Redshirting Roundup

We’re still talking about kindergarten redshirting*.

Slate’s Emily Bazelon surveys the evidence (including the recent Deming and Dynarski study) and suggests we should be skeptical of public policies that delay children’s entry to kindergarten–but the calculus is more complicated for individual parents, who might seek potential advantages from redshirting even if there’s no evidence they actually exist, and even if such individual decisions may collectively have negative results.

Matthew Ladner (via Joanne Jacobs) disagrees, dismissing kindergarten redshirting as a fad and saying parents should look elsewhere for educational advantages. He also pointed us to this summary of research on Vox, an excellent website that translates policy-relevant economics research into useful analysis for lay readers. International evidence suggests that starting school later doesn’t improve attainment or test scores, and that it depresses earnings at age 30.

And with this strollerderby post, the debate has moved to the parenting blogs as well.

You can see our redshirting posts here.

*and not just because it’s an excuse to post the adorable photo, courtesy of flickr user wiskeyboytx.