Redshirting: Holding kids back from kindergarten

(CBS News) Kindergarten "redshirting" is on the rise. That's the practice of parents holding their children back from kindergarten so they can start school at age 6 - older, bigger, and more mature than their 5-year-old peers. Some research shows that redshirting will give these youngsters an edge in school, and maybe even in life. But is it fair? After all, as Morley Safer reports, boys are twice as likely to be held back as girls. Whites more than minorities. And the rich redshirt their kids more than the poor.

The following script is from "Redshirting" which aired on March 4, 2012. Morley Safer is the correspondent. Deirdre Naphin, producer.

Kindergarten was once milk, cookies and finger paints. In a countrywide epidemic of hyper-parenting, it's becoming blood, sweat and tears. So maybe you played Mozart for your baby while he was still in the womb and gave him Chinese lessons at age 2, tried everything to give your kid an edge and then when he's 5, well you don't exactly cheat, but you game the system.

It's called "redshirting": holding your 5-year-old back from kindergarten 'til he's 6 so he'll be among the oldest and smartest kids in class. Parents of a 5-year-old with a late birthday despair that little Johnny will forever be a failure if he has to compete with kids six or eight months older so they put the fix in; hold him back a year so he has the edge in class and ultimately an edge in life.

In the high stakes world of early education, Barrett Hoffecker was unlucky enough to have a summer birthday. If he'd started kindergarten just after turning five in August of 2009, Barrett would have been among the youngest in his class so his mother Megan played the numbers game and put him in a Canton, Georgia, preschool. He went to kindergarten at age 6.

Megan Hoffecker: We wanted to give him that extra year of growth for both size for later on, as well as maturity for him.

Morley Safer: But do you think that gives him an advantage not just in school, but in life?

Hoffecker: I think it does. I would prefer him to be an older in the class and become a leader in his environment, rather than a younger and be more of a follower.

Barrett is now 7, a first grader, oldest in his class and among the brightest.

Hoffecker: He was already reading when he started kindergarten and was pretty ahead of a lot of the people in the-- in his class when he started.

And she has few qualms about giving Barrett a leg up on the competition.

Hoffecker: I don't think it's really cheating the system. I'd do whatever I think within my realm as a parent to make sure that my child is as prepared as they can be for the life challenges.

Safer: And have every advantage?

Hoffecker: Yes.

She's hardly alone. It used to be that everyone started kindergarten at age 5. Today nearly a quarter of some kindergarten classrooms are populated by 6-year-olds. Kindergarten redshirting has more than tripled since the 1970s. Boys are twice as likely to be held back as girls, whites more than minorities and rich more than poor.

Holly Korbey had never heard of redshirting when she and her family moved to Dallas. She assumed her son Holden would start kindergarten shortly after he turned 5 in August of 2008, but she was shocked when her son's preschool teacher urged her to hold him back.

Holly Korbey: And I said, "What? Why?" And I said, "He reads. He's fully reading. He has no behavioral issues." And she said, "Well, he's the very youngest. And here, all the youngest boys are held back."

And then there were the other parents.

Korbey: They started asking me, "Are you going to--what are you going to do with Holden next year?" And I said, "Well, I think we're gonna send him to kindergarten." And they would go, "Hmmm, I don't know about that. You know, that's not a good idea." And they gave me all kinds of reasons.

Safer: Like?

Korbey: Like he'll be the last to drive and he won't get to go on dates like the other kids. There's a lot of talk of, "I want my son to be a leader." I mean academics were never mentioned.

Safer: Any suggestion that you can get an edge up on the other kids?

Korbey: Yes, I think that there is a subtle message that we're gonna have an advantage over everyone else.

Korbey says much of the talk among parents centered upon the work of Malcolm Gladwell whose best-selling book "Outliers" has become the Bible for parents of 4 and 5-year-olds.

Safer: In your book, you argue that the month you were born in can well dictate your success or failure in later life.

Malcolm Gladwell: In that part of the book, I'm talking about a concept called "cumulative advantage" and that is the idea that a little extra nudge ahead when you're 6 can mean that you're slightly better positioned when you're 7, and that means you're slightly better positioned when you're 8, and so on. And you can see this pattern in one field after another.

Like hockey, Gladwell reported that a majority of Canadian junior all-stars had one thing in common.

Gladwell: The overwhelming number of kids are born in the first half of the year.

Safer: So, January, February, March...

Gladwell: Yeah, it's kind of amazing. Look at the list, it's like, January, January, January, February, February, February, and there's like one kid from December, you know.

Gladwell says there's a simple explanation. In Canada, the birthday cutoff for junior hockey is January 1st.

Gladwell: If the cutoff's January 1st, and you're born January 5th, you're an awful lot bigger than the kid born in December. And so, everyone thinks you're better.

And, if you're better from the outset, you attract far more interest from coaches and get more practice. Gladwell says that the predominance of winter birthdays extends into the pros.

Gladwell: You think that at some point these early advantages would dissipate. They don't. They snowball.

Safer: Okay, but that's a sport. But how about in academics?

Gladwell: Yeah, in academics, we see the same effect. The kids who are born closest to the cutoff date, who are the, relatively speaking, the eldest in their class have a small but not insignificant advantage, not just in first grade, but throughout their schooling history.

Gladwell cites the work of economist Elizabeth Dhuey at the University of Toronto who analyzed the data of hundreds of thousands of students in 19 countries. Even as late as the eighth grade the older kids had higher test scores than their classmates. She believes that's because the older kids got more attention from the start.

