About a year ago I worked as a lead pre-school teacher on the north side of Grand Rapids. Our school demographic was made up of mostly middle upper class families, with the exception of a handful of students on scholarship from the Great Start Readiness program. Nearing the end of the school year we had conferences with our four year old group. The main point of these meetings was to discuss kindergarten placement for the next school year. Almost all parents were already set on which school they were sending their child. Most avoiding the Grand Rapids Public schools as much as possible. A handful of parents though were unsure of where to place their kiddo the next year. A couple students were on the young side and were teetering on early birthdays. These two students were white boys, who were in the middle in terms of birthdays, not too young, not too old. These two acted young for their age, but skill level wise they were ready to go. The parents of these students were very concerned about what to do, whether they should keep them for an extra year in our preschool program, where they would be older and more “mature” the next year. The other option being to send them along to kindergarten and see what would happen.
I did my student teaching in a kindergarten placement and taught summer school with successful results. By no means did that make me a kindergarten master, but compared to the knowledge base of the other teachers at my school, and had a fresh view point in terms of school readiness skill expectancy. My viewpoint was biased compared to the suburban mindset of the school. I spent all of my time student teaching and subbing in the Wyoming Public School district. This is an urban district with a high Hispanic population. Most students enter school as soon as they are eligible. There is a head start/early childhood center with opportunities of schooling before kindergarten, but even then there are only so many spots and not always the knowledge of availability. Most of my kids in my student teaching class were of a minority race. Some students came into our kindergarten classroom emotionally young and unprepared in the tools of school readiness. Did I think they were not ready for school, though? Absolutely not. They might have had a delayed start time in terms of catching up with the rest of the students but with hard work they were learning relatively the same pace as the rest of the class, and later went on to the first grade.
When my preschool parents were asking whether their child was ready or not for school. I kept reflecting on my Wyoming kindergartners. I kept thinking, if those kids can jump in and do it, why not these guys? Why can’t they have that little extra leap of faith and jump into kindergarten The other teachers had concerns that they were not ready because of things like not being able to hold scissors, or the amount of responses they would give to an adult, and the size of their bodies. In my mind this just seemed so absurd that these were the red flag factors given to keep these guys at home or in preschool for another year. They would be much larger than the rest of the students in their classes and definitely bored if they stayed an extra year in preschool, and way ahead of the fresh kindergartners the next year. I gave my opinion saying I thought they would be fine. But no one listened to me.
I read the book Multiplication is For White People, by Lisa Delpit. This book is fantastic, I highly recommend
it. Much of it discusses the achievement gap and was we can do to fill it in , and what we are doing that is preventing that change from happening.
While reading and listening to Lisa Delpit talk about the concept of red-shirting . Red-shirting was given its name after colleges red shirt their sports players, giving them an extra year to get bigger. This is the same idea with incoming kindergartners. The kindergarten cutoff date tells parents when their kids can start school based on when they will turn five. The idea behind keeping students held back out of school for an extra year is thought by parents to give kids an advantage physically and academically. In Mark J. Penn’s book, Microtrends; The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, he notes that “the typical red-shirted child is a boy with white, well-educated parents” (Penn). Why these parents in this demographic? They enjoy how it feels to be at the top of the pack and know how competitive it is. They want their children to have the same benefits, along with a head start. The popularity in this trend does not seem to be going away. A recent New York Times article gave the statistic that “ in 2008 17% of kindergarten entrants were at least six years old, nine percent of those being red-shirted” ( Wang). I honed in and felt connected to the issue because of my position working at the preschool. My eyes were opened up to an issue that I can see occurring all the time, but I had no idea that it was being acknowledged by a name, or the amount of power it has on the achievement gap
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/dont-delay-your-kindergartners-start.html
Kindergarten was once place to learn social skills and focused on learning through play and experiences. These valuable skills a necessity for their growth and development in navigating their next experiences in academics and social society. Glancing back at my own personal experience with kindergarten I remember hands on art projects galore, lots of play, class projects, and even the occasional nap. Now is a completely different kind of story. My time spent teaching in a kindergarten classroom clearly shows that to me. With changing curriculum and state standards, students’ expectations are incredibly higher. There is a higher pressure for students to achieve early school readiness skills needed for more formal academics.
