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Does Delaying Kindergarten Entrance Give Children A Head Start?
Abstract
The rising trend in the minimum entrance age for kindergarten in the US has been motivated by findings from cross-sectional studies that older entrants have more favorable school outcomes compared to younger entrants. However, these studies fail to account for endogeneity in entrance age resulting from parental choice, leading to biased estimates of the entrance age effect. This paper uses exogenous variation in birth dates and kindergarten entrance age policies to generate instrumental variable estimates of the effect of delaying kindergarten entrance on children's academic achievement. Both initial level differences and subsequent growth in test scores are examined. I find that entering kindergarten a year older significantly boosts test scores at kindergarten entry. More importantly, entering older implies a steeper test score trajectory during the first 2 years in school. Results also suggest that the benefits from delaying kindergarten entrance tend to be significantly larger for at-risk children.
... It was noted by Musch and Hay (1999) that there is global variation in which month a school year starts, and it is not the season or month itself which correlates with improved outcomes, it is the child's chronological position within their year group. There now exists a wealth of global literature noting a correlation between a child's position in their academic cohort and their outcomes in literacy (Vestheim et al., 2019), numeracy (Aune et al., 2018), and across academic areas (Crawford et al, 2007(Crawford et al, , 2013bDatar, 2006;Sprietsma, 2010). ...
... Similar to the research on those youngest in cohort, research into delayed school entry is largely focused on correlations between age of child and test scores; a quantifiable measure. Some research finds positive correlations between delayed school entry and attainment (Bedard & Dhuey, 2006;Datar, 2006;Datar & Gottfried, 2015;McEwan & Shapiro, 2008), which suggest potential benefit for the individual child (Bassok & Reardon, 2013). Datar's (2006) study in particular reported children gaining much higher scores in reading and maths upon entry to school (SD = 0.6 -0.8). ...
... Some research finds positive correlations between delayed school entry and attainment (Bedard & Dhuey, 2006;Datar, 2006;Datar & Gottfried, 2015;McEwan & Shapiro, 2008), which suggest potential benefit for the individual child (Bassok & Reardon, 2013). Datar's (2006) study in particular reported children gaining much higher scores in reading and maths upon entry to school (SD = 0.6 -0.8). Similar findings were reported by Dağli & Jones (2013) with higher initial reading and mathematics scores for those delayed compared with peers who entered school on time (d = 0.27 and d = 0.52 respectively), a small effect in reading but a medium effect in maths. ...
In England, parents legally have a right to wait until the term after their child’s fifth birthday before sending them to school; when the child is of Compulsory School Age (CSA). For summer-born children, this can result in them starting school a full year after they might have otherwise. There exists limited research in England on why parents choose to delay their summer-born child’s entry into school, and what their experience is of the process. This study contributes to a gap in the literature. A multimethod study was conducted, collecting qualitative data from survey participants (n = 153) and interviewees (n = 10), which was analysed using thematic analysis. The results indicate that parental reasons for delaying their child’s entry to school are complex and cannot be reduced to one reason. However, they include; individual child factors; the child within the family and school system; parental values, beliefs, and views of the English education system. Parents’ experiences of the process of delaying their child’s entry into school included; systematic barriers impacting on fair and equitable access, and the need for parental ability and capacity to engage with the process. The participants in this study were typically affluent and highly-educated, which aligns with other research on families delaying their child’s entry into school. Issues around equality of access are therefore discussed. This study proposes that future research is needed on understanding more about the families opting to delay, and the potential long-term implications of this. Implications for Educational Psychologists include having increasing awareness of the practice of delayed entry, working with families to understand their views, and working within school systems to support summer-born children.
... However, the empirical research generally finds early academic and developmental benefits of older kindergarten entry. Overall, the findings suggest that older entrants have higher test scores compared to younger entrants in early grades (Dagli & Jones, 2012;Datar, 2006;Malone, West, Flanagan, & Park, 2006;National Institute of Child Health and Development, 2007). The test score gaps between older and younger entrants, however, seem to close by the time children reach later elementary grades, thereby suggesting that older KEA may be linked strictly to early benefits (Datar, 2006;Kurdek & Sinclair, 2001;Oshima & Domaleski, 2006;Stipek & Byler, 2001).By middle school, most test score differences have disappeared (Datar & Gottfried, 2015;Elder & Lubotsky, 2009). ...
... Overall, the findings suggest that older entrants have higher test scores compared to younger entrants in early grades (Dagli & Jones, 2012;Datar, 2006;Malone, West, Flanagan, & Park, 2006;National Institute of Child Health and Development, 2007). The test score gaps between older and younger entrants, however, seem to close by the time children reach later elementary grades, thereby suggesting that older KEA may be linked strictly to early benefits (Datar, 2006;Kurdek & Sinclair, 2001;Oshima & Domaleski, 2006;Stipek & Byler, 2001).By middle school, most test score differences have disappeared (Datar & Gottfried, 2015;Elder & Lubotsky, 2009). Two synthesis reports over the past several decades found the same patterns using an earlier body of research (Shepard & Smith, 1986;Stipek, 2002). ...
... Approximately 14% of the sample entering kindergarten in the fall of 1998 were considered to have a disability, which is reflective of national estimates. Prior ECLS-K studies on kindergarten entry age have used mean value imputation with missing value indicator dummy variables to address missing values (Datar & Gottfried, 2015;Datar, 2006), and therefore we took the same approach here. 2 After imputation, there was a total of approximately n=1,960 SWDs in the analytic sample. ...
The age at which children can enter kindergarten continues to be discussed in both educational research and practice, and the debate for whether to increase kindergarten entry age remains active on both sides. A critical oversight has been the lack of attention paid towards entry age for those students who begin school with a disability (“SWDs”). The lack of empirical evidence in this domain is highly concerning given that statewide policies and practices that affect the general schooling population will now also be affecting SWDs who are increasingly being educated in general education classrooms and schools and are hence subject to general educational policies and practices.
... Many researchers have found children with disabilities are more likely to be redshirted than typically developing children [24,25]. Similarly, researchers have found redshirting rates for children with disabilities are higher than those of the general population [25,26]. The prevalence of redshirting among children with identified disabilities has been estimated at around 7-8% [27,28], a rate not surprising considering the challenges these children and their families experience when transitioning from preschool to kindergarten [29][30][31][32]. ...
... Even though researchers have found redshirting rates for children with disabilities are higher than those of the general population [25,26], there is limited evidence of redshirting or delayed school entry as an effective intervention or practice to support a child's school readiness. However, a closer look at the existing research related to the use of redshirting with the purpose of understanding what is known and how it relates to children with disabilities would provide the field with guidance and perspective. ...
... However, a relationship between redshirting and decreased rate of growth in math was observed. Datar (2006) Data suggest children with disabilities benefit from delaying K in terms of fall to spring test score gains in reading and math. Elder and Lubotsky (2009) Findings imply voluntary delayed entry is related to a later diagnosis of disability. ...
The purpose of this paper is to explore issues and concerns related to academic redshirting in kindergarten and to discuss implications of this practice for children with disabilities. Although parents cite a variety of reasons for redshirting their child, only limited evidence of academic or social benefit can be found. A search was conducted to identify studies relevant to academic redshirting and inclusive of children with disabilities published within the past 20 years, and 17 articles were identified related to the topic. From these articles, three central topics emerged: (a) prevalence, predictors, or parent motivations for kindergarten redshirting, (b) the impact of redshirting on academic achievement and post-secondary outcomes, and (c) the impact of this practice on a child’s behavior. While assumptions can be made based on the research conducted using a general education population, the impact of kindergarten redshirting on the success of children with disabilities is unclear due to the limited amount of research that currently exists. Implications for children with disabilities are discussed.
... There is less research specifically investigating this phenomenon, and the findings are as varied as those using the relative age approach. Some studies demonstrate no persistent advantage in academic achievement to delayed-entry students (Dagli & Jones, 2013;Graue & DiPerna, 2000;Lincove & Painter, 2006;Mendez, Kim, Ferron, & Woods, 2015); whereas others show that delayed-entry children fare significantly better in test scores in early primary school (Datar, 2006;Fortner & Jenkins, 2017;Morrison, Griffith, & Alberts, 1997). Using population data in one Australian state, Hanly et al. (2019) noted that developmental gaps exist between children who were delayed entry and those who were not. ...
... Studies finding that greater relative age is associated with higher academic achievement are sometimes interpreted to mean that delaying school entry for 1 year is beneficial and should be encouraged. Such interpretations, however, do not account for the fact that families who exercise their choice to redshirt their child may differ from families who do not make this choice in other important ways (Datar, 2006;Deming & Dynarski, 2008;Fortner & Jenkins, 2017). Likewise, individual children who are delayed entry to school may differ in their behavioral characteristics from children who are sent when first eligible. ...
... Likewise, individual children who are delayed entry to school may differ in their behavioral characteristics from children who are sent when first eligible. The school achievement of delayed entry children might be driven not only by relative age within cohort but also by other unobserved background variables, such as socioeconomic status (SES), gender, or behavioral characteristics (Bassok & Reardon, 2013;Datar, 2006;Fortner & Jenkins, 2017). Because the influence of such additional factors may confound any relation between relative age and school achievement, the current research will explore outcomes for students who have been deliberately delayed entry compared with those who were not, while also accounting for additional background variables. ...
This research investigated whether delayed school entry was associated with higher achievement in national tests of reading and numeracy in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 (n = 2,823). Delayed entry was related to advantages in reading (0.14 SD) and numeracy (0.08 SD) at Grade 3, although little variance was explained (1%-2%). This slight advantage persisted for both domains in Grades 5 and 7, albeit with smaller effects. In Grade 9 there was no association between delayed entry and either reading or numeracy. Exploratory analyses with subsamples in each grade (n = 424-667) revealed no associations between delayed entry and achievement after controlling for inattention and hyperactivity, and negative associations between inattention and achievement in all grades in both domains (-0.33, -0.49 SD).
... In fact, I find a substantial and positive effect of being one year older on total test scores that varies from +0.2 to +0.3 of a standard deviation. I also find heterogeneous effects by group of sex with the female pupils generally gaining 6 See Datar (2006) for example. 7 Because repeaters are supposed to have poorer abilities then poorer results. ...
