Should You Redshirt Your Child From Starting Kindergarten at 5?

Lots of private school parents give their sons an extra year to mature. Why shouldn't public school parents?

The current discussion of whether the recent Mississippi Miracle of higher than traditional Mississippi NAEP scores is really the Mississippi Mirage or not due to Mississippi holding back a few of its worst third graders from advancing to fourth grade has advanced to the point where Columbia statistics professor Andrew Gelman now admits that there is as least something going on that enables Mississippi’s federal NAEP scores to be better than demographically expected in not just 4th but also 8th grade. Unfortunately, the federal NAEP doesn’t test a large enough sample size of 12th graders to rank each of the 50 states to see if the Mississippi Miracle survives through 12th grade.

Professor Gelman has agreed that something is going on with Mississippi for it to climb out of its traditional bottom ranking. Whether that’s fishy or legit remains to be seen. But it clearly doesn’t evaporate wholly by 8th grade. Unfortunately, the NAEP 12th grade tests don’t have a large enough sample size of schools taking the test to rank all 50 states, so we can’t say whether any of the advantage MS gains by holding back a few of the worst third graders out of each class is maintained all the way through senior year of high school

But that raises the broader question of whether redshirting boys to be older than their classmates is a good idea or not. In recent decades, it has become a popular ploy among private school parents, especially among ones with NFL quarterback ambitions for their sons, such as U. of Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen, who enjoyed a spectacular season as a 19 year old high school senior at an expensive high school with the sons of Joe Montana and Will Smith, throwing 49 touchdown passes, because he’d repeated 6th grade twice.

Redshirting is a traditional ploy in college sports, where athletes are eligible to compete for four years out of a five year stretch.

Many not quite mature athletes, such as Michigan quarterback Tom Brady, sit out (redshirt) their freshman year while they mature physically and mentally. To be precise, Brady could practice with the Wolverines but not play in their games as a freshman, thus preserving his four years of eligibility.

Why not let poor parents avail themselves of this privilege too?

As I wrote …

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