It’s March 2012, the Year of Kindergarten, the year our five-year old son should enter kindergarten. I say should because I’ve recently learned of red-shirting kindergarteners, purposefully waiting an extra year and beginning kindergarten at six-years-old instead of five.
Sixty Minutes, serendipitously, had a segment on red-shirting last Sunday night. They talked about Malcolm Gladwell and his book Outliers and his article about the hockey-player stars in Canada. He found that the Canadian hockey system biases towards older kids, the ones born at the beginning of the eligibility year. They’re older, so they’re bigger, so they get special attention, so they get more practice, so they get better, so they get more playing time, and they become stars. The younger, smaller kids get the opposite. He argues it is arbitrary, that the Canadian system creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Gladwell’s logic is crossing the border from Canada and hockey into the US and kindergarten. Parents and schools are choosing to hold back some five-year olds an extra year, arguing it will prevent the kids being unduly stressed by being the youngest in their class.
Here in Los Angeles, my wife and I have our name in the hat for six kindergartens. Six! Do we really need that many choices? We’re trying to be research our options and choose the best school for our son. But aren’t we maybe making ourselves just a little bit crazy?
So far we’ve been admitted to one school, we’ve been red-shirt-recommended at one school and we’re waiting on the four other schools.
The red-shirt-recommendation was our first reply and it caught me off guard because prior to that I’d never even heard of holding a kindergartener back a year.
On President’s Day, we took Jackson to a strip-mall in Orange County and he took a thirty-minute Kindergarten Readiness Evaluation. While we sat in the waiting room, Jackson met with a woman who administered his Kindergarten-SAT. She asked him questions. She tossed him a ball. She had him write his name.
The test looked at nine criteria. We got the report back the next week and it said Jackson was ahead for his age on seven criteria and behind for his age on two criteria. Jackson’s fine- and gross-motor skills are underdeveloped and the recommendation was that an extra year of kindergarten could help him avoid undue stress.
I was confused when I heard the result. I’d never heard of waiting to start kindergarten until that very moment, and now it was being recommended for my son. I tried to stay open-minded, to look at what’s best for Jackson and not let my pride flare up.
Oh shit, my son’s not ready for kindergarten. I’ve failed as a parent and we haven’t even started school yet… As dubious a luxury as that negative thinking might be, it wasnt’ going to help make a good decision.
In parallel to our kindergarten application effort, my day job at UCLA is to be an admission director in the business school there. So I’m living school admissions personally and professionally, 24-7, this winter.
At UCLA I evaluate thirty-year-old adults who want to earn their MBA while they continue to work full-time. I know that admission decisions are difficult. I know that I can’t admit someone who doesn’t show the evidence that they can succeed in graduate-level study, at UCLA, while they continue to work a full-time job.
I can’t “fall in love with an application” and argue to the faculty committee that we should admit the person if they don’t have a solid baseline of academic achievement.
Ok… And, I know that there is inherent subjectivity in the process. We do the best we can to use evidence-based decision-making. We have test scores and transcripts and resumes, essays and recommendations and interviews. We don’t machine-grade applications.
We want a class of people who can do graduate school and who want to do graduate school. And we have a whole lifetime of accomplishments for each applicant to evaluate.
But a four-year-old? How do you decide a four-year-old is developmentally ready?
Their Kindergarten-SAT has been administered to over 100,000 children, over the last thirty years, according to the one-page brochure I read while we sat in the waiting room.
My son’s 95th percentile for height, meaning he’s taller than 9 out of 10 kids his age. If we hold him an extra year and begin kindergarten when he is six, he’ll be a head taller than all his classmates, even with them in fine- and gross-motor skills and way ahead of them in the other seven criteria.
Won’t he be bored? What is the down-side of being bigger than everyone and 18 months more mature?
I told his daycare teacher, Ms. Luz, about the red-shirt recommendation.
“Yes, Jackson has some trouble with his writing,” said Ms. Luz. “He doesn’t always like to do it. He’s still deciding if he’s right- or left-handed. But if he’s an extra year older he may get bored and kids who get bored maybe get into mischief.”
That was one concern I had and the other concern was just the fairness of it all.
Sixty Minutes rightly observed that the parent who are predominantly holding their kids back and starting kindergarten at six are affluent parents, the kind of families whose children are least at risk for trouble in school. The parents of kids from socially-economically disadvantaged backgrounds can’t afford the luxury of an extra year of daycare.
That is the part of this that bothers me the most. If a kid really needs to be held back a year, that is fine. But if there are ulterior motives, like giving affluent kids an extra advantage or to loading up a school with older kids to boost a school’s academic achievements, that seems suspect.
