The Cost of Redshirting

Traditionally, one of the sources of America's advantage in wealth vis-a-vis the rest of the world has been higher overall levels of educational attainment. What's more, over time the overall level of educational attainment in the United States trended upwards. One of the most disturbing facts about the contemporary United States is that both of those trends have halted -- overall attainment levels have flatlined, and we've been overtaken by a number of other wealthy democracies. The causes of this remain somewhat mysterious, but (via Sara Mead) economists David Deming and Susan Dynarski suggest that the practice of so-called "Kindergarten Redshirting," where you keep your kid (usually a boy) out of kindergarten for an extra year so he'll be older than his peers and theoretically gain some kind of advantage, may be partially to blame:

Forty years ago, 96% of six-year-old children were enrolled in first grade or above. As of 2005, the figure was just 84%. The school attendance rate of six-year-olds has not decreased; rather, they are increasingly likely to be enrolled in kindergarten rather than first grade. This paper documents this historical shift. We show that only about a quarter of the change can be proximately explained by changes in school entry laws; the rest reflects "academic redshirting," the practice of enrolling a child in a grade lower than the one for which he is eligible. We show that the decreased grade attainment of six-year-olds reverberates well beyond the kindergarten classroom. Recent stagnation in the high school and college completion rates of young people is partly explained by their later start in primary school. The relatively late start of boys in primary school explains a small but significant portion of the rising gender gaps in high school graduation and college completion. Increases in the age of legal school entry intensify socioeconomic differences in educational attainment, since lower-income children are at greater risk of dropping out of school when they reach the legal age of school exit.

The basic causal mechanism, as Sara explains, is simple "Children (particularly boys) who are held back a year before entering kindergarten are a year older than their peers, which allows them to legally drop out of school a year earlier than they could have if they had started kindergarten when they were eligible, depressing educational attainment." Now individual choice plays a large role here so there's a limited amount policymakers can do to reverse this trend, but public policy does play a role here and we ought to try to make sure it's playing a constructive role.

Photo by Flickr user Leonid Mamchekov used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

When I was a kid a lot of people went to kindergarten twice. They went when they were 5, and then if their teachers/parents didn't think they were ready for 1st grade, they went to kindergarten again. Then they would up driving to high school in their freshman year. I wonder where this fits in with the redshirting thing.

Posted by too many steves | July 28, 2008 4:51 PM

It seems to me that defining educational results as a function of the last grade achieved before dropping out is pretty weak sauce. If someone drops out in the eleventh grade instead of the tenth grade, are they really that much better off?

And a student who delays starting school may do better, becoming less likely to drop out later on. There are big differences between six-year-olds and five-year-olds, relatively speaking. It's easy to imagine that a child on the cusp would do better as an older, more confident student, rather than as one of the youngest in the class. Presumably this is a large part of what their parents are thinking. Why assume that the parents are thinking irrationally?

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | July 28, 2008 4:52 PM

It's the higher earning parents who are more likely to redshirt their children, at least where I live, so I am a bit skeptical of this explanation.

Having said that, my little guy is on the cusp of whether to start one year or the next -- and I have been leaning more and more in the direction of starting him as early as I can (his birthday is in early September).

But this redshirting stuff is not being made up. I overheard a mom at the playground talking about keeping her kids home because they had summer birthdays.

Posted by Barbara | July 28, 2008 4:55 PM

Ever trying to prove that Everyone Shouldn't Be Able to Go To College, MY ignores the most obvious reason for our relative decline. Other countries pay their citizens way through school if they obtain a certain score on a test or in a subject in high school. Ours does not, and student loans haven't covered the cost of college in over 20 years.

but hey, it's gotta be the redshirting. No way we could be falling behind for the obvious reasons. This is one of those moments where Petey could show up, attribute this bizarre logic to trust-fundism, and actually be right

Posted by soullite | July 28, 2008 5:01 PM

I agree with Tyrone. If you controlled for this, I bet you would still see a dropoff in important educational achievement metrics like "completed high school" and "completed college." My guess is that older kids in kindergarten aren't going to depress the college graduation rate by themselves. You might look to rising education expense instead?

Posted by Alex | July 28, 2008 5:01 PM

This is probably one of those "maybe I should read the paper" questions, but isn't it likely that the kids who are redshirted come from families where they're probably going to end up going to college?

