Study finds improved self-regulation in kindergartners who wait a year to enroll

gladwell credited coaching and resources above the age / maturity line he suggested. he's a statist who can't see a harvard degree's a more compelling investment than the same from a state school.

on point, what's "structured" about 20 6 year olds to a single teacher? sounds about as chaotic as it can be. the sooner we get away from this monolithic public education way of thinking, the better off our kids will be.

I am actually way more sceptical about this study since the definition of self+regulation is such a slippery term IMO.

In Texas, familes will often hold their children back so that they are physically larger and more coordinated so that they can excel in football. Not being from Texas, I had never heard of this but apparently its common.

> It's refreshing to read an article about a scientific study from a university press office that doesn't exaggerate or misinterpret its implications.

It's still weird to read about a paper via press release. Papers should stand on their own, not require PR.

Just as a contrary (edit: or perhaps corroborative, depending on what we are attempting to show) data point, I was put in at 4 and was just fine, even in honors/advanced classes (not boasting, as if I could, just adding that circumstance).

Worth noting that my family, despite my parents breaking up around that time, was very supportive and, if not well off, at least not struggling financially. I went to public school K-12.

Seems things work both ways, but possibly the risks are greater in going in early than late — but, as usual, the outcome depends far more on other circumstances.

Age 3/4 is considered "pre-school", and is just playing. (It's optional; there's no public preschool, mostly just Christian private preschools that are effectively a less-religious outgrowth of catechism—most of them are still physically attached to a church in some manner. Kids make crafts and take field trips [with heavy church community volunteer involvement] to parks and public pools and pumpkin patches and so forth.)

Kindergarten is age 5-to-6, and is sort of to school as Candy Land is to board games: no actual subject matter, but teaching kids the meta-skills of "following the rules": sitting at desks, listening attentively to lectures, responding to questions and not interrupting others, time management during projects, etc. (Not as dreadful as it sounds; the "lectures" are group story-time, the "questions" are things like "what did you do this weekend", etc.)

Also, there's some attempt in kindergarten at ensuring everyone can read—i.e., it serves as remedial education backstopping the bad parents who never read with their children. That continues on in grade 1, but it's good to know early who the problem children (problem parents) are.

I've provided a link to the skills a kindergartener is expected to know in Texas. The most interesting one to me: 'counting from 20 to 0 backwards.' It touched my indexing heart when they included 0.

http://tea.texas.gov/uploadedFiles/Curriculum/Texas_Essentia...

Pre-school is still considered "optional" if you "make too much money" (at least in Los Angeles County & Ventura County). My daughter was denied access to pre-school even when my wife would only enter her income, my daughter would get denied. Together, according to the IRS, we're in the top 10% of income earners (though it sure doesn't feel like it). She turned 5 in July and was very excited to start Kindergarten in September. For the last year or so, she's had "Pre-school-like" daycare. Playful learning I would call it. Identifying animals by type (aquatic vs. aerial vs. terrestrial), basic colors and geometric shapes, matching (all the blue items on left, all the stars on the right), Alphabet & Phonics, Numbers, basic writing implement handling (pens, markers, crayons, paintbrushes), writing & recognizing her first name, counting (forward and reverse, counting items), lots of sharing and socialization (no touching, fighting, biting, etc.), manners (please, thank you, excuse me, etc.). So far, I think she's advancing well in Kindergarten and is learning addition, words and sentence structure/grammar, writing, reading, arithmetic. She's beginning to read very well for her age. But, like I said, she's had some pre-school like work, lots of Leap Frog video watching.

Kindergarten ~= to our 'onderbouw'. Remember that you can't compare 1:1 because of a number of factors, like when the school year starts and how admittance fits into that as well as how the rest of the education system until high school is structured (and at what age it starts).

Oh they do, depending on how you define "mature". The primary difference isn't really an age thing though. Typically, girls in classrooms are perfectly happy to sit still and listen. Boys, not so much. Obviously, this isn't binary, it's a continuum. But oh boy does it skew heavily.

When we're talking about a general rule for the masses, I don't think different cutoffs would be that helpful past 4-years old. It would be more beneficial to split them up and teach them differently. That said, it's far more important for parents to make these decisions for their own child. Sometimes they're ready, sometimes they aren't. But there's a lot of growth that can happen when we aren't quite ready for something or when we don't think they are. Everyone is far too afraid of failure, or barring failure, afraid of difficulty. Let them try. They might surprise you. If they struggle, help them along. The trouble is, there are a lot of kids who struggle and simply can't or won't get the help they need to grow through it.

Not to mention the fact that one year is 1/5 of your life at that point.

The study compared children enrolled versus forced to delay entrance according to an arbitrary date.[1] Socioeconomic status has nothing to do with it.

Further, the study explicitly claims causal relationships, rather than merely correlative. I'm guessing as a result of the kind of fancy-pants regression analysis they used. [2]

[1] "children who were born a certain number of days before the Dec. 31 enrollment cut-off and those born after the cut-off" http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610

[2] "We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design" http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610

So, in other words, kids who delay kindergarten (and had another full year of pre-K in-leiu) tended to do better at sitting still in a classroom after a full year of practice than kids who didn't get that year of practice?

