Re: Question for the only one here with a vote - Elliot
Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 12:45 pm
I notice you completely ignore the many instances which this very good articel compeltely refutes your premise and actually makes a really good case for not startign kids late. I also disagree with correlary data in general, I mean let's not forget seasonl increase sin ice cream sales directly correlate to the increase in rape victim instances........... I don;t see any proof that this "helps many and hurts no one". Your article above suggests starting late can actually hurt a child because of a lost year of active participation and tesing which can have an overall better influence on them than an extra year of "preparation". I also see no evidence where chnaging from July 1 to June 1 will definitively help these "masses" of children you are speaking of. Your arguments actually make me think that this nonarbitrary July 1 date is the right date sinc eit is the half way mark. Also, the dozen folks I mentioned that are doing it for sports, I know are doing it for sports as I know them, their child, their teachers and their abilities in the clasroom quite well. It's a small town, even "private" discussions are pretty well known. But please continue to tell me what I do and don't know, it is illuminating. BE it school or hockey, there is an inherent "ability" in individuals but that ability thing is small in relationship to the external influences of the parents, teachers/coaches and the kdis willingness to learn, participate and get better. All my kids are the youngest in the school district for their classes and all are at the top of their class, you'd thinkone would be an anomoly but 3 is a trend, hmmmmm.....WhosPuckIsItAnyways? wrote:(My comments in bold parenthesis)JSR wrote:It's funny because data shows that in ALL states an overwhleming majority of people hold their summer birthday kids back based almost entirely on sports.
>> Not true. See Below.
I would think logical people would want to enforce a rule that would discourage this practice, not encourage it.
>> Logical people don't give a rats ass about holding kids back for sports. Logical people are more concerned about what's best for the child developmentally - both socially and academically. See Below.
My son is a summer birthday, he is an August 7 birthday, we sent him to school and didn't hold him back.
>> That is your choice as his parents and needs to be respected no matter what people *think* your reasoning is. Others expect and are enttled to the same courtesy.
I personally know atleast a dozen kids who are older than my son but a year behind him in school and all but one were perfedctly ready emotionally and mentally, they were all (except that one) held back because of sports.
>> You just don't know that. You are not privy to private discssions between husbands and wives on what is best for their children. You aren't reading books to those kids, playing with them in the park or having discussions with them at the dinner table. Sports may or may not have been part of an equation. Even if a parent told you that wasd the reason exclusively, you just don't know that. I know a guy who said he was holding his kid back for sports, but it turned out the kid was dislexic and the parent didn't feel it was anyone elses business. There are any number of reasons to hold kids back - most of which have nothing to do with sports. See Below.
Made my head want to implode.
>> Don't let your head implode. Here's a reasearch paper (below) done by an expert (no, not Mr.O-Clown, a real expert) , which will shed some light on starting age, relative age and other great insights on childhood development.
Those who have spent time in a kindergarten classroom know that there are remarkable differences in children's skills. Research has shown that these skill differences are strongly tied to age, with students who enter kindergarten later in life doing better than younger entrants. Moreover, an "entry-age achievement gap" (hereafter, the EAAG) has been found to persist until as late as the eighth or ninth grade (see, for example, Bedard and Dhuey 2006).
Does this finding imply that parents or policymakers should push children to start kindergarten at a later age? The answer depends in part on what is driving the EAAG. In this Economic Letter, I describe possible interpretations of the EAAG, along with their implications, and discuss new empirical research attempting to establish their relative importance.
Three interpretations of the entry-age achievement gap
There are three broad, and not mutually exclusive, interpretations of the EAAG. The first is "relative age" --that is, older kindergartners stand to gain over the long term because they are temporarily bigger and smarter in relation to their classmates. (<< Same is true for hockey) This can matter for school achievement because elementary school children are sorted into reading and other curricular groups on the basis of achievement, which, as mentioned above, is strongly correlated with age at this point in the life cycle. (<< Or in hockey, A, B & C teams) Placement in the top group (A Team) can be self-reinforcing, since top groups may tackle more advanced material and move more quickly through a given curriculum. At the same time, older school entrants might become relatively more motivated for school or self-confident because of their relative standing in the class. Anecdotally, this concern has created an unsustainable race in some communities to secure one's own child the position at the top of the class, (Understandable) with "kindergartners pushing [age] seven" (<< Whew! 7? Academic parents are crazier than hockey parents) (Gootman 2006).