... The second in its case adress the measure of the effect of schooling on achivement (measured by nationa test scores) whilst the third exploits the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to estimate the school entry age effect on cognitive and non-cognitive (behaviour problems) developement. 10 In kindergarten or grade 1-3 and Weber (2005) 11 , Datar (2006) 12 , Fredriksson and Öckert (2006) 13 , Crawford, Dearden, and Meghir (2007) 14 , Hámori (2007) 15 and Grenet (2009). For studies interested in the effect of age on another outcomes, see for example Fertig and Kluve (2005) which use obtained degree and probability of retention as outcome in Germany ; or Dhuey and Lipscomb (2008) which adress the effect of relative age on high school leadership activities (being the president of a club or the captain of a team). ...
... Hence, this is of policy matter because policy makers can act on the age of kindergarten entry. Indeed, in the United States, there was a massive rise in minimum school entry age in the last decades (Datar 2006 ;Elder and Lubotsky 2009) in response to these considerations. The most chosen kindergarten entry age appears to be around 5 years old (Elder and Lubotsky 2009). ...
This paper focuses on the quantitative measure of the causal relationship between age and school results of pupils at the end of primary school in Reunion Island. The effect of age is composed of at least three distinct ones : (1) age at entry effect, (2) age at test effect and (3) relative age (compared to grade peers) effect. In order to extend the knowledge about determinants of educational sucess, especially about the impact of age on scholar results and then help policy makers in their decisions about optimal policies in the education field by providing informative results ; this paper, using cross-sectional data sets, exploits an exogenous variation of the age at test within a grade induced by the date of birth to measure the causal impact of age at test on the national achievement assessment scores in grade 5 in Reunion Island. I implement additionally a regresion discontinuity design for comparison purpose. The principal findings are that the age at test have a substantial positive effect on test scores in grade 5. Also, the effects in grade 5 are heterogeneous across sex subgroups but such a pattern is difficult to draw across social category subgroups. These results would suggest at best that, in order to improve the educational results of pupils in Reunion Island meaning the age variable, policy makers could first increase the minimum age of school entry. Second, they could regulate classroom compositions such that the age distribution within a classroom does not disperse too much. Third, they could normalize national achievement assessment scores by age or making pupils with different ages within a grade pass the national assessment at different times such that they have sufficiently close ages at test to not significantly impact their results. The latter enables at the same time to correct the inequality of having a different month of birth (unchosen by the pupils) which is likely to lead all else equal towards different educational outcomes. Pupils would be indeed assessed « at equal luck ».
... Regardless of the type of educational system, the controversy around the practice of academic redshirting continues to receive attention in the popular press (e.g., Lin et al., 2009;Safer, 2012;Moyer, 2013;Ashbrook, 2014;Schanzenbach and Larson, 2017) and in the academic field (e.g., Mendez et al., 2014;Huang, 2015;Barnadr-Brak and Albright, 2017;Fortner and Jenkins, 2018). A few studies have demonstrated some short-term benefits of academic redshirting (e.g., Datar, 2006;Bedard and Dhuey, 2006;Pong, 2009), although the majority of studies have shown no particular lasting advantages for redshirting students (e.g., Graue and Diperna, 2000;Gladwell, 2008;Cascio and Schanzenbach, 2016;Gottfried et al., 2016;Attar and Cohen-Zada, 2018). ...
... One of the most commonly mentioned benefits of redshirting is to rely on more sophisticated cognitive development as a result of higher age (e.g., Datar, 2006;NICHD Early Childhood Care Research, 2007;Dougan and Pijanowski, 2011;Huang, 2015). However, there is some controversy regarding these premise (Attar and Cohen-Zada, 2018). ...
... Some studies emphasise the importance of variables other than age to explain cognitive differences, namely, the child's sex, the family's economic background, and parent's higher education (Attar and Cohen-Zada, 2018). Other mentioned benefits of being redshirted is that children are less likely to be retained (e.g., Datar, 2006;Huang, 2014), and less likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities (Peterson et al., 2010;Huang, 2015). To those who were already diagnosed with learning disabilities, redshirting does not appear to be especially beneficial (Barnard-Brak et al., 2015). ...
The controversy around the effect of academic redshirting on reading acquisition continues receiving attention in the international literature. However, few studies are known with non-English speaking children. In this study we intend to understand this phenomenon with 698 Portuguese speaking first graders, 360 girls (51.6%), aged between 5 years old and 8 months and 7 years old and 6 months (M = 6.3 months, SD = 3.9 months). Reading acquisition precursors were assessed namely phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge. Results reveal that 5.9% of first graders are redshirted. Clusters analysis indicated two clusters per variable. Cluster 1 with low phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge and low socioeconomic status, cluster 2 with high phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge and medium-high socioeconomic status. The cluster results suggest a prevalence of 24.5% children at risk of having learning difficulties. The MANOVA indicated that only socioeconomic status has an effect on phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge, with children from medium-high level presenting higher results. It is concluded that redshirting did not bring additional advantages for reading acquisition success. Implications about the importance of education in order to lessen those differences, as well as prevent difficulties are presented.
... Heterogeneity has been investigated in settings with broader access to registry data, and thus background variables: Chile (McEwan & Shapiro, 2008, who find little differences in the effects of school starting age by parental education); Denmark , who find evidence for smaller adverse effects of school starting age on crime for groups with both better educated mothers and unemployed fathers); Israel (Attar & Cohen-Zada, 2017, who find little differences by parental education); Norway (Black et al., 2011, who find little differences by predicted family affluence); and Sweden (Fredriksson & Ockert, 2014, who find larger advantage in both education and earnings for children of lower-educated parents). In the U.S., Datar (2006) and Elder and Lubotsky (2009) estimate the effects of school starting age by family background and socioeconomic status (SES) but find conflicting results. Cook and Kang (2016) use population-level data and a regression discontinuity analysis, but because they focus on crime and delinquency they only investigate various definitions of significant disadvantage. ...
... A majority of the previous research has offered few and conflicting insights in terms of heterogeneity in the August-September differences. For example, some papers find larger differences for girls (Datar, 2006) while others for boys (McEwan & Shapiro, 2008;Puhani & Weber, 2007). Similarly, there is evidence that effects are larger among higher SES families in some contexts (Elder & Lubotsky, 2009;Tan, 2017) but in lower SES families in others (Black et al., 2011;Cook & Kang, 2016;Datar, 2006;Hemelt & Rosen, 2016). ...
... For example, some papers find larger differences for girls (Datar, 2006) while others for boys (McEwan & Shapiro, 2008;Puhani & Weber, 2007). Similarly, there is evidence that effects are larger among higher SES families in some contexts (Elder & Lubotsky, 2009;Tan, 2017) but in lower SES families in others (Black et al., 2011;Cook & Kang, 2016;Datar, 2006;Hemelt & Rosen, 2016). Because of the contradictory results in the literature, examining effect heterogeneity, especially using large-scale linked administrative data, is important as it may provide further insights on these earlier conflicting results. ...
We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children’s
cognitive development from ages 6 to 18 using a fuzzy regression discontinuity
design and large-scale population-level birth and school data from the state of
Florida. We estimate effects of being old for grade (being born in September vs. August)
that are remarkably stable—always around 0.2 SD difference in test scores—across a
wide range of heterogeneous groups, based on maternal education, poverty at birth,
race/ethnicity, birth weight, gestational age, and school quality. While the September-
August difference in kindergarten readiness is dramatically different by subgroup, by
the time students take their first exams, the heterogeneity in estimated effects on test
scores effectively disappears. We do, however, find significant heterogeneity in other
outcome measures such as disability status and middle and high school course selections.
We also document substantial variation in compensatory behaviors targeted
towards young-for-grade children. While the more affluent families tend to redshirt
their children, young-for-grade children from less affluent families are more likely to
be retained in grades prior to testing. School district practices regarding retention and
redshirting are correlated with improved outcomes for the groups less likely to use
those remediation approaches (i.e., retention in the case of more affluent families and
redshirting in the case of less affluent families.) Finally, we find that very few school
policies or practices mitigate the test score advantage of September-born children.
... Emerging facts from research so far show conflicting results linking early school enrolment and academic achievement. Starting from the positive side, studies in America and Italy show that older children in school perform better in class test than their younger peers (Datar, 2006;Bedard and Dhuey, 2006). These research findings are in conformity with a later study by Lin et al (2009) which discovers that older children always perform better in class work than the younger ones. ...
... Lincove and Painter (2006) used longitudinal data from America to discover that there is no long run advantage in delaying the age at which a child enrolls into school, and conforms to the finding by Elder and Lubotsky (2008) that there is no evidence that older school children learn faster than the younger ones; while the research in Italy by Pellizzari and Billari (2011) reveals that younger students perform better than the older ones in almost all the subjects in school. These later findings in America and Italy are in contrast with the earlier work in those countries by Datar (2006) and Bedard and Dhuey (2006). Moreoever, study by Malone et al (2006) shows that children who start school at younger age perform better in school than those who enroll in school at older age. ...
... The effect of age in academic performance is significant at 5% level. Despite the fact that it contrasts with some of the findings in America and Italy (Datar, 2006;Bedard and Dhuey, 2006), the finding is in line with the study by Hamori (2008) which shows that there is a negative relationship between age and academic performance in Hungary. On the side of poverty, the result reveals that the relationship between poverty and school test score is inverse, though, poverty is not a significant factor. ...
Parents are now eager to see their children enroll into formal schooling before 4 years and graduate out of the university within the teenage age in Nigeria. It is a complete reversal from the preindependence policy in education which required that a child should be up to 6 years before enrolling into infant school. In the presence of falling standard of education in the country, an attempt is made to determine the effect of early school enrollment on academic performance of children in school. The study uses primary data from test organized for primary six children in public schools in Nsukka for the research. Contrary to expectation, early school enrollment gives a child a good advantage in academic performance. The finding is a serious challenge to education curriculum designers in the country.