These pressures are the soul basis for why parents choose to red-shirt their kids. A recent study done on the changes of a child’s timeline discusses the parental attitudes behind this saying “Parents believe that older children out-compete their younger peers in the classroom, on the athletic field, and in college admissions. Thus, eager to give their children an edge, parents are willing to hold back their child one year in order to shift them up the pecking order” ( Deming & Dynarski). The idea that bigger is better, and more experience will get you ahead completely applies here with parents keeping their children behind a year whether at home, or in a preschool setting, getting a jump start on their peers.
http://users.nber.org/~dynarski/Deming_Dynarski_Childhood.pdf
All of this looks good on paper, giving our students that jump start in a highly competitive world, but wait. If we look back to the demographic this focuses on, upper middle class white, and typically a boy. In some ways this is quite the impossible cookie cutter to live up to. That completely leaves out our at-risk student demographic. Families from at-risk demographics cannot compete with these red-shirting families for a variety of reasons. While red-shirters stay home an extra year with a caregiver, complete some form of preschool/day care, students from at risk families do not have that leisure or money to make that choice of staying home an extra year. At risk students attend school when they qualify according to the kindergarten cut off, whether that means they’re younger or older in the class.
Just because a student is at-risk doesn't always mean they are not coming into school with no pre-school experiences but because of their socio economic status it does often make preschool unobtainable or have a huge effect on their kindergarten readiness. Studies have shown that students who have attended preschool prior to kindergarten have a higher kindergarten readiness, which is critical for success especially with students from lower income families. But how available or even obtainable is preschool for our at-risk students? A Children’s Defense Fund Study reported “that only 42% of children from house- holds with incomes under $15,000 annually were enrolled in preschool, compared with 65% of children whose parents earned more than $50,000” (Frey). That is such a large percentage of students being left out of a chance of having kindergarten readiness who truly need it the most.
Even if at-risk parents would like to send their child to pre-school for an extra year, this often isn't even possible. A study examining at-risk Latino students and at-risk preschool experiences and the implications of what they can afford. The article says that “Subsidized preschool and a day-care programs typically have strict age requirements such that children must leave the preschool when they are first legally able to enter kindergarten. These rules are driven by economic factors, as programs strive to serve as many children as possible with limited funds” (Cosden). Recently my own preschool has been preparing to apply to become a great start program. The amount of paperwork and requirements to make this happen is astonishing, but well worth it. We will be given scholarship money to allow at-risk students in our program so they do not have to pay tuition costs. Although it is great that we are doing this, I can see where other schools might have difficulties making these requirements that revolve around required school hours, staff numbers etc. On a frustrating note to do this you have to request the number of slots you would like for scholarship students. Numbers can often vary depending on the attitude of the school. I know I personally had to argue for more spots because others making the decision were considered that if we had too many at-risk children it would ruin the family dynamic of our preschool. How absurd! These are just a few examples of what at-risk students are up against just trying to obtain kindergarten readiness before even entering school.