We figured out that kids that start later have an easier time sitting still and paying attention compared to other kids of the same age.

> “We found that delaying kindergarten for one year reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73 percent for an average child at age 11,”

That's exactly the position I'm in, at least eventually.

My son was born in early July and my wife and I are trying to see if we should wait until he's a full 5 and be a year older than everyone or go when he's basically 4.

The extra year in a job to me isn't trivial. It's a 50k + extra year of experience decision. I left high school a year early and even though I'm the same age as a lot of people around me, I have 20k extra in my 401(k), I'm in a management position and I have graduate school finished.

The start advantage is fading as I get older though.

It probably still depends on the child. Some can probably handle it better than others. Personally, I'll have to wait and see to see what the little guy is like and what he can handle.

The flip side is parents who delay their kids so they are the biggest kids in class and get to dominate at sports. This is also nuts!

The right answer is evaluate what's right for the child. Different kids have different maturity levels. My daughter started K at age 4 and was still well above average and bored by 5th grade. The productive thing that school districts can do is roll out pre-K so parents don't have to make a costly daycare choice.

I was an October baby, so I started "a year late". I only had one good friend a year above me, we got out of touch when he went to Junior High while I was stuck in 6th grade. My other friends were in the same year and considering the older friend grew up to have lots of legal problems, I'm not disappointed on that end.

I do wish I had finished a year earlier, though. It would have meant cheaper college and would have also meant starting a career sooner, which for me is above $100k/yr. It would have also increased the chance of my mother still being alive since she died right after I was hired and I think if she didn't have to work until the end because I'd have been paying her bills she'd still be around.

I'd suggest going with what your kids want. If they want to learn, go for it. If they're perfectly happy with pre-school/daycare, or have lots of friends in that age group, maybe reconsider. They'll make new friends regardless of the grade, though.

yeah but they also say that computers should be avoided because they are influenced by the demon Ahriman

Will the difficulties they face when they're younger impact their grades and in turn impact which colleges will accept them?

If yes, optimize for that not to happen.

If no, optimize for difficulty.

It's probably impossible to predict what will happen on an individual level, these sorts of statistics are useful mostly on a populational level. Good luck.

What makes you so sure that education is that way because of Orwellian goals of conformity? Perhaps it's just really damn hard to custom tailor education to each individual student?

It's not because of American value in conformity that school is the way you describe. It's logistics. If there were 1:1 teacher:student ratios, of course things would be very different. After math, you go hiking with your teacher. As you're hiking you discuss life and world events. Very personalized and balanced growing plan for your child.

Haha no one realizes that conformity is valued. It's as if they never heard of "No Child Left Behind". Apparently, if you spend most of your days in a school building, you're as able to notice the norms of education as a fish is able to notice water.

So those "redshirt" kids made your child's 1st grade experience more like the 2nd grade.

In one sense, this seems like an unproductive arms race. But it could be a step in the right direction, towards placing children according to ability rather than age.

Or, we could change the starting age band for each year.

Perhaps July is simply a poor cutoff.

Shift starting age by 1-2 weeks a year and class size would change little, but you could quickly alter the age bands for each grade level.

Or perhaps we use 1/2 year bands. So, some students start in fall and graduate in spring like now and other start in January and graduate in December. Which also means someone could skip or fail 1/2 a year.

PS: The point being the current system is hardly the only way to approach mass education.

The article says Denmark:

"For the study, researchers used data from a nationwide mental-health screening tool of children in Denmark – a survey that is widely used internationally in clinical and academic settings – and matched it against the Danish census. Linking the two allowed researchers to make analyses using exact dates of birth, allowing for robust comparisons among similarly aged children.

Because children in Denmark enroll in kindergarten in the calendar year they turn six, kids born exactly on Dec. 31 would have started kindergarten earlier that year, while those born a day later on Jan. 1 would be 6-years-and-8-months old when they start formal schooling.

Researchers were thus able to examine differences between children who were born a certain number of days before the Dec. 31 enrollment cut-off and those born after the cut-off. They used full-sample sizes from the parent-reported mental health survey; 54,241 parents responded when their children were age 7 and 35,902 responded when the children were about 11 years old."

Denmark; note that there is an explicit identifications of conditions in Denmark that may contribute, and may not be found elsewhere (notably, in the U.S.) regarding universally available alternative for those who do not enroll in kindergarten at 5.

This seems mostly to provide a step toward better understanding of developmental-stage appropriate pedagogy methods, especially given that Denmark has universal pre-K so that the children not going to kindergarten are not starting school later, they are transition between styles of education at a different point.

I know. I interpreted this article as: 6 year old kindergartners are more mature than 5 year old kindergartners. Perhaps they are as mature as 6 year old first graders.

Delaying putting your kid into kindergarten is just giving them more time to ripen on the vine. Delaying also means that you will be supporting them for one more year before they graduate school and also takes one more year of earning potential away from their working years. Food for thought.