It seems to me that crappy gov policy which makes college more expensive here than in much of the rest of the oecd is to blame more than redshirting. If we drastically increased enrollment in community colleges and expanded good state schools it would have equivalent effect.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 28, 2008 5:02 PM

I have a boy who just finished kindergarten at the normal age. In his class though were about 4-5 boys who were a year older. It may be great for those boys self esteem to be the biggest, most articulate, most capable boys, but it kind of unfairly diminishes the regular boys self confidence.

Posted by Doug | July 28, 2008 5:02 PM

There's definitely a sweet spot when it comes to teaching kids to read. If they start too late, they may never really catch up. Usually that means, if they're not reading well by the time they hit 3rd grade or so, they're screwed, but I could see how starting kindergarten a year late might hurt them.

Posted by too many steves | July 28, 2008 5:04 PM

"Other countries pay their citizens way through school if they obtain a certain score on a test or in a subject in high school. Ours does not, and student loans haven't covered the cost of college in over 20 years."

Such a system would quickly turn into comedy in the U.S. Paying only those that got a certain score would lead to the usual complaints of bias in the tests against the official victim groups. And of course there would be constant political pressure to lower the required score until even the idiots got the $$$$.

It's the American Way.

Posted by kafka | July 28, 2008 5:16 PM

which allows them to legally drop out of school a year earlier than they could have if they had started kindergarten when they were eligible, depressing educational attainment

I don't understand this. The quoted text talks about attainment in terms of "high school and college completion rates". How does redshirting affect high school or college graduation rates?

Yes, it may affect whether someone drops out after 10th grade or 11th grade, but either way they are not graduating high school.

More explanation is necessary.

Posted by Al | July 28, 2008 5:16 PM

This is absurd. Working class and single parent families send their kids to full day kindergarten as soon as they possibly can--if they can get it because not all states have it. Upper class parents sometimes try to hold their kid back because of anxieties about the kids performance (ie his inability to perform at the same grade level as the girls) but I'd be hugely surprised if that is true for lower income parents. If upper income kids are *dropping out* because they are aging out of the system before entering college I will eat my hat. This is one of those absurd correlations that just doesn't make any sense on the ground and I doubt it very, very, much.

On the other hand there are lots of obvious and non trivial reasons 1) why parents red shirt, 2) why lots more kids than should get forced out of school before graduating high school, and 3) why lots more kids can't afford college here in the US. Most of them, as soullite and tyrone pointed out above, have to do with inequities in funding and in education generally. You don't need to go for some strange "frogs are being born with one eye and bats are dying!" explanation for why boys are dropping out of highschool--they can't afford college and male wages for boys without college educations are stagnant and dropping so they can't afford to work for a while and then go back, either. And their parents can't stake them to unemployed higher ed. So, nu?

aimai

Posted by AIMAI. | July 28, 2008 5:17 PM

There is also the issue of kids starting kindergarten before they are ready making kindergarten less productive for kids that are ready for it, and putting kids into the system before they are ready for it, causing them to be more likely to falter.

Kids should start K at 5, not younger. That means 5 years old by September!

Posted by tft | July 28, 2008 5:17 PM

Agree with Tyrone-- this seems to mostly be a phenomenon among middle-class and higher families, which shouldn't correspond too strongly with dropout rates given that these kids are usually a relatively small risk in that sense anyway.

My older nephew started [parochial] kindy about three weeks after his fifth birthday, and he was both smaller & less socially adept than some of his peers, which was tough for everyone at times. But he was already well ahead wrt reading (knew his alphabet & even recognized a few words before his second birthday), so keeping him back wouldn't have been a good idea either. And the Montessori schools, which probably would have been a better learning environment for him in many ways, had an earlier cutoff date he would have missed. Anyway, he's headed to second grade in a couple of weeks and has mostly caught up socially, although he'll probably always be just a bit awkward... but as his parents note, he's white, male, relatively affluent, from a stable home, nice-looking, and generally friendly, so there's no point in fretting too much.

Posted by latts | July 28, 2008 5:17 PM

This is absurd. Working class and single parent families send their kids to full day kindergarten as soon as they possibly can--if they can get it because not all states have it. Upper class parents sometimes try to hold their kid back because of anxieties about the kids performance (ie his inability to perform at the same grade level as the girls) but I'd be hugely surprised if that is true for lower income parents. If upper income kids are *dropping out* because they are aging out of the system before entering college I will eat my hat. This is one of those absurd correlations that just doesn't make any sense on the ground and I doubt it very, very, much.

