Washington, D.C., is no longer allowing parents to delay their child’s entrance into kindergarten by one year, a practice often referred to as “redshirting.”
The practice is commonly used by parents of children with later birth dates relative to the school year, or children viewed as facing a higher risk of struggling or failing in kindergarten due to delayed social, physical, or academic development.
However, while D.C. Public Schools has historically taken a lenient approach to redshirting, often allowing parents to delay enrollment, DCPS has rejected requests from more than a dozen families trying to delay enrollment into highly rated elementary schools so far this year, according to Axios. Principals are even turning down children with doctor’s notes requesting an exception…