... Developmental data shows that starting formal instruction early has a positive effect on mathematical skills, both in the short term (Cliffordson & Gustafsson, 2010;Herbst & Strawiński, 2015) and in the longer term (Black, Devereux, & Salvanes, 2011;Sylva et al., 2008). On the other hand, within-country studies focusing on special groups of children as well as early interventions with both fading out and catching up effects (Clements & Sarama, 2014), indicate opposite trends (for a review, Datar, 2006) which call for and necessitate further investigation of these effects. For example, Altwicker-Hámori & Köllő (2012) showed that Hungarian children from low socioeconomic backgrounds benefit from starting formal school later, which was attributed to effective early math education in preschool. ...
... For example, Altwicker-Hámori & Köllő (2012) showed that Hungarian children from low socioeconomic backgrounds benefit from starting formal school later, which was attributed to effective early math education in preschool. Similarly, even though there are overall positive schooling and age effects on cognitive development, younger entrance age was found to have negative effects on the economically and cognitively lowest group of a sample from different states in the United States (Datar, 2006). In addition, schooling may have different effects on different quantitative skills other than age (Bisanz, Morrison, & Dunn, 1995). ...
... Chronological age had strong, positive effects in our model showing that older children have better chances for belonging to profiles with higher levels of sub-skills, thus, controlling for its effects on skill profiles is needed when any other effects are investigated. In this respect, our results of the lowest skill profile are similar to Datar (2006) who shows that younger entrance age for kindergarten negatively affects the economically and cognitively lowest group of the sample. Recognition of the negative association of schooling and specific mathematical skills in a particular sub-group of children adds educationally-relevant knowledge to previous variable-centered research findings, which showed positive educational effects on early numeracy on average level (Bojorque et al., 2016;Hannula, Mattinen & Lehtinen, 2005;Watts et al., 2017). ...
This study investigated the effect of children’s first formal school years on mathematical skill profiles, measured by a variety of arithmetical skills and Spontaneous Focusing On Numerosity (SFON) tasks. By using person-centered approach the aim was to investigate whether the amount of formal schooling is associated with mathematical skills in the same way for all children, or, whether the associations differ according to the children’s mathematical skill profiles. Data was analyzed from 652 4–7-year-old children from four European countries with different school entrance ages. A person-centered approach with latent profile regression analyses on four-factor score variables identified six mathematical skill profiles with both qualitative and quantitative differences. The results revealed significant, but small effects of the amount of schooling on mathematical profiles when chronological age and country-specific school entrance age were controlled for. Educational implications of the findings emphasize regarding the heterogeneity in children’s mathematical skill profiles and the potentially different effects of starting formal schooling across different profiles.
... Research suggests that socioeconomic and racial/ethnic gaps in academic (Coley, 2002;Rouse, Brooks-Gunn, & Mclanahan, 2005) and socio-emotional competencies (Baker, Jensen, & Tisak, 2017;Martin et al., 2010;Weimer & Guajardo, 2005) exist when children start kindergarten. Studies have also demonstrated that children's gender (Ready, LoGerfo, Lee, & Burkam, 2005) and age (Datar, 2006;Lin, Freeman, & Chu, 2009) are also associated with measures of school readiness. Our analysis includes a rich set of controls to help disentangle the associations among transition practices, parental perceptions and involvement, and measures of school readiness. ...
... There were also a set of child and family characteristics included as controls for parental involvement during preschool. Other things being equal, parents from higher socioeconomic status backgrounds reported (2003-2004), preschool data collection (2005-2006), Kindergarten 2006(2006), Kindergarten 2007 data collections. (2003-2004), preschool data collection (2005-2006), Kindergarten 2006(2006), Kindergarten 2007 Puccioni, et al. ...
... Other things being equal, parents from higher socioeconomic status backgrounds reported (2003-2004), preschool data collection (2005-2006), Kindergarten 2006(2006), Kindergarten 2007 data collections. (2003-2004), preschool data collection (2005-2006), Kindergarten 2006(2006), Kindergarten 2007 Puccioni, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 109 (2020) 104742 engaging in more parental involvement activities. ...
Preschool teachers can help support families and children successfully transition to kindergarten by utilizing transition practices that support parental involvement and create smooth linkages between early care settings and formal schooling. Additionally, parents’ perceptions of invitations for involvement may also play an important role in shaping parental involvement. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth cohort (N ≈ 4100) a structural equation model was estimated to examine the relationship among preschool teachers’ transition practices, parents’ perceptions of invitations for involvement, parental involvement, and measures of school readiness during the transition to kindergarten. Results indicate that parent’s perceptions of invitations for involvement are positively associated with home-based parental involvement. Additionally, home-based involvement was predictive of school readiness measures. More specifically, findings suggest that parents who have more positive perceptions about preschool teachers’ invitations for involvement report engaging in more home-based involvement activities, which in turn, was positively associated with children’s academic achievement and prosocial behaviors and negatively associated with conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention. Results from this study have important practical implications for educators who aim to encourage parental involvement that supports children’s transition to elementary school.
... Similarly, different studies have shown that girls experience a lower RAE than boys, meaning that girls born late in the school cohort are better able to catch up with older girls than boys (Datar 2006;McEwan and Shapiro 2008;Mühlenweg 2010;Page, Sarkar, and Silva-Goncalves 2017). For instance, in the formerly described paper of Page et al. (2017), the reported effect was only observed among boys. ...
... To contribute to filling that gap, we interact the relative age effect with the student's gender and various indicators of SES. Although we lack statistical power to affirm the statistical significance of most of the interactions analyzed, those interactions are consistent in sign and size with most literature that has investigated the RAE on academic outcomes as well as its heterogeneity by gender (Datar 2006;McEwan and Shapiro 2008;Mühlenweg 2010) and SES (Bernardi 2014;Bernardi and Grätz 2015;Dicks and Lancee 2018). Our results suggest that the relative age effect on cognitive effort might be larger among boys and low-SES students. ...
All around the world school entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar, so that the age of students in the same cohort differs up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent strand of research that has turned to investigate the RAE on non-academic outcomes such as personality traits. An experimental setup is used to assess the willingness to exert cognitive effort in a sample of 798 fifth grade students enrolled in the Spanish educational system, characterized by strict enrolment rules. After controlling for cognitive ability, we observe that older students outwork their youngest peers by two-fifths of a standard deviation, but only when rewards for performance are in place. Implications for sociological research on educational inequality and policy are discussed.
... Page 2 of 18 Aguayo-Téllez and Martínez-Rodríguez Large-scale Assess Educ (2020) 8:11 studies in developed countries agree that differences in child's maturity at the moment of starting first grade have consequences on children's academic performance; been the youngest ones the more disadvantaged (Bedard and Dhuey 2006;Datar 2006;Puhani and Weber 2007;Elder and Lubotsky 2009;Crawford et al. 2010;Sprietsma 2010;Grenet 2011;Kawaguchi 2011;Nam 2014;Cascio and Schanzenbach 2016). Then, how good (or bad) is to allow children younger than the required age to start first grade of elementary school? ...
... 1 Short-run academic performance: Bedard and Dhuey (2006) for 22 developed countries, Datar (2006) for the United States, Lawlor et al. (2006) for Scotland, Puhani and Weber (2007) for Germany, Kawaguchi (2011) for Japan, Robertson (2011) for the United States, and Crawford et al. (2014) for England. Middle run academic performance: Cascio and Schanzenbach (2016) for the United States, Crawford et al. (2010) for the United Kingdom, Smith (2010) for Canada, Sprietsma (2010) for 17 developed countries, Grenet (2011) for France, and Nam (2014) for South Korea. ...
Using an unanticipated policy reform in Mexico that shifted 4 months the cutoff date for elementary school eligibility in 2006 and information on academic performance of 15-year-old students from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 survey, who entered first grade in 2006, this paper estimates the effects of starting first grade without having reached 6 years of age on middle-run academic performance. We found that entering school at a younger age increases the probability of having repeated at least one academic year by 7 percentage points and reduces academic performance (measured throughout PISA’s score points) between 6 and 10 score points in mathematics, reading and science (a Cohen’s d effect size between 0.06 and 0.10). We did not find evidence to claim that the effect of early entrance on academic performance is different for girls and boys or for urban and rural locations.
... Such explanations are of little help in understanding the disappearance of the age differentials at school entry in final educational attainment. However, several studies have already shown that girls experience a lower RAE at the initial stages of the educational career (Datar, 2006;McEwan & Shapiro, 2008;Mühlenweg, 2010;Page et al., 2017). It might be that, in Spain, the forces that fuel the initially larger effect among males are ineffective among females and, for the latter, the effect fully disappears before affecting final educational attainment. ...
In countries with a school-entry cutoff date, individuals born right after the cutoff are almost 1 year older than individuals in the same school cohort born right before that date. Abundant research has documented that, as a result of that extra year of maturation and skill accumulation, older students in a cohort outperform their younger peers. It is also well-established that this effect peaks at the initial stages of the educational career and wanes as students grow. However, it remains unclear whether or not the age at school entry affects final educational attainment. In this work, we use Spanish census data to assess whether individuals born right after the school-entry cutoff (January 1) are more likely to complete post-compulsory education, a university degree and post-graduate education. We also assess if the age at school entry affects the probability of completing education in a STEM field of study. Our findings indicate that males born after the cutoff accumulate more years of education than males born before that date, but are less likely to complete their education in a STEM field of study. Interestingly, the effect concentrates among the youngest and oldest students in each cohort, is less intense for higher levels of education and disappears among females.
... Ayrıca okula bir yıl erken girmenin, öğrencinin okuma testi başarısını ve matematik performansını arttırdığını belirtmişlerdir. Datar (2006), daha küçük yaşta anaokuluna giren çocukların ilköğretim boyunca akademik olarak daha iyi performans gösterdiğini bulmuştur. Cahan ve Cohen (1989), İsrail eğitim sistemindeki yaş ve okul etkilerini analiz ettikleri araştırmalarında, akademik başarıya etki bakımında endojenliğin sorunlarını ifade etmişlerdir. ...
