Red shirting is back in the news, not college football players waiting a season to play but families deciding their child should wait a year to start school or repeat a grade, with the Wall Street Journal reporting more parents are thinking about it.
As usual family reporter Sue Shellenbarger packs her Work & Family column with good information from both sides of the debate. For example, research suggests retention doesn’t offer long term benefits, but there are caveats about that research and applying it to individual students.
A growing number of parents are wrestling with the decision to hold their kids back to encourage their mental, social and physical development. More children are being held back a grade because they have failed standardized tests, fueled in some places by the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.
Now, however, being held back a grade is considered less of a stigma by parents who see their kids struggling or performing at average levels and think repeating a grade would put them closer to the top of their class, school officials say. – “The Parental Push to Repeat a Grade,” 8/11/10.
The story sparked an active discussion on the WSJ’s family blog, The Juggle (100-plus comments and counting.)
Check it out.
New Research on Head Start: Debates about Head Start and Early Head Start will continue, and there are new findings about both programs that hopefully will improve the discussion.
- The number of funded Head Start slots fell by 8,000 to 795,776, from 2008 to 2009, according to the report from CLASP.
- In Head Start programs, most preschool teachers, 83 percent, had Associate’s Degrees, and nearly half, 49 percent, held Bachelor’s Degrees or higher degrees, according to the report.
- Yet, teachers earned on average, $27,752, far less than the average salary of U.S. kindergarten teachers, $50,380
- Overall, 90 percent of pregnant women in the Early Head Start program had both prenatal and postnatal health care, CLASP reports.
- In Head Start programs, roughly 13 percent of enrolled Head Start students had a disability.
Check out the full Head Start and the Early Head Start highlights.