On the other hand there are lots of obvious and non trivial reasons 1) why parents red shirt, 2) why lots more kids than should get forced out of school before graduating high school, and 3) why lots more kids can't afford college here in the US. Most of them, as soullite and tyrone pointed out above, have to do with inequities in funding and in education generally. You don't need to go for some strange "frogs are being born with one eye and bats are dying!" explanation for why boys are dropping out of highschool--they can't afford college and male wages for boys without college educations are stagnant and dropping so they can't afford to work for a while and then go back, either. And their parents can't stake them to unemployed higher ed. So, nu?

aimai

Posted by AIMAI. | July 28, 2008 5:18 PM

There is also the issue of kids starting kindergarten before they are ready making kindergarten less productive for kids that are ready for it, and putting kids into the system before they are ready for it, causing them to be more likely to falter.

Kids should start K at 5, not younger. That means 5 years old by September!

Posted by tft | July 28, 2008 5:19 PM

I have to wonder more about a 15-16 year old high school freshman trapped in algebra with his younger classmates while his biological peers are in a more developmentally appropriate group.

Also, I doubt that the kid who is struggling so much that he drops out in 9th grade was going to get much out of 10th. Measuring academic achievement by years "completed" may be convenient to social scientists but seems a piss-poor substitute for looking at real educational outcomes (knowledge and skills).

Posted by Scott Ferguson | July 28, 2008 5:25 PM

I agree with everyone who says it's the better off families who are holding their children back in kindergarten.

That's certainly been my experience. We held our son back an extra year in kindergarten. Academically, he was more than ready to start. Socially, not so much.

Posted by blah | July 28, 2008 5:27 PM

File this under "the plural of anecdote is not data" category, but I was a "red-shirted" boy (summer baby, etc.) -- because I was a bit shy of other kids at that age (the shyness probably correlating to nerdiness more than anything ... if I were less of a college-bound nerd type maybe I wouldn't have needed red-shirting?). The extra year did me a world of good.

Also to be filed under "the plural of anecdote is not data", where I went to school (at an institution noted, IIRC, for having Young Ezra's father on its faculty) it did seem as if there was a decent size gender gap. But most of the "excess" of women seemed attributable to entrepreneurial immigrant families sending their daughters off to college (to get their MRS degree) and keeping their sons at home to work in the family business. Of course the parents involved could never understand why their daughters were dating outside of their ethnic background ('cause all the people of their background weren't actually sending their sons to college) or dating someone not going to a four year college (because all their co-ethnics of the male persuasion were not able to go to 4 year colleges 'cause they had to help out in the family business).

Is there any research as to the magnitude of "families sending daughters to college to get their MRS degrees whilst keeping their sons at home to work on the family business" in terms of the gender gap at colleges?

BTW -- I am such a Star Trek geek that I thought this would be a post about giving people dangerous assignments in Iraq or something (the red shirt always dies). Now that I know I'm a red shirt, I'm gettin' kinda nervous. I guess I shouldn't go on any away team missions?

Posted by DAS | July 28, 2008 5:32 PM

I think people need to understand why is this redshirting occuring. I can't speak for everyone, but as someone who had an August birthday. The rule was you had to be 5 by Sept 1, and I went to kindergarten at age 5.

Every year we would have the Presidential Physical Fitness assessment, or whatever it's called. How many pullups can you do, etc. And every year, I performed at the level of a child one grade lower than I was in. Why? Because I was one year younger than virtually everybody else in my class.

I was always a little guy anyway, but being a year younger essentially made it harder for me to compete. So I had no interest in sports.

There were other things too, I was a year behind everyone else driving a car, etc. So I always felt like I was an outcast.

That being said, I instead devoted myself to that which I was good at... studying, reading, etc. I read more books than anybody else in my class.

I suspect that has more to do with it and not some bs about being able to drop out sooner.

Posted by The Other Steve | July 28, 2008 5:45 PM

"I am such a Star Trek geek"

Ah ha. When you mentioned MRS degree, I figured you were an engineer or some other science geek. That would explain the misogynist comment. :-)

Posted by The Other Steve | July 28, 2008 5:50 PM

Doug: I have a boy who just finished kindergarten at the normal age. In his class though were about 4-5 boys who were a year older. It may be great for those boys self esteem to be the biggest, most articulate, most capable boys, but it kind of unfairly diminishes the regular boys self confidence.