Bu çalışmada temel amaç ‘ilkokula başlama yaşının akademik başarıya etkisini’ incelemektir. Çalışma iki yönlü olarak ele alınmıştır. Birincisi, okula başlama yaşının akademik başarıya etkisine ilişkin sınıf öğretmenlerinin görüşleri nelerdir? İkincisi, ortaokul öğrencilerinin ‘puan ortalamaları ile okula başlama yaşları arasında istatistiksel anlamdaki ilişki düzeyi nedir?’. Hem nitel hem de nicel verilerin kullanılmasındaki amaç, yaşın akademik başarıyı etkileme durumunu daha net ortaya koyabilmektir. Karma yöntem çalışması olarak tasarlanan bu araştırmada çeşitleme deseni kullanılmıştır. Bu desende nitel ve nicel veriler aynı zamanda toplanıp, ayrı ayrı analiz edilmiş ve sonuç kısmında entegre edilerek bütünsel bir değerlendirme yapılmıştır. Çalışmada okula başlama yaşına ilişkin öğretmen görüşlerinin, öğrencilerin akademik başarıları ile ne ölçüde örtüştüğüne bakılmıştır. Araştırmanın nitel verileri, Tokat il merkezinde görev yapan 117 sınıf öğretmeninin görüşlerinden elde edilmiştir. Nicel veriler ise, Tokat il merkezinde 7.sınıfa devam eden 1792 öğrencinin yaş ve not bilgilerinden oluşmaktadır. Araştırmanın nitel verileri NVİVO programı ile kod ve kategorilere dönüştürülerek analiz edilmiştir. Nicel veriler ise SPSS programı kullanılarak düzenlenmiş ve analiz edilmiştir. Ayrı ayrı analiz edilen nitel ve nicel bulgular, araştırmanın sonuç bölümünde entegre edilerek açıklanmıştır. Araştırmanın hem nitel hem de nicel sonuçları, Türkiye’de okula erken başlayan öğrencilerin akademik anlamda daha başarısız olduğunu göstermektedir. Daha küçük yaşta okula başlayan öğrencilerin akademik başarısızlıklarını, öğretmen görüşleri de desteklemektedir.
... Similarly, these approaches may complement the regression discontinuity design when used in the context of examining summer learning loss or summer programming, which may also be confounded with maturation (Finch, 2019;Zvoch & Stevens, 2011). Moreover, practitioners and administrators interested in evaluating kindergarten age cutoffs may leverage these methods to investigate the effects of varying eligibility policies for kindergarten entrance (Datar, 2006;Elder & Lubotsky, 2009). Finally, these alternative approaches offer additional opportunities for researchers to conduct replication analyses and implement robustness-checking practices, which may ultimately serve to enhance the integrity of developmental science . ...
In the present study, we investigated the relative impact of age- versus schooling-related growth in school readiness skills using four modeling approaches that leverage natural variation in longitudinal data collected within the preschool year. Our goal was to demonstrate the applicability of different analytic techniques that do not rely on assumptions inherent in commonly applied methods (e.g., the school entrance cutoff method, regression discontinuity design) that selection into subsequent grades is based on birthdate alone and that the quality of experiences between grades are not responsible for differences in outcomes. Notably, these alternative methods also do not require data collected across multiple grades. Participants included 316 children (Mage = 54.77 months; 47.15% male) who mostly identified as White (64%) or Latinx (20%). A little over half of the sample attended Head Start preschools (54.75%). Four modeling techniques that leverage data collected at two timepoints in preschool were used to examine schooling effects on children's preliteracy, emergent math, and executive function (EF) skills. Results replicate evidence from previous research using traditional methods. Specifically, findings across all models demonstrate a schooling effect on preliteracy skills during the preschool year, above and beyond maturation, but not on emergent math or EF. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each analytical tool for researchers who are interested in answering questions about the effects of schooling with diverse data collection strategies, as well as broader implications for the integrity of educational and developmental science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Previous studies on school starting age and educational outcomes highlight two contradictory opinions. Some scholars concluded that children should start schooling at an older age as older children are physically and mentally mature enough to absorb and learn complicated things at school (Bedard & Dhuey, 2006;Datar, 2006). In contrast, basic human capital theory suggests that an early start in formal learning will be advantageous for children (Fredriksson & Öckert, 2005). ...
School entry regulations in Indonesia have a specific cutoff date for enrolment and it requires children to start school at the age of seven. In practice, there were schools that allowed children to start elementary school before reaching seven years old. This might create age differences between children in the same grade at school. Some literature has been shown that older students outperform younger students in the school outcomes. For instance, higher education attainment, reduce grade repetition, and excellent academic performances. However, limited evidence exists about the school starting age and academic performances in Indonesia. In order to determine whether the school starting age rule in Indonesia affects children’s academic performance, this study utilizes the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS wave) 5 and regression discontinuity design. This study found that older entrance might get lower score compared to the children who start school at early age. Based on the results, entering school earlier might increase the average of total score by 2.687 grade points higher than older entrance.
... All countries have administrative birthdate cut-offs for school enrolment, providing a quasi-experimental design that makes it possible to statistically compare children who start school younger (around age 5.5) with their counterparts who start 1 year older (around age 6.5) (Angrist and Krueger, 1991). Using the quasi-random variation in school starting age induced by birthdate, the labour economics literature emphasized the positive effects of delayed school enrolment on educational achievement and labour market outcomes, at least for wealthy countries (Bedard and Dhuey, 2006;Datar, 2006;McEwan and Shapiro, 2008). 1 In addition to showing greater readiness for learning and integrating into the school environment, older children are less vulnerable to negative school externalities (e.g. social stigmatization, peer effects) than their younger counterparts (Black et al., 2011;Stipek, 2002). ...
Recent studies reported that the age of primary school enrolment is a major driver of educational achievement and adult income, but its impacts on childhood health and nutrition remain largely unknown, particularly in developing countries where childhood stunting and overweight coexist. In Brazil, children are supposed to enrol in primary school the year they turn 6. Using a database of middle school students in Brazil based on a 2015 survey, I implemented an instrumental variables strategy using quasi-exogenous variations in the students’ birthdates to isolate the impact of late primary school enrolment (i.e., older than 6 when enrolled) on height-for-age and body mass-for-age indicators. Overall, late enrolment has protective effects against hazardous weight gain (-0.14 z-score unit) but significantly increases the risk of moderate stunting (by 1.5 percentage points). Heterogeneity in family backgrounds may explain these results. Indeed, delayed school enrolment is particularly detrimental for the nutritional status of students from underprivileged settings. In terms of public policy, rather than changing school starting age, this study highlights the importance of focusing on pathways to fight both stunting and overweight conditions in Brazilian children.
... Second, we do not have information on students' pre-school attendance (i.e. in pre-primary education 19 ). Such information could have been useful, as previous literature has indicated that attending pre-primary education may help younger students to close their relative disadvantage with older students (Datar, 2006;Fletcher & Kim, 2016;González-Betancor & López-Puig, 2015;Hidalgo-Hidalgo & García-Pérez, 2012;Lubotsky & Kaestner, 2016). Third, we are working with a sample of students and, although we are using four PISA cycles and the OECD assures that PISA has good properties in representing the population, these results should be taken with caution, as there may be some other unobservables which we are not able to control for. ...
Grade retention has been the focus of the education debate in Spain for decades. On average, more than 30% of students have repeated at least one grade before they finish (or dropout from) their compulsory studies. The present research provides new evidence on this issue by investigating the influence of Spain’s school entry age upon students’ grade retention. Using data from 15-year-old students who participated in the PISA 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015 assessments, we implement a regression discontinuity analysis. Our key finding is that students who were born late in the year (younger students) are more likely to repeat a grade. Yet, once they reach secondary education, the disadvantage they suffer due to their younger school starting age seems to disappear. Hence, the key reason why younger students have lower PISA scores than older students in Spain is due to their increased likelihood of repeating a grade, rather than being due to their relative age per se. To avoid these artificial disadvantages of younger students and unfair retention, we suggest that policymakers inform families about this school entry issue and also make the school entry law more flexible. This would facilitate parents of younger children to choose whether to delay their children’s school enrolment or not.
... Student measures include gender, race, English language learner (ELL) status, an indicator for attending full-day versus part-day kindergarten, age at kindergarten entry, and a continuous measure for body mass index. These student-level covariates have been found to be associated with achievement and social outcomes (Gottfried, 2013;Datar, 2006;Elder & Lubotsky, 2009;Wingfield, McNamara, Janicke, & Graziano, 2011). ...
Background/Context
In the United States, there has been an increased trend in parents’ utilization of center-based child care. Yet, though research has examined the effects of attending prekindergarten center-based care or the effects of attending center-based care during the kindergarten school year, little is known about the effects of having attended both.
Purpose/Objective
This study asks three questions: (a) Do children who attend both prekin-dergarten and kindergarten center-based care have different achievement outcomes, measured at the end of kindergarten? (b) Do children who attend both prekindergarten and kindergarten center-based care have different socioemotional outcomes, measured at the end of kindergarten? (c) Do these relationships differ by individual socio-demographic characteristics?
Population/Participants
This study utilizes data from the newly released Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Class of 2011 (ECLS-K:2011). The ECLS-K:2011 represents the most contemporary national-level data available to study the educational experiences of young students in the United States. Information was first collected from kindergartners (as well as parents, teachers, and school administrators) from U.S. kindergarten programs in the year 2010–2011.
Research Design
This study combines secondary data analyses and quasi-experimental methods. There are two achievement outcomes: reading and math. There are five socioemotional outcomes: externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, self-control, approaches to learning, and interpersonal skills. The study begins with a baseline, linear regression model. To address issues pertaining to omitted variable bias, the study employs various fixed-effects models.
Findings
The findings for the first research question indicated that academic outcomes do not differ for children in both years of center-based care compared to children who attended only one year of center-based care or none at all. As for the second research question, the findings show that multiple years of center-based care is related to increases in problem behaviors and decreases in prosocial behaviors—outcomes that are worsened by the number of years of center-based care attendance. The findings for the third research question suggest some minor differences between boys and girls in zero, one, or two years of center-based care.
Conclusions/Recommendations
This study has brought to surface new ways that center-based care attendance might influence children's short-term outcomes. Therefore, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners must base future questions on empirical work concerning how to address children's outcomes across multiple years of care, rather than simply focus exclusively on one year's influence.
