Red-shirting kindergartners: Does it help most students? New analysis suggests no.

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.The practice of red-shirting — having students start kindergarten a year late — appears to have returned to historically normal levels after a post-pandemic bump.And the students who started kindergarten late in the aftermath of COVID now perform similarly to their slightly younger classmates on standardized tests, according to a new analysis from the testing company NWEA.The analysis released Tuesday comes amid ongoing concerns about the academic preparedness and progress of young students. Separate studies by NWEA and other testing companies have found that students who weren’t even in school yet during the pandemic are struggling academically compared with their pre-COVID counterparts. The reasons are not well understood, and theories range from parental stress to missing preschool learning experiences to increased screen time.Red-shirting refers to the practice of having children