The Problem With Holding Kids Back from Kindergarten

Newsweek ^ | February 08, 2011 | Kristina Dell

[TheDingoAteMyBaby]

As private kindergartens prepare to send out acceptance letters this week, competitive parents are trying to game the system with so called “red shirting”—delaying their kids start in school so they'll be more advanced then their classmates. Kristina Dell on why it's backfiring. Holly Korbey's son, Holden, was easy to spot in his kindergarten class—he was the one who actually looked kindergarten sized. "The other kids were just taller," says his mother.


That's because unlike his classmates, most of whom were six years old, Holden was only five—the traditional kindergarten age. But entering kindergarten at age six is becoming more and more common, say researchers. "My parents went to my son's kindergarten and said, 'The kids are so big! They look like they're eight,'" says Korbey.


[Politicalmom]

We’ve done both schedules. My children and I all prefer an early start and an early finish. They still get the same amount of summer, but they get to finish an entire semester before Christmas and one after, so they don’t have to have finals hanging over them over Christmas. In GA, the kids were sick of heat by August anyway, so the A/C at school was welcomen.

[Past Your Eyes]

I call weekly square dances at a summer camp on Squam Lake (AKA “Golden Pond”) in New Hampshire. By the middle of August, the trickle of their staff leaving to go back to college is becoming a torrent and the guests that used to populate the place until Labor Day have also dwindled dramatically to the point where they probably aren’t making money any more. That is what I mean by summer being ruined. The guests don’t come in numbers until late June, just like they always did.
What is the point of being done by Memorial Day? Doesn’t the air conditioning work in June?
Luckily, this place hires dozens of Russian kids to do the jobs that they can’t find American kids wanting to do any more (housekeeping and kitchen work, for instance) and those people are willing to stay as long as there is work. I have been there for 20 years and when I started, there were hardly any foreign kids there. Now the vast majority of them are foreigners, mostly Russian, and they must be the cream of the crop because they are wonderful people. I have been very impressed with them.

[eccentric]

In the 1990's, our school district in Kansas held one-day screenings to determine what children should be put into Kindergarten and which should go to pre-kindergarten. Generally speaking most of my grandsons, were recommended for pre-K. Their mothers' opted for Kindergarten and the boys did just fine. Another relative was put in Kindergarten, but was later put into special education classes for slow learners. Okay, the district was right a couple of times, including on grand-daughter that they recommended pre-K for. When she was put into Kindergarten instead, she floundered and was held in Kindergarten for another year, no big deal.

The big deal came, when the screened students entered high school and found that they would graduate when they were 19 years old instead of 18. Many dropped out of school. It just seemed that one day of screening isn't enough to acurately determine what a child can do. I told my children to leave their kids in Kindergarten for a few months and then decide.