Taking a Year Off: The Influence of Redshirting on Academic Achievement across Socioeconomic Status and Gender

Abstract

Low-income boys are steadily performing worse than their female counterparts and high-income students of both genders. One potential contributor is the use of school cutoff dates and the practice of academic “redshirting,” the decision to delay a child’s school entry, which is most used by high-income households.

I use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), a nationally representative data set, to estimate the relationship between academic redshirting, SES, gender, and achievement. I find that high-income boys are more likely to redshirt than other groups and redshirting is associated with higher standardized test scores in math and reading in kindergarten. I recommend policymakers revisit the use of school cutoff dates to eliminate or share the advantage gained by redshirting, and the use of early childhood education to improve academic preparation pre-kindergarten for all students.