Importantly, in each case, the result is "zero-sum": (As a group) when older students gain, younger students lose, becoming less engaged with school, being placed in lower reading groups, etc. Therefore, a policy intervention that moves the date by which starting kindergartners should be aged five from December 2 (as is currently the regulation in California) to September 1 would affect who is at the top of the class and who is at the bottom, but not academic outcomes on average. (More important to the individuals than the group - when you force kids who are not ready to begin early you put them at an undue disadvantage)
The second interpretation, "age at entry," is that older school entrants outperform younger school entrants because they are better equipped to succeed in school. While this interpretation of the EAAG might seem quite similar to the relative age interpretation, it differs in a very important way: Here, it is no longer the case that older students gain at the expense of younger students; rather, older students gain without affecting younger students at all. (This is the strongest argument for setting the age to June 1 - the summer kids (younger kids) benefit without taking anything away from the older kids by letting them enter the system at the maximum age , in this case, when the birthday falls within the school year) This suggests that increasing the minimum age at school entry may indeed raise academic outcomes of a cohort on average by promoting the achievement of students who would have otherwise started one year younger. (Exactly) Parents might also be able to improve a child's achievement by holding him back, giving him an extra year of preparation for kindergarten through more preschool and other enriching activities. However, any given child's achievement will not be compromised by other parents making the same choice. (and that's the kicker - as has ben said so many times - "Helps Many. Hurts No One".)
The third interpretation, "age at test," is that age at school entry has no impact on achievement per se, but is correlated with cognitive development and the stock of skills that a child has accumulated outside of school. At any point after kindergarten entry, older children have lived longer and experienced more--had more books read to them by parents, taken more trips to the museum or the zoo, and potentially spent more time in preschool--than younger children who started kindergarten with them. The additional life experience of older students will eventually be minuscule compared to the stock of skills accumulated by their younger counterparts. If "age at test" is driving the EAAG, concern over age at school entry must rest on different grounds.
On balance, this new research suggests that the EAAG is largely an artifact of natural differences in skill between older and younger students. Does this mean that policymakers and parents should not be concerned about age at kindergarten entry? Not necessarily. There are possibly positive spillovers from having older peers, (some here have noted the positives from playing hockey with older kids) but these need to be weighed against the negative effects of starting school later (The vast majority of younger kids who are not able to compete with the older kids and left behind) . First, a lost year of schooling may lower test scores by more than is gained by an additional year of school preparation. Among minorities, high schoolers expected to be youngest in their school cohorts score significantly higher on tests than individuals expected to be eldest in the cohort behind them (Cascio and Lewis 2006). Americans who are older when they start kindergarten also on average end up with less schooling as adults, since the oldest children in a class reach the age at which they can legally leave school in a lower grade (Angrist and Krueger 1991). Further, under the assumption of an unchanging retirement age, the loss of labor market experience among older school entrants might not only negatively impact lifetime earnings, but also lower lifetime contributions to Social Security (Deming and Dynarski 2008). Thus, knowing what drives the EAAG is only a first step toward learning the optimal age at kindergarten entry.
Elizabeth Cascio
Dartmouth College and
Visiting Scholar, FRBSF
References
Angrist, Joshua D., and Alan B. Krueger. 1991. "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Education and Earnings?" The Quarterly Journal of Economics 106(4) (November) pp. 979-1,014.
Bedard, Kelly, and Elizabeth Dhuey. 2006. "The Persistence of Early Childhood Maturity: International Evidence of Long-Run Age Effects." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (4) pp. 1,437-1,472.
Black, Sandra, Paul Devereux, and Kjell Salvanes. 2008. "Too Young to Leave the Nest? The Effects of School Starting Age." NBER Working Paper 13969. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Cascio, Elizabeth U., and Ethan G. Lewis. 2006. "Schooling and the Armed Forces Qualifying Test: Evidence from School-Entry Laws." The Journal of Human Resources 41(2), pp. 294-318.
Cascio, Elizabeth U., and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. 2007. "First in the Class? Age and the Education Production Function." NBER Working Paper 13663. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Deming, David, and Susan Dynarski. 2008. "The Lengthening of Childhood." Forthcoming, Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Elder, Todd E., and Darren H. Lubotsky. 2008. "Kindergarten Entrance Age and Children's Achievement: Impacts of State Policies, Family Background, and Peers." Forthcoming, The Journal of Human Resources.
Gootman, Elissa. 2006. "Preschoolers Grow Older as Parents Seek an Edge." The New York Times (October 19).
Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore. 2007. "What Have Researchers Learned from Project STAR?" In Brookings Papers on Education Policy 2006-2007, eds. T. Loveless and F. Hess. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 205-228.
Set the date to June 1 --- Helps Many. Hurts No ONe.
