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One more reason not to "redshirt"
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I have been officially against kindergarten redshirting for a couple of years now, ever since I got pressured to hold my perfectly capable son back from kindergarten merely because he had a summer birthday (you can read about my experience on parenting site Babble). I had read (and agreed with) the studies from educational experts saying redshirting does more harm than good. Studies in these areas show that normal six-year-olds perform just like their five-year-old peers, not better, when placed in kindergarten a year late; also, behavioral problems show up in some redshirted children as they get older.
But new research from economists argues there’s more at stake when holding children back from kindergarten than just educational issues.
According to the December 14 issue of the New York Times Magazine’s “The Year in Ideas,” redshirting and its ramifications are now the concern of economists, who fear the “lengthening of the American childhood” will come back to haunt us in the workforce. David Deming of Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Susan Dynarski, of the University of Michigan, published a paper this summer on the economic ripple effects of delaying a child’s entrance into school.
The Times reports that the number of children entering first grade at age 6 has dropped dramatically, from 96.5 percent in 1968, to a stark 84.5 percent in 2005. Deming and Dynarski have discovered two negative outcomes from delaying a child’s entry into school.
First, American minimum requirements for education go by age, not years in school. So a child who did not enter school until he was six and decides to drop out at sixteen has received an entire year less of mandatory schooling – which, any way you sort it, is a bad thing. Next, delayed school entry now will keep millions out of the workforce in the near future. The six-year-old kindergartener will still be in high school at seventeen and eighteen, when her parents were already in college, and still in college at the time her parents were working. Deming and Dynarski cite Congress’ action to increase the Social Security retirement age to 67, under the assumption that there will be more workers to support them - yet that may no longer be true. According to the two authors, redshirted children will have a seismic impact on the workforce of the future.
(To view the piece in the Times, go to "The Year in Ideas" interactive page and scroll to "K" for kindergarten.)
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