I would think that the self-esteem and experience with education turns more on how a kid can handle the curriculum -- not a zero-sum game -- rather than how a kid stacks up against all the other kids in the class -- definitely a zero-sum game. The opposite is true in a competitive sport like soccer, to be sure.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | July 28, 2008 6:02 PM

Ah ha. When you mentioned MRS degree, I figured you were an engineer or some other science geek. That would explain the misogynist comment. :-) - The Other Steve

Indeed I am a scientist.

The MRS degree comment wasn't meant to be misogynist so much as attacking the mentality of the parents of the young ladies in question. The young ladies in question certainly, no matter why their parents sent them to college, were there to learn as much as us guys were. Many of them went on to be scientists, engineers, business people and especially physicians and lawyers at rates equal to (or perhaps greater than -- nowadays parents of a certain sort send their daughters to medical and law school, not to be lawyers or doctors, but to make sure they find a lawyer or doctor to marry) the young men at my school.

I guess another way to put it is that at UC Irvine, there was no degree in "Underwater Basket Weaving" that was basically an MRS degree. The young women sent to UC Irvine by their parents to get an MRS degree were majoring in Bio-Sci, etc., like everyone else. Indeed, that was part of the point. I imagine that if UC Irvine did have a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving and a gal whose parents sent her to school to meet the right kind of guy declared she was majoring in said subject, they would respond "Underwater Basket Weaving? how are you gonna meet a good man in the classes you'd take for that? no! you major in biology to meet future doctors or political science to meet future lawyers".

Posted by DAS | July 28, 2008 6:06 PM

I had a fall birthday, as did many of my friends. Staying back a year or repeating kindergarten was reserved for those who simply couldn't handle kindergarten and the ability to pick up the basics of reading and the basics of paying attention.

As to whether there's a competitive advantage to starting kindergarten a year late, I'd have to see how many students graduating in the top of their class were red-shirted as 5 year olds.

Seriously, though "red-shirting"? Isnt this basically saying, "I will make my child into a brightly colored target when we beam down"?

Posted by Tyro | July 28, 2008 6:22 PM

This "study" seems to say nothing other than kids who drop out in 10th grade instead of 11th grade get one less year of school -- ok, so what? Same thing happens to kids who get left back a year for poor academic performance, and isn't that now being brought back into vogue.

My daughter was born in mid August, and we sent her to kindergarten at 6 instead of 5. I thought she'd be the oldest in the class, but there were several kids born in July and even one in June in her class. I don't regret it at all.

There was a study done about major league baseball players, and far more are born after August 1, on a relative basis, than the other 7 months of the year. The reason -- Little League has an 8/1 cutoff, and those born after August end up as the stars at an early age, and that advantage carries on throughout their lives.

Posted by pj | July 28, 2008 6:38 PM

I agree that red shirting may or may not have any effect at all, but if it did I would think that has more to do with the fact that younger people learn better. Peak learning age is somewhere around 15, I believe. If you raise the average age of a student above that in anyway then you're going to have student performing more poorly.

Poorly performing students will be more likely to drop out of HS and/or college.

The solution to our educational problems seems to be that we should start teaching our kids more when they're younger. Teach them languages when they're 10 and still have the knack for picking up languages that only children have. Introduce them to the abstract concepts of calculus and the advanced theoretical sciences when they're freshmen and not when they're seniors.

And, for god's sake, please throw "New Math" out the freaking window!

Posted by NutellaonToast | July 28, 2008 6:43 PM

Has Matt looked at educational attainment controlled for race and ethnicity? Given the rapid demographic changes in the U.S., that would seem to be something htat one would want to look at.

Or what about changes in democgraphics that are race-neutral? Are the Yuppies reproducing as fast as the PWTs? Watch Idiocracy, people.

Posted by Glaivester | July 28, 2008 6:51 PM

To Al at 5:16pm: Consider two boys (twins?) born on the same date in the same hospital in e.g., November. One is redshirted in kindergarten, one is not. Assume the age when a child may legally drop out of school is 18. Redshirted kid turns 18 in November of 11th grade, while non-redshirted kid turns 18 (at the same time) in November of 12th grade.

If these two kids are both the type who might consider dropping out, don't you think the redshirted kid would think, upon turning 18, "Wow, I have 18 more months to finish school, or I could start earning money right now. That's a long time." Whereas the non-redshirted kid would be more likely to think "OK, I could drop out today, or I could just stick around for only 6 more months and get my diploma."

