Research Spotlight: Kenneth A. Shores and Anamarie A. Whitaker
New UD research finds that kindergarten redshirting and retention shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic
By the time a child reaches the age of 4 or 5, most parents and caregivers have heard about “kindergarten readiness.” But what if a 5-year-old still struggles to count to 10, sing the alphabet song or play cooperatively with other children?
In cases like this, parents may choose to “redshirt” their child or delay their entry into kindergarten by one year. New research from University of Delaware alumna Rachel Fidel of the National Institute for Early Education Research, Associate Professor Kenneth A. Shores and Associate Professor Anamarie A. Whitaker found that Delaware rates of kindergarten redshirting and retention — holding a child back from progressing to first grade — changed dramatically during the pandemic.
“Delaware law generally requires children to enter kindergarten at age 5,” said Shores, who studies education policy in UD’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD). “Redshirting is therefore relatively uncommon in Delaware, but our research shows that families do delay kindergarten entry and that these decisions changed considerably during the pandemic.”
Redshirting or retention?
Children may benefit academically or socially from redshirting if they spend the year in a developmentally appropriate setting with cognitive and social stimulation.
“If the parents put the child into a high quality-learning environment — and that’s a big ‘if’ — children who are redshirted are more likely to enter kindergarten better prepared than children who were not,” Shores said. “But disadvantages can range from social isolation to exposure to lower quality instructional environments to the cost of delaying the child’s entry into the labor market.”
Amanda Sassaman, a CEHD alumna and fourth grade teacher in Delaware, decided to delay her daughter’s entry into kindergarten this fall. Sassaman and her husband — both teachers in a family of educators — decided to redshirt their daughter after she was diagnosed with a speech delay.
“When we found out that our child’s due date was in July, my husband [was already considering redshirting, noting that] the baby would have that much more time for social-emotional maturity, academic development [and] athleticism, though it wasn’t a sports decision,” Sassaman said. “Then, pretty early on, we noticed that our daughter had some speech delay issues, which turned into articulation issues. So once we saw that, we thought that it’s only going to benefit her to work on her speech before she socially engages in a kindergarten class.”
Sassaman feels confident in her decision to redshirt her daughter, but also acknowledges some social challenges. She was surprised to discover that her daughter “feels that she’s older” and has asked why some of her friends went to kindergarten and she did not.
While redshirting is a parent-led decision to delay the start of kindergarten, retention is a school-led negotiation with parents to hold a child back after a first year of kindergarten. Teachers and administrators suggest retention when a child does not meet the benchmarks necessary for first grade. But the research is less clear about its benefits.
“If a child repeats kindergarten, there are real tradeoffs,” Shores said. “Maybe another year of instruction will help them be successful in first grade, but there are also costs, including social stigma and greater social isolation. There is evidence that grade-level retention can be beneficial, but much of that evidence comes from later grades.”
Families also bear the costs of these decisions differently: redshirting typically requires private resources, like affording another year of preschool, whereas retention leverages the public school system without an extra cost for families. Historically, redshirting has been more common among boys and children from economically advantaged families, while retention has disproportionately affected children from less advantaged backgrounds.
Changes in decision-making
The study’s findings suggest that the pandemic disrupted these established patterns.
The researchers analyzed student-level data from fall 2010 to fall 2023 in partnership with the Delaware Department of Education. Before the pandemic, about 2% of Delaware kindergarten students were redshirted, usually children with summer birthdays who would have been among the youngest in their class. In fall 2021, redshirting increased by 44%, and the increase extended across all 5-year-olds, not only among children with birthdays near the kindergarten eligibility cutoff date. In Delaware, children must turn five by Aug. 31 in order to begin kindergarten that fall.
The largest relative increases were among historically underrepresented groups including Black, Hispanic and low-income students — groups that had been less likely to redshirt.
“In regards to retention, we found that, over time, fewer children repeated kindergarten,” said Whitaker, who studies early childhood education policy in CEHD and serves as the faculty director of the college’s Delaware Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood. “Yet, this pattern pauses in fall of 2021, perhaps indicating that families opted for another year of kindergarten, given the pandemic’s virtual schooling environment. Retention rates began declining again the following year, adding more evidence to this hypothesis.”
According to a March 2026 report released by Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a K-12 assessment and research organization, the national redshirting rate also peaked in fall 2021 at 6.4% — a 28% increase from an average of 5% between 2017 and 2025.
Together, these patterns suggest that families and schools used redshirting and retention as parallel strategies for securing more typical kindergarten experiences for children during the height of the highly disruptive pandemic.
But, according to the same NWEA report, redshirting did not show lasting academic advantages. By the third grade, children who entered kindergarten after a one-year delay in fall 2021 were scoring equivalent to their non-redshirted peers on academic assessments.
“Our study focuses on a unique context, and it’s likely that the reasons for redshirting or retention changed during this period,” Whitaker said.
For example, parents’ reasons for redshirting likely shifted from worries about a child’s kindergarten readiness to worries about whether the public school classroom environment would be safe.
“Our findings suggest that we need to better understand why families delay enrollment, particularly when those decisions appear to be driven by circumstances other than school readiness,” Whitaker said. “They also underscore the importance of children’s access to developmentally appropriate learning environments, regardless of when they enter kindergarten.”
To learn more about CEHD research in early childhood or education and social policy, visit its research webpage.
Article by Jessica Henderson. Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson.
About Kenneth A. Shores
Kenneth A. Shores is an associate professor specializing in education policy in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on educational inequality and encompasses both descriptive and causal inference. His work addresses racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequality in test scores, school disciplinary policy, classification systems and school resources.
About Anamarie A. Whitaker
Anamarie A. Whitaker is an associate professor in CEHD’s Department of Human Development and Family Sciences and director of the Delaware Institute of Excellence in Early Childhood at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on how early care and education systems support program quality improvement efforts and how ECE program components promote children’s development. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how ECE policies at the local, state and federal level influence ECE programs, classroom practices and quality and children’s school readiness.
This research complements the work of CEHD faculty studying education and social policy, including Ann Aviles, Lauren P. Bailes, Dominique Baker, George Bear (emeritus), Juliet Bromer, Martha Buell, Laura Desimone, Valerie Earnshaw, Joy Esboldt, Elizabeth Farley-Ripple, Anna Ferris, Sue Giancola, Rena Hallam, Gary T. Henry, Jason Hustedt, Allison Karpyn, Erica Litke, Leigh McLean, Whitney Polk, Florence Xiaotao Ran, Marisa Schlieber, Barbara Settles (emeritus) and Bryan A. VanGronigen.