One of the heroes of UCLA is Coach John Wooden, one of the winningest coaches of all time in any sport, and author of the Pyramid of Success. He coached basketball in the 1960s and ’70s.
He always taught to focus on being the best you are personally capable of being. The real competition is me-vs-me, pushing myself to overcome my limits through hard-work and practice, not looking for an extra edge.
Sports Illustrated this month had a whole article about how UCLA’s current basketball program has lost its way, how lack of discipline and coddling to 18-year-old stars is eroding the legacy from Coach Wooden.
Aren’t we as a society losing our way about education? Every kid is different. And in thirteen years of K-12 education there is much more to be learned than book-smarts.
Perseverance, respect, curiosity, those are just three elements that I want our son to receive in his education. And I want those things for all kids.
My-kid-wins while your-kid-loses is not the kind of world I want to live in. That’s my concern about red-shirting, that applied too liberally, it skews the game for the majority.
I’m not a fan of red-shirting. There’s still a lot to learn about kindergarten, but I’m coming to the conclusion this one part of it isn’t something I see as to the overall good.
P.S. Here’s a great TED talk about our obsession with the cult of the average.
Dylan Stafford 
Hi, Cuz…
I was kept back a year from Kindergarten in St. Louis because the cut-off was Sept. 5 and my birthday was Oct. 28. I was furious and I taught myself to read that year. I guess this helped me in the long run, but I was an aggressive little thing.
I love reading your thoughtful struggles to “do the right thing” for Jackson. I get the sense that you and Marissa are filling his world with love. Awesome sauce!
Love your cuz in NV
By: Susan Priest on March 13, 2012
at 10:14 am
Dylan,
As an 18 year educator and Kindergarten teacher….there are positives and negatives….in the end it all depends on your child and where they are emotionally, socially and academically….there is no one right answer. I agree that holding a child back for sports is ridiculous…that is not why we are in school….
I have had young ones come in behind but excel and do fine….and just the opposite. I have had parents refuse to hold their child back at the end of that year and push their kids on to the next grade only to have that child suffer miserably…and then there are the kids who somehow seem to come into their own during that next year and do fine.
As a parent, who was not in the position to pay for another year of daycare, I put both my boys into school at barely 5 and not yet 5. Both repeated a grade. Trevor is a July baby and started at barely 5 and suffered through 3 years of school before I made the very difficult decision to hold him back in 2nd grade…we switched schools to make it easier. Academically he was holding his own but emotionally and socially he was so much more immature than his peers. I worked at the same school he went to and saw him struggle to make friends and be a part of the group. I do not regret holding him back but to this day…he is 20…he is still more immature than his peers…I only wish I had just not started him until later. My other son, Connor who is a Senior and 18, started at 4 and did so well in Kindergarten that I decided to let him go on to 1st grade even though I had thought I would not. But in 1st grade we started seeing some issues so I held him back in 1st grade. Ironically, I later found out that he was dyslexic which was the cause of his issues not maturity. I do not regret for one minute holding him back either. He is so mature and responsible. He is a leader among his peers. He has earned many awards and accolades for his maturity it seems more than his academics. Ultimately…it is your decision….own the one you make !
By: Jennifer on March 13, 2012
at 6:57 am
I have a kindergarten teaching mom who would say don’t hold him back. I have a nephew who was held back a year and is thriving now that he had an extra year to go. Makle itmean what you want it to mean and create a context that empowers you and Marisa. Once you both agree on a future, the rest will come easy. You could go with simple logic. If 4 of 6 say he is ready… put him in coach. The LF will fix whatever is wrong when he is 8 anyway.you both one of the smartest school heads in LA. Ask her.
By: Herb on March 8, 2012
at 8:57 pm
Gracias Herby! Love to you!
By: Dylan Stafford on March 13, 2012
at 7:05 am
Dylan, years ago I talked with a 4th grade teacher in the Bay area and she was happy to see children, especially boys with slower development, kept from having to read too early. However, she felt some parents were holding children back for the wrong reason: athletic capability. That was ten years ago so it’s been an ongoing decision for parents. Good luck!
By: Jeanette Daane on March 8, 2012
at 4:25 pm
Thanks Jeanette, Jackson does love story-time. Whenever we start kindergarten, he’ll be his great-grandmother librarian’s grandson when it comes to stories!
By: Dylan Stafford on March 13, 2012
at 7:05 am
Dylan, I adore you – you know that. But on this point I respectfully disagree. Given that you are applying to 6 kindergartens, I am assuming you are applying to private kindergartens – thereby already offering Jackson the “affluent upbringing” that those who need to send their kids to school for the purposes of avoiding daycare can’t offer their children.