... For example, studies have shown socioeconomic differences in academic achievement (Coley, 2002;Rouse, Brooks-Gunn, & Mclanahan, 2005) and socio-emotional competencies (Baker, Jensen, & Tisak, 2017;Martin et al., 2010;Weimer & Guajardo, 2005) exist at the start of kindergarten. Studies have also demonstrated that children's gender (Ready, LoGerfo, Lee, & Burkam, 2005) and age (Datar, 2006;Lin, Freeman, & Chu, 2009) may also be associated with measures of school readiness as children begin kindergarten. Although parent and child characteristics have been shown to influence children's academic achievement in kindergarten, it is also important to recognize that children who have exposure to center-based care or preschool have higher academic skills and cognitive development (Magnuson, Ruhm, & Waldogel, 2004;Magnuson & Waldfogel, 2005), but may show increased externalizing behaviors (Huston, Bobbitt, & Bentley, 2015;Magnuson et al., 2004). ...
Parents’ beliefs about school readiness have been linked to their involvement practices and children’s achievement. However, there is some evidence to suggest associations among parental beliefs, practices, and children’s outcomes may vary by families’ racial and ethnic background. This study examines the associations among African American parents’ beliefs about school readiness, home-based involvement, and measures of school readiness for children during the transition to kindergarten. Drawing upon data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten cohort: 2011 (N = 1716) a structural equation model was estimated and results show that African American parents’ school readiness beliefs were positively associated with children’s beginning achievement. In addition, parents’ home-based involvement was positively associated with children’s academic achievement and social skills. The most salient finding is that parents’ school readiness beliefs positively predicted their home-based involvement, which in turn was positively associated with children’s academic achievement and social skills. These findings have practical implications for educators and policymakers who aim to enhance home-school partnerships and parent education programs serving African American families. Results suggest that early interventions focused on encouraging parental involvement should consider parents’ beliefs about the importance of literacy, numeracy, paying attention, and behaving well, as they promote resilience among African American students.
... Researchers looking at red-shirting and retention in the early grades have found that these changes may result in short-term improvements in school achievement (Datar, 2006). Researchers have also analyzed retention in later gradess related to test scores. ...
My dissertation examines the economic links between people's experiences in early and later-life. It offers new empirical evidence on the effect of income in infancy on later-life outcomes, and investigates the performance and econometric properties of the linking tools often used to create data for these long-term empirical investigations. In my first chapter, I estimate a relationship between family income in infancy and later-life outcomes for children. Eligibility for child-related tax benefits depends on the calendar year in which a child is born. Families with children born in December are eligible for tax benefits a year earlier than families with children born a few days later in January. These differences create a discontinuity in after-tax income in infancy worth on average approximately $2,000 for families in tax year 2016. I use regression discontinuity techniques to calculate the effect of this change in after-tax income on outcomes for children and young adults in Census data. Evidence show that a $1,000 increase in after-tax income in infancy results in a 1.2 percentage point increase in the probability of a student being grade-for-age by high school, a basic indicator of academic achievement and social maturity. Effects of this income shock are larger for children from families that are more likely disadvantaged at a child's birth, including Black families, and families with low education attainment. After high school, small differences in labor force attachment, earnings and education attainment persist for the adults who experienced the income increase as children. These effects are again pronounced for Black adults and adults born in counties with low average education attainment. In my second and third chapters, I investigate methodological problems that arise when linking data. Linking is often necessary to investigate generational economic links between childhood and adulthood. In the second chapter, my coauthors Martha Bailey, Catherine Massey, Morgan Henderson and I review the literature in historical record linkage in the U.S., and examine the performance of widely-used automated record linking algorithms. Focusing on algorithms in current practice, our findings highlight the important effects of linking methods on data quality. We then extend our analysis to look at the consequences of these differences in data quality on inference by computing intergenerational income elasticities between fathers and sons. Many of the methods produce estimated elasticities that are statistically distinguishable from the estimated intergenerational elasticity with hand-linked data, suggesting that the linking algorithms themselves may bias inference. However, eliminating false matches renders elasticity estimates similar to each other, and statistically indistinguishable from the elasticity estimated with the hand-linked data. In the third chapter, my coauthors Martha Bailey, Catherine Massey and I investigate two complementary strategies to address the issues we highlight in my second chapter. We investigate the use of validation variables to identify higher quality links and a regression-based weighting procedure to increase the representativeness of custom research samples. We demonstrate the potential value of these strategies using the 1850-1930 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series Linked Representative Samples (IPUMS-LRS). We show that, while incorrect linking rates appear low in the IPUMS-LRS, researchers can reduce error rates further using validation variables. We also show researchers can reweight linked samples to balance observed characteristics in the linked sample with those in a reference population using a simple regression-based procedure.
... Numerous birthday-effect studies have reported significant relationships between children's quarter of birth and measures of their academic success. This birth effect indicates that younger children are at a disadvantage compared with their older peers (Bedard and Dhuey 2006;Crone and Whitehurst 1999;Datar 2006;Huang and Invernizzi 2013;Kinard and Reinherz 2015;Oshima and Domaleski 2006;Robertson 2011;Stipek and Byler 2001). ...
The aim is to examine the impact of interventions on fluency and reading comprehension and how the effects of these interventions depend on the time that teachers spend with children with reading difficulties. Two groups were involved: an experimental group (n = 600) trained in code-related skills and a control group (n = 597) that received no intervention. In the Exp group, teachers adapted a specific instructional time for reading (SITR) in the light of children’s difficulties. A significant gain of .23 σ in fluency and a gain of .33 σ in reading comprehension were observed in favor of the Exp group, (a) but there was no gain in numeracy skills (as expected); (b) the amount of SITR is linked to children’s scores in literacy skills; (c) SITR is linked to progress in fluency and reading comprehension. These results argue in favor of differentiated reading instruction for children with difficulties during learning to read.
... Araştırmanın sonuçlarından biri küçük yaştaki çocukların, okul öncesi eğitime uyumu bakımından daha dezavantajlı olduklarıdır. Yapılan araştırmalar, okula uyum sorunu yaşayan çocukların daha çok küçük çocuklar olduğunu göstermektedir (Datar, 2006;Yoleri, 2014) Çocuğun okulda yaşadığı akran reddi veya aile içinde, bakıldığında anne-babaya güvensiz bağlanma sosyal açıdan en büyük etkendir. Annesinden ayrılacağını ve geri gelmeyeceğini düşünen çocuk okula gitmek istemez ve ağlama davranışı gösterebilir. ...
... We restricted the age to be less than 18 to avoid possible sample selection issues with teens' decisions to leave their parents' household to either attend college or start their own household. It is possible that teen boys may leave their home later for college if boys start kindergarten at a later age on average than girls, as evidenced by Datar (2006). As discussed earlier, there is also evidence that marriages last longer when the couple has a boy rather than a girl. ...
Several studies of parental time allocation have found that fathers spend more time with sons than daughters, while mothers devote roughly equal amounts of time to boys and girls. In this paper, we use time diaries from the American Time Use Survey and the PSID Child Development Supplement to test whether this pattern, which translates into a greater investment of parental time in boys, results from gender bias in parental preferences or from boy-girl differences in child production functions. We confirm the result that boys receive significantly more paternal time than girls; however, in families with same-sex siblings, girls are not compensated by more overall time with their married mothers. The 'production function' hypothesis that boys require more parental time receives little support, relative to an explanation based on parental preferences for spending time with a same-sex child. Fathers appear to bear most of the cost of their extra time with sons in the form of reduced leisure and household work. We also find that mothers of sons benefit through increased leisure. Single mothers spend more time with daughters relative to sons, though if boys require more parental time they should be compensating for the absent parent. However, fixed-effects estimates indicate that, within families with both boys and girls, parental time is equalized in both single-and two-parent households. We also find that same-sex parent-child time in gender-stereotypical activities is pervasive and becomes increasingly evident in the teen years.
... The RAE has also been examined in relation to behavioral, social-emotional, academic, and career-related outcomes. These studies indicate that the youngest children in a group are more likely to perform lower on measures of academic achievement (Bell & Daniels, 1990;Datar, 2006;Lawlor, Clark, Ronalds, & Leon, 2006;Lien, Tambs, Oppedal, Heyerdahl, & Bjertness, 2005), to be referred for special education evaluations (Graue & DiPerna, 2000;Wallingford & Prout, 2000), to repeat a grade (Barnard-Brak, Stevens, & Albright, 2017;Elder & Lubotsky, 2009), and to be identified as having social, emotional, or behavioral problems (Goodman, Gledhill, & Ford, 2003;Polizzi, Martin, & Dombrowski, 2007;Thompson, Barnsley, & Battle, 2004) than those who are oldest. The RAE has also been associated with career success, wherein individuals born immediately before school enrollment cutoff dates (i.e., the youngest in the class) are significantly less likely to apply for medical school (Abel, Sokol, Kruger, & Yargeau, 2008) and are less likely to become chief executive officer of a company (Du, Gao, & Levi, 2012). ...
One potential source contributing to the misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could be as simple as a child’s age in relation to others in their grade. Studies indicate that children who are youngest in their grade are at greater risk of being diagnosed with, and medicated for, ADHD. The relative age effect (RAE), wherein younger people are described as less proficient relative to older members of the group, may explain these findings. This meta-analysis explored the overall effect of the RAE on ADHD in school-aged children. Twenty-six studies met eligibility criteria and 24 were included in the quantitative analysis. Results indicated that there is evidence that children who are the youngest in the class are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and to be prescribed medication, SE = 0.09, t(8.87) = 16.0, p < .001. Implications of these findings on diagnostic and treatment practices for ADHD and school policy are discussed.
... With this approach to the problem, there is a possibility of differences in the average level of maturity within each group. Such an initial effect of relative age difference (RAE) for children according to research [1,2] should diminish or even overcome over time, although there are differences in children who have an innate ability to adjust more quickly in the midst and biological maturity [3][4][5]. The differences in chronological age between children in one age group is known as relative age and its significance as RAE. ...