Upon entering school the effect red-shirting has on our at-risk students is quite
frustrating. Students entering school on time, not red shirted for year, are ready for school expecting to be taught at age appropriate curriculum. Instead, since so many children enter school at the age of six curriculum can be pushed ahead as far as 18 months because of the developmental differences and experiences. Students coming in at a normal time expectation are prepared to play and pretend are interested in age appropriate items. This can often create a social gap as well with older students setting an unreachable maturity gap. Not only is this a disadvantage for students, but teacher’s jobs become even harder having to balance almost two different grade levels of curriculum in one classroom. At-risk students from day one have to compete with red-shirted students. During a time when learning and development are most crucial, these first few years stretch the achievement gap even further. This increases the retention rate with our at-risk students. A recent article in Mother Goose discussed this saying “Given the increasingly dramatic size of the existing achievement gap—one exacerbated by few affordable pre-K options—some worry that as teachers make kindergarten more challenging to engage the older students, low-income
kids will fall even further behind .“
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/10/redshirting-kindergarten-backfire-education
So, to back track and examine the effects of red-shirting, this widens the achievement gap, creates a divide in social maturity, and raises the competitiveness with academic development and skill level, creates curriculum difficulties for teachers, and increases competition for kindergarten readiness. All of these things have an influence on state education laws. The increase in these trends of red-shirting has developed into something called a Kindergarten Arms Race, this being defined as “with children starting school at an ever-increasing age in order to gain a perceived advantage on standardized tests” (Deming &Dynarskis). This means that the age requirement for entering kindergarten is being pushed back further and further to keep up with competition and maintain test scores. The same study discussing this says that in long term results of this “The presence of older, more mature children in a class may lead teachers to raise their standards, resulting in lower relative performance and increased grade retention rates for children who enter school at the statutory age”. The same study shared the after effects of this trend sharing that when the age of school entry rises, so do high school dropout rates. Many teenagers leave school as soon as the law will let them. Teenagers who leave school as soon as they are legally able (say, at age 17) will end up with more years of schooling if they entered first grade at age six than if they entered at age seven. High school graduation rates in the United States are stagnant or falling , and the United States is falling behind other nations in its rate of human capital accumulation”. I personally thought this was interesting. I think often times we focus on what is good right now, and what will give us that immediate jump-start, but what about the later outcomes? Outside of the effects on at-risk students, Mark J. Penn pointed out in Microtrends that with red-shirting our children we will see a rise in things like sexually active middle schoolers, 11th grade military enrollment, high school voters, and high school dropouts.
After sorting through research for and against red shirting and the effects on our at risk students, and outside of examining future outcomes, it is safe to say that we cannot make the claim the red-shirting benefits our children enough to continues the practice. We can say that the effects on our at-risk children completely widen the achievement gap and continue to make it harder to compete with the top group in school. “ A U.S. Department of Education study of 21,000 pupils released in May found that, by the end of first grade, red-shirted kids did slightly better in reading, but worse in math than their grade- level peers who entered kindergarten on time. Other studies have shown that red-shirted kids excel academically for a while, but the advantage disappears by third grade. In another study with early literacy shows that “. Delayed students showed a better understanding of the connection between letter sounds at the ends of words and understanding words in context and score better on tests of academic achievement in math, reading, and general knowledge.
In contrast a New York Times article shared information showing the gap break up over time saying “In a class of 25, the average difference is equivalent to going from 13th place to 11th. This advantage fades by the end of elementary school, though, and disadvantages start to accumulate. In high school, red-shirted 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” (Wang). Although this shows the breakup of red-shirt advantages over time, it seems clear that our at-risk students will feel the effects of it for most of their lives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/dont-delay-your-kindergartners-start.html?_r=0
In Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Outliers,
he discusses the idea of red-shirting relating the topic to Canadian hockey players just entering their leagues, and how competitive it is to be on a winning team. He explains the Matthew Effect that is the idea that those who are given much, will have an abundance. He uses this to explain how older children redshirted do better in these leagues because of their birth month. He discusses how redshirting puts students into the patterns of “achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement” that stretches on. He says that with this maturity difference “they put the older kids in the advanced stream, where they learn betters skills, and the next year because they are in the higher groups, they do even better, and the next year the same things happen and they do better again” (Gladwell). Although his opinions and research again varies with the rest, it points out again the continued influence red-shirting has on at-risk students, splitting the older students and at-risk students in two different groups of achievement and development. Is that the way we constantly want to have to teach students? Doesn’t it seem like there should be a better way of entering and requiring students on timeline than this?
The question that I keep going back to in relation to my stories about my pre-school and other teaching experience in terms of the discussion surrounding deciding when to send kids to school, is do we really want to teach with this attitude knowing that many at-risk students are completely getting the disadvantage? It seems completely unhealthy to have a system of entrance that is so incredibly competitive and concerned about being on top that we can’t take a moment to look at the big picture and see how it continue to promote and secure the achievement gap.
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