That's the argument at least. I have no idea how significant that effect is.

Posted by nbt | July 28, 2008 6:55 PM

If these two kids are both the type who might consider dropping out

But is there any reason to think that both would be equally likely to drop out upon turning 18?

Posted by blah | July 28, 2008 6:58 PM

So, the basic criticism seems to be "Are lower income kids really red-shirted very frequently?" with the most likely answer being "Probably not."

Which suggests that this is likely not a very important cause of problems with education in the US.

Posted by John | July 28, 2008 7:15 PM

Ever trying to prove that Everyone Shouldn't Be Able to Go To College, MY ignores the most obvious reason for our relative decline. Other countries pay their citizens way through school if they obtain a certain score on a test or in a subject in high school. Ours does not, and student loans haven't covered the cost of college in over 20 years.

Er - whether or not everyone should be able to go to college is a separate issue from whether everybody should be able to afford to go to college.

Posted by Glaivester | July 28, 2008 8:04 PM

And, for god's sake, please throw "New Math" out the freaking window!

No one has taught "New Math" since the 70s. Where do you get this stuff?

We have experienced at least three curriculum shifts in mathematics since the failure that was New Math. The latest is the IBL (inquiry-base learning) movement, which has nothing to do with the content (unlike New Math), but only affects the mode in which it is taught. For once these improvements appear to have made nationwide gains in mathematics -- at the elementary level (matters still fall apart when students hit algebra).

Posted by Walker | July 28, 2008 8:09 PM

In our school district (Montgomery County, Maryland) the cut-off for starting kindergarten has been gradually moved from 31 December to 1 September, so that all kids are now at least five (and some are nearly six) when they start kindergarten. I believe this is a nationwide trend. This, rather than red-shirting, might explain why more six year olds are in kindergarten rather than first grade.

We are by no means working class but are anxiously awaiting the day when our four year old son can start full day public kindergarten. Since he has a fall birthday we will be waiting (and paying for full time childcare) for another year. Red shirting is definitely a luxury for the very affluent, since presumably they are paying for some sort of private preschool during that year.

I spoke with the principal at his future elementary school and she said that they love the fact that all kids are now 5 when kindergarten starts. In most cases, there is a big difference between a five year old and a four and a half year old in terms of ability to focus and follow directions.

Kindergarten is now much more academic than it was when we were young (at least in Montgomery County and other affluent counties in the DC area) and the kids are expected to be able to read by the end of kindergarten. Essentially, kids now learn in kindergarten what we learned in first grade in the 1970s (or maybe most of you on this blog were first graders in the 1980s?) In the era of No Child Left Behind, kindergarten is not about fingerpainting and naptime, it is about learning to read and write. The increasingly academic nature of kindergarten is probably the main reason behind the increasing age of kindergarteners.

Posted by KCN | July 28, 2008 9:41 PM

As someone who started kindergarten a year later I think it probably did help me out being older in some small marginal way. Since dropping out was never on the map, it just meant that I got an extra year of preschool. Although, perhaps I contributed to the arms race of holding kids back, stealing educational attainment from those who needed it most. Oops.

Posted by Kyle | July 28, 2008 9:45 PM

The idea that redshirting 5 years is a factor in the drop out situation is preposterous. Show me the stats.

Families with modest incomes view school as a break from daycare expenses. Redshirting a kid is a financial luxury available to those with a stay at home parent or who can easily afford day care expenses.

I would bet serious money that redshirted kids, especially the boys, are higher achievers than the average. I have posted frequently in the past on what is discussed in the link above, the soccer effect. I had my kid do a middle school science project 7 years ago on the situation in both soccer and Little League baseball. It should be obvious to anyone who spends any time at all with youth sports. BTW, the soccer effect has two peaks because there are two cut off dates in effect. The Olympic Development Program (ODP) has a January cutoff and is used for international competition. However, the normal select club teams are based on an August cutoff.

To think that this effect does not hold for pretty much any endeavor in our society that rewards maturity is short sighted. The more mature, better behaved 6 year old in kindergarten gets rewarded for the next 13 years with more attention, just like the August born kid who gets to play shortstop, point guard or center forward. The kid who starts kindergarten behind will tend to stay behind. I would bet that the at risk group for dropping out are the summer boys of families who cannot afford to redshirt them.