Background: Studying the differences of relative age and relation to selected anthropometric parameters that occur in adolescents, it was concluded that other social, economic and psychological factors influence the phenomenon whose significance should be reduced.
Objective: The aim of the study was to determine how much adolescents differ in certain anthropometric characteristics in relation to the relative age effect (RAE). Methods: The study included a sample of 73 students of the first grade of Miloje Dobrašinović High School in Bijelo Polje (Montenegro), divided into two sub-samples. The first sub-sample included 27 boys, while the second sub-sample included 46 girls divided into four groups according to RAE.
Results: Research results indicate that as many as 76.7% of children in the total sample are obese. Of these, 63% are girls and 13.7% boys who were born in April May and June, while the other boys 23.3% have normal nutritional values.
Conclusion: Adolescents are advised to exercise at least 60 minutes daily, with notion that they should be included in moderate or high-intensity aerobic physical activity, but also at least three times a week in high-intensity physical activity
... A meta-analysis (Stipek, 2002) of research investigating the relationship between age and different abilities (e.g., emergent literacy skills, grammar, numeracy skills, IQ tests) has shown that older children have an advantage compared with their younger counterparts. Thus, numerous birthday-effect studies have indicated that younger children are at a disadvantage compared with their older peers (Bedard & Dhuey, 2006;Crone & Whitehurst, 1999;Datar, 2006;Oshima & Domaleski, 2006;Stipek & Byler, 2001). In a recent study (Huang & Invernizzi, 2013), the emergent literacy skills of the oldest and youngest children were investigated using the fall PALS-K (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Kindergarteners; Invernizzi et al., 2004) summed score as the outcome variable. ...
In a large-scale study conducted in 4- to 5-year-old French-speaking preschoolers ( N = 12,162), early literacy skills were assessed with four short tasks designed to investigate three domains related to learning to read: letter knowledge, phonological skills, and vocabulary. This tool was developed in response to the lack of available literacy screening tools for this population. Item response theory (IRT) analyses were used to examine the discrimination and difficulty parameters of each item. Then, a structural model confirmed that all the scores contributed to a latent ability, namely, early literacy. Three variables, namely, sociodemographic zone, age, and gender, are related to performance on literacy skills. Finally, an IRT with these variables as covariates confirms that all of them explained the difference in the scores in each domain except for zone in the case of letter-name knowledge (without significant link). This initial tool for French-speaking preschoolers could be used to identify children with early difficulties and help promote early language interventions to combat subsequent difficulties in learning to read.
... Her ERA would be 8, that is, she was born 8 months after the month that starts with the cutoff date. This instrument is the same as that in Fumarco and Baert (2019), and it is very similar to that used in Peña and Duckworth (2018), Peña (2017), and Datar (2006). The latter studies measure expected relative age as the distance in non-integer years between student i's age-if she was a regular student-and the age of the hypothetically youngest student in the class, who was born right before the cutoff date. ...
We investigate whether relative age (i.e. the age gap between classmates) affects life satisfaction and health in adolescence. We analyse data on students between 10 and 17 years of age from the international survey 'Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children' and find robust evidence that a twelve-month increase in relative age (i.e. the hypothetical maximum age gap between classmates) i) increases life satisfaction by 0.168 standard deviations, ii) increases self-rated general health by 0.108 standard deviations, iii) decreases psychosomatic complaints by 0.072 standard deviations, and iv) decreases chances of being overweight by 2.4%. These effects are comparable in size to the effects of students' household socioeconomic status. Finally, gaps in life satisfaction are the only ones to reduce with the increase in absolute age, but only in countries where the first tracking of students occurs at 14 years of age or later. *** A DISCUSSION PAPER VERSION OF THIS STUDY IF FREELY DOWNLOADABLE HERE: https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp11990.html
This paper estimates the difference in academic performance of the oldest (treated) and youngest (control) students in a given grade. We employ Queensland Department of Education school administration panel data for the population of 2008–2016 state school students. Academic performance is measured using standardised test scores (National Assessments Program in Numeracy and Literacy) and teacher‐assessed measures of performance and effort for individuals in grades 3, 5 and 7. The empirical analysis employs a regression discontinuity design based on birth date relative to administrative rules on age of school enrolment. The class‐assigning mechanism operates via a known cut‐off date and results in the oldest child in the grade being almost a year older than the youngest. However, lack of enrolment compliance implies the regression discontinuity design is fuzzy rather than sharp, identifying the local average treatment effect rather than the average treatment effect. In particular, given the one‐sided nature of non‐compliance, we employ the partially fuzzy estimator of Battistin and Rettore (Journal of Econometrics, 142, 715–30, 2008). Exploiting a 2008 enrolment cut‐off date reform, which delayed school starting age by 6 months, we find a large increase in enrolment compliance. This exogenous change in the enrolment age enables one to gauge the importance of enrolment non‐compliance in estimating the treatment effect of being older versus younger in cohort. We find that pre‐reform the treatment effect is small and generally statistically insignificant and post‐reform it is sizeable and statistically significant.
This study aims to determine the opinions of preschool teachers on preschool adaptation during the Covid-19 pandemic process and to determine what can be done to facilitate the adaptation of children to school in such negative situations. The research was carried out as a multiple case study with 22 preschool teachers working at private and governmental institutions in seven different regions of Turkey. The data were collected by means of phone conversations using an interview form prepared by the researchers. The results of the research determined that children's adaptation was affected by masks and social distance requirements, necessitating teachers to prepare their activities accordingly. Teachers' opinions about the effect of gradual transition on the adaptation process to the school were found to differ. The findings and results of the research are detailed in the study.
While the previous literature finds robust evidence that children who enter school at a more advanced age have better test scores than their younger classmates, only little is known about the persistence of this effect into adulthood. This study is the first to analyze whether the school starting age even affects test scores long after school graduation. The scores were conducted as part of a representative survey of adults, measuring math and language competencies. Exploiting state and year variation in school entry regulations, the results show that a higher school starting age significantly increases competencies in receptive vocabulary.
Given the time constraints, women face divergent choices in their twenties and thirties. This study investigates the effect of age on women’s graduate education choices. Utilizing the exogenous variations in primary school entry age set by the Compulsory Education Law in China, this study adopts a double-difference strategy. Relative to those entering school at six years of age, a one-year delay in primary school enrollment caused by the birth month cut-off is associated with a significantly lower probability of graduate school enrollment for the women entering school at seven years of age. In contrast, such a finding is absent in the male population. Furthermore, suggestive evidence is provided showing that the marriage market and the labor market can explain the findings of this study. The results of this study indicate that the implementation of the Compulsory Education Law improves women’s graduate education investment in China.
In this paper we detail the entire Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) history, including its origins in the 1960s, and its two main waves of formalization in the 1970s and 2000s, both of which are rarely acknowledged in the literature. Also, we dissect the empirical work into fuzzy and sharp designs and provide some intuition as to why some rule-based criteria produce imperfect compliance. Finally, we break the literature down by economic field, highlighting the main outcomes, treatments, and running variables. Overall, we see some topics in economics gaining importance through time, like the cases of health, finance, crime, environment, and political economy. In particular, we highlight applications in finance as the most novel. Nonetheless, we recognize that the field of education stands out as the uncontested RDD champion through time, with the greatest number of empirical applications.
The belief that additional time allows children to become more ready for school has affected public policy and individual practices. Prior studies estimated either associations between school entry age and academic growth or causal effects on achievement measured at one or two points. This article contributes novel causal evidence for the impacts of kindergarten entry age on academic growth in the first three years of school. We embed regression discontinuity into a piecewise multilevel growth model and apply it to rich assessment data from three states. Being a year older leads to higher initial achievement and higher kindergarten growth rates but lower growth rates during 1st and 2nd grades. Effects do not differ by gender or race.
Whenever treatment effects are heterogeneous, and there is sorting into treatment based on the gain, monotonicity is a condition that both instrumental variable (IV) and fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) designs must satisfy for their estimate to be interpretable as a local average treatment effect. However, applied economic work often omits a discussion of this important assumption. A possible explanation for this missing step is the lack of a clear framework to think about monotonicity in practice. In this paper, we use an extended Roy model to provide insights into the interpretation of IV and fuzzy RD estimates under various degrees of treatment effect heterogeneity, sorting on gain and violation of monotonicity. We then extend our analysis to two applied settings to illustrate how monotonicity can be investigated using a mix of economic insights, data patterns and formal tests. For both settings, we use a Roy model to interpret the estimate even in the absence of monotonicity. We conclude with a set of recommendations for the applied researcher.
The education laws of each country establish starting cutoff dates for compulsory education which could, potentially, affect students’ academic achievement. Specifically, they could be detrimental for those students whose birthday is just before the school entry cutoff, as they will be the youngest in their classroom, while it could boost the academic performance of those whose birthday is just after (the eldest ones). The present research paper analyses this issue in respect to students’ academic achievement using census and longitudinal data for the most populated region of Spain (Andalusia) with a regression discontinuity methodology. Our results show that those students who are the youngest in the classroom due to this school entry cutoff present lower academic achievement compared to the eldest students, an effect which is reduced while students advance in their education. This motivates policy recommendations aimed at checking students’ cognitive skills prior to their access to compulsory education and at letting parents choose whether or not to delay their children’s access to school in case they are not yet ready.
This study explores how the distinctive Korean age reckoning, the Confucian age culture, and the school-entry-cutoff date affect the decisions of parents on both birth and school-entry timing for their children in Korea. There is a traditional method of age calculation in Korea that all people get one year older on January 1. Korea also has a distinctive age culture influenced by Confucianism. I find a substantial amount of birth and school-entry timing selections around the Korean age-cutoff date, January 1. The estimation results show that children born in January and February delayed school entry by 18.2–21.2 percentage points more than those born in November and December and 24% of births moved from one week before January 1 to one week after when the school-entry cutoff was March 1. After the school-entry cutoff has changed to January 1, children barely delay school enrollment, while more births are moved from December to January: 42% of births are shifted within the 7-day window. These behaviors are made by two motives: (1) parents want their children to have the same Korean age with their classmates because of the Confucian age culture; (2) they also want their children to be relatively older to have academic advantages.