Let’s be honest about how kindergarten has evolved. My children will learn things in kindergarten that I learned in first grade. We are constantly as a society asking more and more of our children.
Some educators decided 5 was the age for kindergarten but the date by which a child has to have turned 5 to enter kindergarten changes by state. In NY – the cutoff is Nov 30. In PA, where we live, the cutoff is Aug 31. So, in each state, some empowered official has drawn an arbitrary line that we are all expected to live by? I don’t accept that premise.
The parochial school our children will attend has all day kindergarten. All day is alot to ask of a young 5 yr old. Thankfully, our daughter has a Sept birthday (and the district’s cut off is Sept 1) so she wasn’t even permitted to attend kindergarten this year and I still get her home with me everyday at 11:30. And she has all afternoon to play with her brothers and her friends. And that is fine with me.
Our second, Nolan, has a June birthday. He’ll be 4 in June and I’ve already decided he won’t go to kindergarten until he turns 6. Why? Because life is short and kids grow up too fast and I’d prefer to give him an extra year of childhood: an extra year to spend his afternoons playing with his younger brother, another year of afternoons with me. Period. Its not because I want him to be bigger, stronger, or better at sports than his classmates. Its also not because I want him to be further ahead academically (if that were the case he’d be at a preschool with a more academic focus – but he’s at a “play” school twice per week where they bake and do crafts and play games – it is simply for socialization).
I thought the 60 minutes piece was biased. I found it clear that Morley Safer had an agenda. Don’t get me wrong – I feel sorry for the mothers who do not have the luxury of staying at home with their kids until they decide their children are ready for school. But their circumstance is not mine and I don’t feel compelled to make decisions about my child’s education based on what is best for others’ kids. And I don’t appreciate being lumped in with uber competitive, “my kid wins while your kid loses” crowd just because I am holding Nolan back a year. Others don’t have the luxury of staying home with their kids so I am being condemned for deciding extra time with me is what’s best for my son? Crazy.
By: Anonymous on March 8, 2012
at 2:36 pm
Hi Ellen, thanks for reading my blog. And you know I adore you (and Dan) too. You still get quoted once a quarter, each time we have the next SuperSaturday. We’ve now had 28 total in 9 years, with over 1,000 volunteers and almost 4,000 interviews conducted! All from your leadership.
In my five years of daddy-writing, this red-shirt post got more replies than just about everything else I’ve written. I know you’ve made the best choices for your children and please don’t let me give the appearance of knowing otherwise.
We’re navigating our choices here, and it’s caught me off guard about how many there are, and we’re not even in the private kindergarten discussion. The price tags on private kindergartens here are in the $25,000/year range, which completely blows my mind. $25K for kindergarten? That’s way out of our budget, especially as we’re waiting to adopt this year and will have a second child to parent.
Our six schools are three city schools in Culver City, one public-charter in the next town over, and then two Catholic schools. It’s like we have two “first choice” schools, one Catholic and one public, but they’re apples and oranges to choose between.
My thinking is evolving over the six months of learning about our kindergarten options. At first I was freaked out about “making the wrong choice.” I first titled the kindergarten blogs “Kindergarten Dominoes” to reflect that idea of getting the first domino wrong and then all subsequent dominoes also going “wrong”.
But that line of thought is being replaced with more of an “embarrassment of riches” perspective. The schools all seem pretty amazing. Whatever shortfalls they have are being shored up by very active administrators, teachers and parent groups. While it is somewhat overwhelming, having so many choices, the choices are all pretty good so far. I know it isn’t that way everywhere, but it seems like it also wasn’t that way here in recent past. There seem to be active parents at every school and there seems to be this consistent sense of “We’re in this together and we’ve got to help our schools ride these tough times” and it seems to be working.
I’ve had this observation since we looked at daycare four years ago and now that we’re looking at kindergartens. It seems there’s even more thought about the structure and purpose of daycares/kindergartens than there is about MBA programs. No disrespect about MBA programs, but I don’t see any of the top-10 MBA programs with the same zeal that I hear from these daycare/kindergarten programs.
The whole journey is re-framing for me.
I really appreciate you reading and replying.
Best,
Dylan
By: Dylan Stafford on March 13, 2012
at 7:03 am
It only gets more competitive, I fear, through school and sports. I get a little nauseous over it every day. The thing is – he has good parents and you care enough to think this stuff over. He’s going to do well in life no matter what. Give that guy a hug from the Yorks. We miss you all.
By: Cat York on March 8, 2012
at 8:30 am
Hi Cat, great to hear from you all. We miss you too. Thanks for reading. We’ll keep you posted how “the decision” turns out. HA!
By: Dylan Stafford on March 13, 2012
at 6:42 am