Posted by Nat | July 28, 2008 9:55 PM

To elaborate just a bit on my post above: if there is indeed a correlation between drop outs and redshirting, I suspect the kids dropping out will tend to be the ones who have had to compete for 10-12 years with kids who are 12 to 14 months older (and probably from higher income families) than they are. As redshirting increases the playing field tilts even more than if redshirting did not exist.

Please note: there is no redshirting in youth soccer and baseball, and even then the kids who drop out tend to be the youngest. Redshirting kids in school will exaggerate this tendency. The kids who succeed are not the ones who drop out, it's the kids who perceive that they are failures who drop out.

Posted by Nat | July 28, 2008 10:43 PM

"...which allows them to legally drop out of school a year earlier than they could have if they had started kindergarten when they were eligible, depressing educational attainment."

Or, allows them to surpass their peers in testing scores and maturity at college enrollment time....

Posted by scudbucket | July 28, 2008 10:44 PM

The more mature, better behaved 6 year old in kindergarten gets rewarded for the next 13 years with more attention,

I'd have to see the data to believe it. I went to school in the 80s, before redshirting was even something approaching any kind of trend. However, those with fall birthdays which fell after the cutoff date, and were thus a year older, were rarely if ever counted among the top students. I'm not saying it was necessarily a point against for them, only that none of them stuck out as people who had some kind of big academic advantage that they were able to leverage to great effect years down the road.

Posted by Tyro | July 28, 2008 11:11 PM

My son has a Sept. birthday and went to private school from pre-K through 4th grade. Because he is tall and was socialized the school kept telling me to move him forward a year. When he got to first grade they said he had too much play in him and shouldn't be there.
I saw the opposite trend in his school. Parents thought it was an accomplishment for their kids to be there early, not late.

Posted by carsick | July 29, 2008 9:04 AM

I'm skeptical as well. For homes where the parents work full-time, redshirting has a fairly significant cost: another year of full-time child care vs. the lower cost of after school care. If it's more affluent families that have the opportunity to make this choice, I'd be surprised if this translated into a significant number of senior drop-outs.

I have son who just graduated from high school. When he entered kindergarten, the cut-off date was October 1st (unusually late, I believe). My son's birthday was September 28 and I eagerly started him in kindergarten. I often though over the next 12 years that he (and I!) would have been better off if we'd waited another year.

Posted by Ken | July 29, 2008 9:28 AM

It's not totally a matter of income, redshirting is more a proxy for comittment to education. For exampl:

Family A: Nurse and plumber making 150k is all excited about an early start to kindergarden as they can use the daycare money for a boat.

Famiyl B: Adjunct Prof and "non-profit" employee making 70k. They will scrimp and save to ensure every academic advantage.

The children of famlily A will be at a far greater chance of dropping out than the kids in family B even if their family income is more than twice as high.

Posted by jmo | July 29, 2008 9:53 AM

To elaborate just a bit on my post above: if there is indeed a correlation between drop outs and redshirting

I'm going to say that if there is indeed a correlation between drop outs and redshirting, it is that schools with large amounts of redshirting have lower drop out schools than those without, for both redshirted and nonredshirted students.

Posted by John | July 29, 2008 10:28 AM

I have to be honest: I've never heard of redshirting. Maybe I don't hang out in the right circles or something.

Our son was born in August and will be six when he starts Kindergarten simply because of the way the school district decides where to cutoff date is (three days before his birthday).

While I understand, to a point, why they do it, it seems stupid to me -- a kid's abilities and social skills should determine when s/he starts school, not some arbitrary date.

I dunno ... maybe I'm just looking forward to saving $700 a month on daycare.

Posted by Mark D | July 29, 2008 11:11 AM

John has a good point. Schools with a high redshirt rate would tend to be more affluent with ambitious parents. That's a good prescription for an overall low drop out rate, but it does not necessarily describe who is dropping out at those schools.

What is at issue is the voluntary red shirt not the redshirt for cause. I am aware of several kids who were redshirted for what I assume is some variation of Asperger's. That's not the same thing.

And BTW, here in Austin the failure to graduate rate seems to be about 40% for a decently run high school. The troubled high school that was just closed ran closer to 70%. So we have plenty of data down here if anyone wants to do a study.

Posted by Nat | July 29, 2008 12:26 PM

A good performance by commenters today -- as many have noted, choosing to redshirt your son so he'll be bigger, smarter, more socially dominant than his classmates is an upper-middle class phenomenon. (For example, the Notre Dame U. quarterback Jimmy Clausen was the #1 high school football player of his year, in large part because he was 19 in the fall of his senior year in high school, not the usual 17. His family is quite well to do.) These kids are highly likely to graduate from high school.