We investigate the causal impact of age of enrolment on educational attainment in a developing country setting. Using China's 1986 Compulsory Education Law, which established a new nationally uniform age threshold for primary school enrolment as a natural experiment, we find that the probability of attending high school falls by 3.6 percentage points when school enrolment is postponed by one year. We provide suggestive evidence that those who start school later are not better learners, and that older students' higher labor opportunity cost plays an important role in explaining the negative impact of school entry age on educational attainment.
This chapter explores the transitional practice of voluntarily delaying a student's kindergarten entry through a combination of reviewing prior literature and also presenting new research findings. Using data from a large, predominantly low-income and ethnically diverse sample, the authors examine early elementary school outcomes for a group of children (n = 305) who delayed kindergarten entry in comparison to their on-time peers. Results indicate that children who delay kindergarten entry slightly outperform their peers in the kindergarten year, but these differences disappear by the end of 1st grade. Results were similar for students with disabilities. Overall, delaying kindergarten entry did not seem to provide sustained academic advantages for this sample of students. Implications for delaying kindergarten entry are discussed.
This paper examines the effect of universal pre‐kindergarten (pre‐k) on the labor force participation of mothers with pre‐k‐aged children in Oklahoma and Georgia. I apply the synthetic control method (SCM) to Current Population Survey (CPS) data to identify the causal relationship between universal pre‐k and female labor market outcomes. I find that the universal pre‐k policy has a positive impact on the intensive margin of the labor supply of mothers with pre‐k‐aged children in Georgia, which provides full‐day child care services for all pre‐k programs. However, Oklahoma's universal pre‐k policy has little effect on the labor outcomes of mothers with 4‐year‐old children. The empirical results also suggest that universal pre‐k has heterogeneous impacts on subsamples stratified by education level, marital status, poverty status, and the age structure of children in the household.
A large literature shows that relatively young students perform worse in class. Using data from the ‘Health Behaviour in School Aged Children’ international survey, we additionally find robust evidence that they are aware of performing poorly, they spend more time watching TV and less time doing sports than older peers, while tending to spend as much time as older peers on their homework. We use a two-stage least square to instrument both relative and absolute age, which turns out to be an important issue. Heterogeneity analyses show that most of these effects reverse or disappear in time.
As important as education for all is, qualitative education for all matters as well. Neither education for all nor qualitative education for all can be achieved without a closer look at the way rural education is organized, especially in the developing countries. The concern for rural education in developing countries is obvious. Majority of the children in developing countries live in the rural areas and under heavy social, economic and political deprivation. It is no choice of theirs to be rural and depriving them of qualitative education now means postponing the day they will be liberated from the situation in which they find themselves. As a first step to guide education policy in this direction, performance evaluation of rural and urban school children was done in 2012 in Nigeria. Really, judging by the test scores of both groups of children, there is a serious performance gap. What can then be done? Solution is in providing incentives to rural teachers, making education materials accessible in rural schools, retraining programme for rural teachers, provision of social services (water, electricity, internet service) in the rural areas to make life attractive and redesigning curriculum to include local examples.
Despite its relevance for policy, there is limited evidence on the impact of lowering school entry age and increasing the length of primary education on student performance. This study examines these changes in the context of Brazil’s 2006 compulsory schooling reform. We exploit differences in the years that schools adopted the policy as a plausibly exogenous source of variation and use students’ birth months to predict school entry age. The overall impact of the policy package was to increase math and Portuguese test scores by approximately 0.11 and 0.06 standard deviations in students’ fifth and ninth year of school. Among the students who entered primary school one year earlier, those without any prior education experienced larger increases in their fifth year test scores compared to students who gained an additional year of primary education at the expense of preschool. This advantage, however, became smaller by their ninth year. We discuss different mechanisms through which the policy may have influenced student performance and conduct various robustness checks that lend support to the paper’s interpretation.
Using an arbitrary cutoff date, school districts regulate which children will begin school. This "natural experiment" was used to examine effects of age- and schooling-related influences on memory and 3 levels of phonological segmentation in children who just made vs. missed the cutoff. Group comparisons over time permitted assessment of schooling influences and Age × Experience interactions. Short-term memory was enhanced by Grade 1 schooling, with no evidence of an Age × Schooling interaction. For phonological segmentation, both schooling- and age-related influences appeared, with unique patterns for each level of segmentation. The cutoff method proved sensitive to important changes in cognitive skills during this age period. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The influence of school- and age-related variables was examined separately on 2 tasks involving elementary quantitative skills: conservation of number and mental addition. Performance on these tasks was compared by using a
cutoff design with 3 groups of kindergarten and Grade 1 children who differed in age but not amount of schooling (grade), in schooling but not age, or in both age and schooling. The effects of age and schooling were distinct. On conservation of number, performance improved as a function of age but not schooling. On mental arithmetic, accuracy improved with schooling rather than age but children's use of various solution procedures (e.g., retrieval, counting) was not influenced by schooling. Thus, in the domain of elementary mathematical skills, the influence of schooling can be very specific, and age-related variables other than schooling play an important role in the development of elementary mathematical skills. Results illustrate the utility of the cutoff design for investigating instructional and developmental influences on cognitive development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We draw attention to two problems associated with the use of instrumental variables (IV), the importance of which for empirical work has not been fully appreciated. First, the use of instruments that explain little of the variation in the endogenous explanatory variables can lead to large inconsistencies in the IV estimates even if only a weak relationship exists between the instruments and the error in the structural equation. Second, in finite samples, IV estimates are biased in the same direction as ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. The magnitude of the bias of IV estimates approaches that of OLS estimates as the R(2) between the instruments and the endogenous explanatory variable approaches 0. To illustrate these problems, we reexamine the results of a recent paper by Angrist and Krueger, who used large samples from the U.S. Census to estimate wage equations in which quarter of birth is used as an instrument for educational attainment. We find evidence that, despite huge sample sizes, their IV estimates may suffer from finite-sample bias and may be inconsistent as well. These findings suggest that valid instruments may be more difficult to find than previously imagined. They also indicate that the use of large data sets does not necessarily insulate researchers from quantitatively important finite-sample biases. We suggest that the partial R(2) and the F statistic of the identifying instruments in the first-stage estimation are useful indicators of the quality of the IV estimates and should be routinely reported.d
We establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school
attendance laws. Individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age, and can therefore drop out after
completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year. Roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain
in school because of compulsory schooling laws. We estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter
of birth as an instrument for education. The instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary
least squares estimate, suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates.
The impact of entrance age on reading and mathematics achievement in 1st grade was examined. Methodological problems with past research were identified, including small size of achievement differences, failure to take background variables into account, and confusion of achievement levels with degree of learning. Using a pre-post design, growth of reading and mathematics was examined in younger 1st graders, older 1st graders, and older kindergarteners. Comparisons of background information on these groups with children who were either held out prior to or retained an extra year in kindergarten, produced minimal background differences. Results revealed that younger 1st graders made as much progress over the school year as did older 1st graders and made far more progress than older kindergarteners. Overall, findings demonstrated that, in itself, entrance age was not a good predictor of learning or academic risk.
This paper examines the long-term effects of early test scores using data from the British National Child Development Survey. We show that test scores measured as early as age 7 have significant effects on future educational and labor market outcomes. For example, men and women in the lowest quartile of the reading test score distribution have wages 20% lower at age 33 than those who scored in the highest quartile. We test several hypotheses about the interactions between socioeconomic status and high or low test scores at age 7. In terms of test scores, educational attainments, and employment at age 33, low-SES children reap both larger gains from having high age 7 test scores and smaller losses from having low age 7 test scores. The opposite is true among high-SES children who suffer larger losses from low scores and smaller gains from high scores. However we find little evidence of comparable interactive effects for wages.
This paper tests the hypothesis that compulsory school attendance laws, which typically require school attendance until a specified birthday, induce a relationship between the years of schooling and age at school entry. Variation in school start age created by children's date of birth provides a natural experiment for estimation of the effect of age at school entry. Because no large data set contains information on both age at school entry and educational attainment, we use an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimator with data derived from the 1960 and 1980 Censuses to test the age-at-entry/compulsory schooling model. In most IV applications, the two covariance matrices that form the estimator are constructed from the same sample. We use a method of moments framework to discuss IV estimators that combine moments from different data sets. In our application, quarter of birth dummies are the instrumental variables used to link the 1960 Census, from which age at school entry can be derived for one cohort of students, to the 1980 Census, which contains educational attainment for the same cohort of students. The results suggest that roughly 10 percent of students were constrained to stay in school by compulsory schooling laws.
In an effort to balance their budgets many states are considering reducing eligibility for Medicaid. Using variation in state policies, this paper models the effect of more stringent eligibility criteria for Medicaid on the insurance status and the use of antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for people living with HIV, a group heavily dependent on Medicaid. Using nationally representative data from the mid-1990's, we find that stricter eligibility thresholds for Medicaid raise uninsurance rates and reduce the use of antiretroviral therapy among HIV+ patients, especially for those who are disabled. These stricter eligibility thresholds in turn adversely affect the survival prospects of HIV+ patients by lowering the rate of HAART use. Our estimates suggest approximately 13,000 lives could have been saved if all states had adopted the eligibility thresholds of California. We do not find any evidence of a "crowding out" effect of public insurance on private coverage among these patients.
This paper uses data from the National Child Development Survey of an entire cohort of children born in Britain in one week in 1958. We show that test scores measured as early as age 7 have significant effects on future educational and labor market outcomes, even after a wide array of observable characteristics have been controlled for. The effects are similar or larger than those of other observed characteristics of the children. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is easier to predict future test scores given past test scores, than to predict schooling attainments or labor market outcomes. A striking result is that among men, early test scores are better predictors of wages and employment at age 33 than at age 23. Among women, one observes the same pattern for wages, but it is generally more difficult to predict employment at age 33 than at age 23, presumably because many women take time out of labor market careers to care for children. We test several hypotheses about the interactions betwe...
Increased interest in the child ?not ready? for reading has led to the use of a number of instructional options, of which the transition class is one. Efficacy of transition room programs is reviewed and importance of teacher attitudes is discussed. Educators will need to examine current educational practices in order to reduce the school failure rate.
