering kindergarten a year later than they could, though there's little evidence that children perform better in school if they start late. This practice has become common enough to earn the nickname "redshirting," borrowed from a term used for college athletes who don't play in their freshman year in order to spend the time building their strength and skills.

For kindergarten, boys are twice as likely to be redshirted as girls; whites are redshirted more than minorities, and middle-class and more affluent students are more likely than poorer ones to delay, according to studies by the U.S. Department of Education's statistics center and other researchers. As kindergarten becomes more academic and schools move to full-day programs, whether to redshirt has become a hot topic -- and great source of stress -- for parents with the means to pay for an extra year of day care or preschool.

The situation is exacerbated in California, because its requirement that kindergartners be 5 years old by Dec. 2 is one of the five latest cutoff dates in the nation. Thus, a single kindergarten class can include old 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds and young 6-year-olds, and many teachers say that creates a developmental gap that is hard to bridge.

But experts worry that redshirting puts low-income students at an extra disadvantage. The children who end up going to school young because their parents can't afford to hold them back are also the ones with the least preparation and lowest rates of participation in preschool, they say. Then those children have to compete with older, better-prepared students whose parents may demand more challenging classrooms so their kids aren't bored.

California state Sen. George Runner, a Republican, has authored legislation each year for the past decade to move up the state's cutoff date to Sept. 1. He said his bill finally gained traction last session, when it passed through every committee with support from the California Teachers Association, the state PTA and the California School Boards Association.

Twenty-two states moved up their cutoff dates between 1975 and 2000, said Deborah Stipek, dean of Stanford University's School of Education; 37 now limit kindergarten to children who are 5 years old by Sept. 30 or earlier.

Comparison of test scores among states is helping drive the change.

"I think people are recognizing our curriculum is different than it was 10 or 15 years ago," said Runner, who founded a private school before becoming a legislator. "We constantly found our (students with) fall birthdays, particularly the boys, were the kids who were struggling."

If passed, Runner's bill would move up the cutoff one month each year for three years, starting with the 2008-09 school year. The sticking point has been figuring out how to handle its financial impact, because the number of kindergartners could drop by one- fourth over the phase-in years, which would result in less per- pupil state funding for schools.

But holding children back from kindergarten could have unintended consequences.

Stipek, who has studied the issue, said the academic benefits that redshirted students see early on generally disappear by third grade. Some studies also suggest children who are "over age" for their grade are more likely to have behavior problems and to drop out later.

Stipek, who opposes changing the cutoff, is concerned that low- income students -- who she believes would benefit more from a year in school than another year at home -- lose from redshirting, whether they or their classmates are held back.

"Unless you ensure kids have access to high-quality preschool, you are putting disadvantaged kids at a greater disadvantage," she said.

A study published this summer by researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Texas at Austin found that redshirted students were less likely to repeat kindergarten and subsequent grades but didn't see any long-term academic or social benefits.

Many kindergarten teachers insist that age makes a difference.

"I can tell which kids are ready to sit on the rug, which ones don't need to cling to Mom and Dad. I can tell by their interest and their ability to focus," said Los Angeles teacher Armando Argandona, president of the California Kindergarten Association, whose members voted this year to make changing the cutoff its top priority.