When I was 4 years old, my parents faced a decision. My birthday is in late November, so should they send me to kindergarten as the youngest kid in my class? Or, wait another year to enroll me? — A practice referred to as academic redshirting.
Since I was already the oldest sibling, they decided it was time for me to experience something different. So, they sent me to school.
For me, the age gap didn’t really matter until my freshman year at college, when I was only 17 and couldn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election with everybody else. Feeling left out, I started to wish my parents had waited to put me in school. But, Diane Schanzenbach, an education professor at Northwestern University, and Stephanie Larson, director of Rose Hall Montessori School, have made me think twice.
The two recently published an article on the emotional and economic toll that redshirting can have on students, despite all its praise from writers like Malcolm Gladwell. To read more from SOPHIA ALVAREZ BOYD, click here.