We present a model in which compulsory school attendance laws, which typically require school attendance until a specified birthday, induce a relationship between years of schooling and age at school entry. Variation in school starting age created by children's dates of birth provides a natural experiment for estimating the effect of age at school entry. Because no large data set contains information on both age at school entry and educational attainment, we use an instrumental variables (IV) estimator with data derived from the 1960 and 1980 Censuses to estimate and test the age-at-entry/compulsory schooling model. In most IV applications, the two covariance matrices that form the estimator are constructed from the same sample. We use a method-of-moments framework to discuss IV estimators that combine moments from different data sets. In our application, quarter of birth dummies are the instrumental variables used to link the 1960 Census, from which age at school entry can be derived for one cohort of students, to the 1980 Census, which contains educational attainment for the same cohort of students. The results suggest that compulsory attendance laws constrain roughly 10% of students to stay in school.
First-grade entry ages were determined for all LD children in grades one through twelve in a large special education cooperative. The children were classified as early, medium, or late entering. U.S. Census data were consulted to determine the expected frequencies in each of these categories. It was found that there were more early-entering and fewer late-entering children in this sample than would be expected if entry age were a chance variable. Though more research is needed, the results of this study suggest the possibility that children who enter first grade early may be more likely to be labeled LD than children who enter when they are older.
This study investigated the changing achievement relationships among students based on ages at entry into first grade and ages relative to their classmates. Data from students in grades 4, 8, and 11 were selected from National Assessment of Educational Progress achievement data in mathematics, science, and reading collected from national samples of Caucasian and black 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students. Relative age, class age, sex, parental education, home environment, and type of community were entered in stepwise multiple regression analyses. The achievement data for Caucasians indicated that the significantly higher achievement of the oldest as compared to the youngest students at age 9 remained significant, but decreased at age 13, and disappeared by age 17. For blacks, while the trend did not decrease at age 13, it also disappeared at age 17. A second analysis of the proportion of students retained one grade revealed significantly increasing proportions of retained students as relative age became younger for Caucasians and blacks. Clinical screening based on sex and school district entrance age requirements was suggested for several groups. Signs of inadequate readiness in some of these groups pose potentially serious threats to academic careers and suggest delaying entrance for a year.
This study examined whether the educational practice of retaining students in junior first grade for a year between kindergarten and first grade enhanced their academic achievement and self-concept of academic ability. Subjects were 120 students randomly selected from a midwestern school district and divided equally into 4 groups: (1) recommended for first grade and placed in first grade; (2) recommended for junior first grade and placed in junior first; (3) recommended for junior first grade but placed in first grade; and (4) borderline between junior first grade and kindergarten, but placed in first grade. The groups were compared on 14 variables: (1) gender; (2) birth month; (3) retention; (4) absences; (5) lunch status; (6) class placement in mathematics; (7) grade point average in mathematics; (8) mathematics total on California Achievement Tests; (9) category of achievement in mathematics on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program; (10) class placement in reading; (11) grade point average in reading; (12) reading total on California Achievement Tests; (13) category of achievement in reading on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program; and (14) self-concept of academic ability. Males were retained in junior first grade at twice the number of females, and several variables were significantly different for the four groups, including self- concept of academic ability. Findings indicated that an extra year of junior first grade did not enhance academic achievement or self-concept of academic ability. (Contains a 49-item bibliography.) (WP)
SUMMARY This paper investigates the possibility of an ‘early warning system’ for identifying children ‘At Risk’ of educational failure. Using data from the National Child Development Study, a national, longitudinal survey of about 16 000 children in Britain, we examined what characteristics could be used to predict at earlier stages children whose experience of the educational system would lead to their being classified as relative failures (as identified at 16 years). The paper uses, to this end, the technique of analysis of variance, and we reach the conclusion that relatively effective prediction of those ‘At Risk’ could be accomplished using quite simple criteria. The ones found in this study to be the most effective in predicting educational failure were in fact educational criteria themselves.
A review of studies on transition programs for children "not ready" for reading indicates that transition-class children perform comparably to or worse than similar at-risk children placed in regular classes. Although school personnel generally show favorable attitudes toward transition classes, few programs maintain effective monitoring systems to indicate the progress of the child. A small teacher/student ratio is common among transition classes, but less time is devoted to academic activities than in regular classes. Although it is possible to make changes in transition programs to meet educational and legal objections, other approaches may still have superior outcomes. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
One hundred and thirty-seven fourth-grade pupils participated in a follow-up study of the effect of school-entrance age on academic achievement and social-emotional functioning. The sample included 73 oldest pupils, born in the months of January to March, and 64 youngest pupils, born in October to December of the same calendar year. Results indicated that differences between the two groups in academic and social-emotional measures, found when the subjects were in first grade, persisted in part to the fourth grade. The youngest subjects continued to score lowest in mathematics and in oral and silent reading comprehension; they were slower readers; and they had higher trait anxiety scores. In addition, the differences between the groups in oral and silent reading comprehension performance were found to increase over the years.
Grade retention is a major issue in the ongoing debate over how to improve primary and secondary education in the United States. This paper examines the retention decision and its empirical effects using an economic framework. Within our model, the retention decision is endogenous with respect to such observables as dropping out of school and labor market earnings and this endogeneity needs to be accounted for in empirical work. In the empirical section of the paper we use the High School and Beyond (HSB) data set to examine the effects of retention on the probability of dropping out of high school and on labor market earnings several years after the student has entered the workforce. We account for the endogeneity of grade retention by using instrumental variables (IV) estimation where the key instrument is based on exogenous variation across states in kindergarten entry dates.
There are high positive correlations between the percentages of learning disabled children and their months of birth in Hawaii. The relationships are similar for the sexes and do not decrease with age. The LD children born early or late in the year show differences in variability of IQ subtests and age of referral. This, together with a trend towards IQ differences, suggests that simple immaturity at school entrance is an insufficient explanation for the relationships observed. An investigation of the neuropsychological characteristics of early-born and late-born LD children is in progress.
Investigated the impact of assigning poor-prognosis 1st graders to separate transition rooms and contrasted it with giving similar children (transition eligible) regular instruction in an integrated setting. Also examined was the effectiveness of an individualized reading program (New Reading System; NRS) in teaching low-performance students beginning reading. Results of a study with 76 1st graders selected from 4 urban elementary schools indicate that low-performance students learned beginning reading better in regular instructional settings and under the NRS program. These results may be due to 2 factors: (a) Individualization provided teachers with tools for teaching heterogeneous students. (b) Students in regular settings received substantially more reading instruction. (19 ref)
To investigate whether students who are old-for-grade have higher rates of reported behavior problems and to investigate whether this association is independent of having been retained a grade in school.
Cross-sectional analyses of parental reports from the nationally representative sample of 9079 children ages 7 to 17 years who participated in the Child Health Supplement to the 1988 National Health Interview Survey. Students older than the modal age for their grade were considered old-for-grade, either due to delayed school entry (those without grade retention) or to delayed school progress (with history of grade retention). Behavior problems were defined as scores >90th percentile on a well-utilized, standardized Behavior Problem Index (BPI).
Twenty-six percent of 7- to 17-year-old children in the United States are old-for-grade. Being old-for-grade is more common in males (31%), blacks (33%), Hispanics (32%), those living in single-parent households (31%) or poverty (43%), and those with mothers with low educational attainment (42%). Most children (84%) who repeated a grade are old-for-grade, but only 54% of old-for-grade students have been retained. For children who were old-for-grade, 19% of those grade-retained and 12% of those nonretained had extreme BPI scores, and for those not old-for-grade, 17% of grade-retained and 7% of nonretained children had extreme BPI scores. Although rates of extreme BPI scores were consistently lower for children who were neither old-for-grade nor grade-retained, and consistently higher for those with both, these rates increased with age for children who were old-for-grade without being retained. Controlling for multiple potential confounders with logistic regression, both old-for-grade status and grade retention are independently associated with increased rates of behavior problems. Separate logistic regression analyses for blacks and whites showed that these findings pertained only to white children.
Whereas grade retention is associated with increased rates of behavior problems in children and adolescents, simply being older than others in one's class, without having experienced grade retention, is also associated with increased rates of behavior problems, most noticeably among adolescents. These data suggest that there may be latent adverse behavioral outcomes that result from delaying children's school entry.
In this paper, we develop an econometric model to estimate the impacts of Electronic Vehicle Management Systems (EVMS) on the load factor (LF) of heavy trucks using data at the operational level. This technology is supposed to improve capacity utilization by reducing coordination costs between demand and supply. The model is estimated on a subsample of the 1999 National Roadside Survey, covering heavy trucks travelling in the province of Quebec. The LF is explained as a function of truck, trip and carrier characteristics. We show that the use of EVMS results in a 16 percentage points increase of LF on backhaul trips. However, we also find that the LF of equipped trucks is reduced by about 7.6 percentage points on fronthaul movements. This last effect could be explained by a rebound effect: higher expected LF on the returns lead carriers to accept shipments with lower fronthaul LF. Overall, we find that this technology has increased the tonne-kilometers transported of equipped trucks by 6.3% and their fuel efficiency by 5%.
This paper estimates an, educational production function. Educational attainment is a function of peer group, parental input and schooling. Conventional measures of school quality are not good predictors for academic attainment, once we control for peer group effects; parental qualities also have strong effects on academic, attainment. This academic attainment is then a key determinant of subsequent labour market success, as measured by earnings. The main methodological innovation in this paper is the nomination of a set of instruments, very broad regions of birth, which, as a whole, pass close scrutiny for validity and permit unbiased estimation of the production function.
This paper estimates an educational production function. Educational attainment is a function of peer group, parental input and schooling. Conventional measures of school quality are not good predictors for academic attainment, once we control for peer group effects; parental qualities also have strong effects on academic attainment. This academic attainment is a then a key determinant of subsequent labour market success, as measured by earnings. The main methodological innovation in this paper is the nomination of a set of instruments, very broad regions of birth, which, as a whole, pass close scrutiny for validity and permit unbiased estimation of the production function. Copyright The London School of Economics and Political Science 2003
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