Elizabeth Dhuey: They're just older but they look more able so they get in the higher reading group in kindergarten so they learn how to read a little better. And then in first grade they know to read a little better so they're put in the higher reading group again. And then they know how to read a little better in the first grade. And it perpetuates over time.

She says the data also show that older kids are more likely to attend college. And then there is the issue that haunts so many parents: popularity.

Dhuey: I have a study looking at leadership effects. And I find that if you're relatively old in kindergarten and that-- that you're more likely to be a high school leader or a sports team captain, a club president. And so I think a lot of this works in this confidence-boosting leadership kind of capacity.

Safer: When you completed this, dare I say, rather arcane university study, did you think it would get the kind of attention that it got?

Dhuey: No, not at all. Not at all.

Safer: But if you had a 5-year-old, would you hold him back?

Dhuey: If they were the very youngest, probably. Yes.

Samuel Meisels: The funny thing is that in the past if you wanted your kid to get ahead, you would want him to skip a grade. Now in order to get ahead, you want him to stay back a year.

Samuel Meisels, president of Chicago's Erikson Institute, says while redshirting may be appropriate for some kids, it mostly amounts to educational quackery.

Meisels: I think that as children get older that whatever advantage is conferred by starting school a year older decreases dramatically.

He says kids develop at different rates. He points to studies that show negative consequences of redshirting; including increased behavioral problems in older kids who may be bored in classes that are just too easy for them.

Meisels: We see more dropouts among children who are held out. We see less achievement despite the fact that some research shows it one way, more research shows it the other way. At best we could conclude that the research is split on this and there's another moral lesson for the parents which I know most parents don't wanna hear. And that is this is inequitable.

Poor families can't afford the luxury of holding kids back. The sooner they get them into school, the less childcare they have to deal with. But with redshirting, their children must now compete with kids who can be as much as 18 months older.

Meisels: I'd like to see everyone have a level playing field. Then maybe we could stop some of the panic that we're seeing among parents who are rushing to do this.

Safer: And when everybody holds back, we start all over again, correct?

Meisels: Well, I suppose so if everyone does it.

Safer: So they'll be shaving in kindergarten?

Meisels: This is called the graying of the kindergarten.

Some school systems are cracking down on redshirting. Heather Wasilew tried to hold her son Jacob back, but the Chicago Public School system said 'no way.' She was told he would have to go to first grade.

Heather Wasilew: And I was stunned. The policy is 5 by September 1 goes into kindergarten, 6 by September 1 goes into first grade no matter what.

Safer: So when you got this absolute no, what did you decide to do?

Wasilew: I cried a lot. I was prepared to move to the suburbs.

Safer: Really?

Wasilew: Really.

Safer: Over the issue of kindergarten?

Wasilew: Over the issue of kindergarten.

Wasilew was so determined she considered suing, but in the end she enrolled Jacob in a private school. He started kindergarten at age 6 this past fall.

Wasilew: He's a little tall. But he's not any taller than the other, you know, some of the other boys in the class. And I love the school. It's very small and intimate.

Safer: And expensive, no doubt.

Wasilew: And more expensive than public school. Yes.

Safer: You're spending a lot of money on this issue that I guess some people would say will solve itself. I mean, if you may-- he doesn't do well at kindergarten by the time he's in third grade he'll be shining like the rest of the kids. So what's the big deal?

Wasilew: Well, actually I think it's the opposite. I think he would be okay if he got pushed ahead. But I think come third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade he would not be okay socially. I think he would be too young.

The Chicago Public School system met with so much resistance from parents that they are reviewing their policy. And redshirting only seems to be increasing. Malcolm Gladwell believes that most parents need to take a deep breath.

Gladwell: Parents are grasping at every straw available to them to try and maximize their children's chances of doing well in the world. I wonder if we'll look back on the way children were raised in our particular time and place and say, "What were we thinking?"

Safer: One of the effects of your book has been an epidemic of people holding their kids back from kindergarten. Do you feel a responsibility in this?

Gladwell: Yeah well, I mean first of all I'll take this to my grave but if everyone does it then the effect is cancelled out. The irony, of course, is that the kinds of parents who are doing this are the parents whose children are the least at risk.

And then there is the Jock Effect: holding kids back to give them a sporting edge or more accurately an unsporting edge.

Safer: Did the issue of athletics play into your decision as well?

Megan Hoffecker: It did. That one year has made a huge difference for him.

Megan Hoffecker insists that all is fair when it comes to the game of life.

Hoffecker: I want to give him an advantage in every aspect that he has. And if that's in the sports realm, I'll give him the advantages that he can have. I'm not trying to make others disadvantaged, but it does benefit him.

Holly Korbey also believed that the advantage of being not just older, but bigger was the real motivation behind redshirting.

Korbey: Several parents said to me, "Don't you want him to be competitive?" And I said, "He's 4! I don't even know if he likes sports."

Despite all the pressure to hold her son back, Korbey felt Holden was ready to start kindergarten just after he turned 5.

Korbey: And everything went fine. Nothing exploded.

Now age 8 and in the third grade Holden Korbey seems to be thriving despite being the youngest in his class.

Korbey: He gets excellent grades. He has never had a behavioral issue. He has lots of friends. He's absolutely normal.

Safer: Having been through this experience how would you advise young parents?

Korbey: Okay, I have one message: Have your babies in the wintertime. If you are thinking about becoming a parent, have your babies in the wintertime, and then you will get to avoid this issue completely.