On the other hand, some kids are held back because they aren't as smart as their peers and can't do the classwork. Not surprisingly, they would be less likely to graduate from college.

So, you need to distinguish between the two types of redshirting.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 29, 2008 5:35 PM

Since redshirting is obviously a red herring, what's really driving up the high school dropout rate?

Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman put out a big paper last year on high school dropout rates. He found they had bottomed out around 1970 at about 20% and were now up to about 25% (but it's actually even worse if you count all the recent Hispanic immigrants -- Heckman is only measuring the dropout rate among people born here or who have been in American since they were small children).

Dropout rates have gotten slightly worse for all groups (the racial gaps haven't changed since the early 1970s), but I estimate that the majority of the deterioration for the country as a whole is simply because Hispanics and blacks making up a larger share of the population than they did 35 years ago.

In contrast to the federal propaganda, Heckman finds that the dropout rate is around 35 percent for both African-Americans and for those more assimilated Hispanics who either were born in America or have been here at least a decade. The dropout rate for whites is about half that.

Heckman that the dropout rate for all Hispanics, including recent immigrants, is significantly worse because:

"… almost half of Hispanics in this [18-24] age group immigrated within the last ten years. These recent Hispanic immigrants are primarily low-skilled Mexican workers … The migration of workers with low levels of education has increased substantially over the past 40 years.…"

In summary, as usually is the case with anything involving education, the quantities and qualities of types of student is more important than educational policy in influencing outcomes.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 29, 2008 5:50 PM

For a detailed analysis of Heckman's study of high school graduation rates, see:

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/080101_dropout.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 29, 2008 5:54 PM

To sum up the conceptual distinction: there are two kinds of redshirting:

- When a kid is held back so that he'll be ahead of his classmates. These kids are not much at risk of not graduating from high school.

- When a kid is held back so he won't be behind his classmates. These kids are at risk of not graduating from high school no matter how old they are. The decision to redshirt them is usually made in part to increase his chances of graduating from high school.

It's not at all clear why either would increase the dropout rate.

The much simpler foremost explanation for the increasing dropout rate is that ethnic groups with higher dropout rates (i.e., Non-Asian Minorities) now make up a much higher percentage of young people today than in 1970. But since all right-thinking people are supposed to be oblivious to the obvious, innately smart people like Matt end up wasting their time and everybody else's time on wild-goose chases like this posting on redshirting.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 29, 2008 6:59 PM

The term "redshirting" has nothing to do with Star Trek, and was coined both before Star Trek existed and by people who almost certainly would have been unaware of Star Trek once it did exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(college_sports)

It is the term used for athletes who do not compete (and thus save one of their four years of college eligibility) while they are in college and practicing with the collegiate team. The players gained not only a year of maturity but a chance to focus on developing skills and especially weight-training and adding bulk. As a result they gained an advantage that generally persisted throughout their careers. Originally, at least at some institution, such players wore a red shirt to distinguish them from the players who were eligible to compete, which led to the name.
This term is so common in sports that it is amazing this discussion has gone on this long with multiple "Star Trek" references and no one mentioning the actual origin (with the obvious analogy to the current situation.) I will now have to go do several sets of push-ups now just to get the stench of nerdiness off.
And on the comments at hand (there are some very good ones):
I am a math teacher. For high achieving students, I would much rather get them into the most advanced stuff possible as early as possible (assuming interest on the part of the student.)
As a teacher, and as a parent of kids in the relevant age group (and thus acquainted with many other parents): It NEVER happens that kids from a background with any likelihood of dropping out starts kindergarten late. The number of these kids who drop out is so low, even if every one of them could be attributed to kindergarten-redshirting, it would not matter in the statistics.

Posted by david | July 29, 2008 7:14 PM

One thing I thought would have been mentioned by now is the way in which the perceived solution to academic shortfalls vis-à-vis other advanced countries has been addressed by the ratcheting up of expectaions grade by grade. By the time these changes work their way down to lower grades, fundamental tasks such as writing the alphabet are expected before children at traditional ages are developmentally able to do them, for such immutable reasons as the physiological develoent of the motor and intellectual skills to carry them out. And the schools (at least the private ones) have made this age shift happen at least as much as the parents. But all this is part of the dirty little secret of our evaluation of kids' progress--simply comparing, say, sixth-graders over time is complicated immensely by the fact that the grade levels aren't really comparable as an absolute measure over time.

Posted by CP | July 29, 2008 11:58 PM

Maybe K through 3 should be broken into semesters to enable the kids to be re-slotted into a developmentally appropriate schedule for each Spring Semester.

Kids develop along a wide curve, especially early on, and the smaller ones live generally at a advantage.

Posted by Jay Testa | August 1, 2008 5:52 AM

A mothers take…..

I have 3 children 16, 15, 2 (All born between August 27th and September 21st)

My Son, now 16, whose birthday is September 21st, started kinder a year later when he was six.
My daughter, now 15, whose birthday is August 27th started kindergarten on time a few days after her 5th birthday.

This was the rule for the public school; I had no ulterior motives to hold my son back.

My daughter worked hard and studied hard to learn everything that was so easy for my son. I could see that it was always a struggle and she was hard on herself to keep up with her older brother who was in the same grade and for the first year the same class. She was friendly enough and was social.
Now that she is older she still works hard to keep up her grades, never faltering and staying up late nights to finish assignments. She learned early about working hard and making sacrifices and doing her best. She is now a junior in High School and I feel she will do well in her life.

My son learned from home most of what was taught in the classroom because by the time he started he was almost 7. He didn't have to work hard at anything in the first years. He was the bigger kid and he was nice and friendly. He had great manners and all the teachers loved him. He had excellent social skills and many friends.

The downturn is when he got into a grade and an age (around middle school) where he needed to buckle down and study and learn new things in order to pass and make good grades. He didn’t make the transition. By this time he was lazy and expected things to still come easy. It's a shame to me because he was a very bright child and quick to learn math and simple algebra in elementary school and then he shut down. Now, he is not anti-social but is somewhat of a recluse. In High School somehow he is still managing to get promoted although he has no where near enough credits to graduate until he is about 19 or 20 (not kidding). I fear he will give up but I do my best to keep him interested in being there and wanting to advance in life.

I know have a 2 (will be 2 this month) year old, that’s right, I did it again. His birthday is August 29th.
According to the school district we are now in he could start school (pre-K) at 4. His birthday is 1 day before the cut off date, one day after his 4th birthday. I have no plans on holding him back. He will start Kindergarten on time at age 5. In my experience it is better to teach him as much as I can in my home before school and get him prepared for battle than to hold him back and teach him life is easy.

Posted by Stacy Patterson | August 4, 2008 1:18 PM

A mothers take…..

I have 3 children 16, 15, 2 (All born between August 27th and September 21st)

My Son, now 16, whose birthday is September 21st, started kinder a year later when he was six.
My daughter, now 15, whose birthday is August 27th started kindergarten on time a few days after her 5th birthday.

This was the rule for the public school; I had no ulterior motives to hold my son back.

My daughter worked hard and studied hard to learn everything that was so easy for my son. I could see that it was always a struggle and she was hard on herself to keep up with her older brother who was in the same grade and for the first year the same class. She was friendly enough and was social.
Now that she is older she still works hard to keep up her grades, never faltering and staying up late nights to finish assignments. She learned early about working hard and making sacrifices and doing her best. She is now a junior in High School and I feel she will do well in her life.

My son learned from home most of what was taught in the classroom . He didn't have to work hard at anything in the first years. He was the bigger kid and he was nice and friendly. He had great manners and all the teachers loved him. He had excellent social skills and many friends.

The downturn is when he got into a grade and an age (around middle school) where he needed to buckle down and study and learn new things in order to pass and make good grades. He didn’t make the transition. By this time he was lazy and expected things to still come easy. It's a shame to me because he was a very bright child and quick to learn math and simple algebra in elementary school and then he shut down. Now, he is not anti-social but is somewhat of a recluse. In High School somehow he is still managing to get promoted although he has no where near enough credits to graduate until he is about 19 or 20 (not kidding). I fear he will give up but I do my best to keep him interested in being there and wanting to advance in life.

I know have a 2 (will be 2 this month) year old, that’s right, I did it again. His birthday is August 29th.
According to the school district we are now in he could start school (pre-K) at 4. His birthday is 1 day before the cut off date, one day after his 4th birthday. I have no plans on holding him back. He will start Kindergarten on time at age 5. In my experience it is better to teach him as much as I can in my home before school and get him prepared for battle than to hold him back and teach him life is easy.

Posted by Stacy Patterson | August 4, 2008 1:20 PM