Study: Kids whose parents hold them back from school a year have advantages
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From an academic standpoint, both children were able to excel. There was no question they were smart enough to start school.
But one child was shy, and not socially adept. And I think we made a mistake with that one. That child is the smarter of the two, but is not doing so great as an adult.
The other was both socially and intellectually gifted as a preschool child. That child is still in high school, and is thriving both academically and socially, and has very specific, ambitious goals for college and career.
Gender indicators in this post have been left out deliberately. I realize they could be germane to the discussion, but I left them out for the sake of privacy.
That being said, there are a variety of other character traits that play a role in how different people reach success, thus part of the issue is simply the interpretation of "success" itself, because quite often we look to very specific examples of successful people (e.g. Steve Jobs) or paths, that don't suit our personality taits nor strengths at all, and set us up with unrealistic expectations for ourselves.
Success comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes, so there should be no reason to let certain traits limit us on the hunt for success, when the game is largely about filtering out the noise and focusing on paths and pursuits that actually play to our strengths, instead of ones that make us perpetually anxious and stressed out.
I hear a saying a while back and I'm murdering it but "Introverts recharge by themselves and extroverts recharge with other people" and that is me, in small stints I can be gregarious and outgoing but within a short period I just want to be on my own again, I find it tiring.
If holding your children back for one year is good, how about twelve?
Otherwise, yes, there is incredible untapped human potential wasted in today's schools, unfortunately.
Setting up an environment that allows children to learn is ridiculously easy. Food, shelter, freedom to explore and experiment, other children and adults to interact with and discover things, more detailed resources if they end up needing math or something to solve a problem, and so forth. Primary schooling costs something like $200k total per student, and this expense could buy a lot of child-focused structure.
Critically, there's an big economies of scale advantage in schools relative to homeschooling. Resource specialization has advantages. Just spitballing, I'd imagine the curve would show it's at least 2-3x cheaper to provide an equivalent education to a student at a mid-sized school relative to a student in a 5-student homeschool environment, and probably 5x+ for single student - obviously depends on the parent's earning capacity and skill as a teacher. The argument for homeschooling is almost never about cost though, due in part to this enormous disadvantage.
Usually not. School funding is not allocated at the "neighborhood" level but instead the county level. There is almost no difference between per student funding between the richest and poorest counties: http://hechingerreport.org/the-gap-between-rich-and-poor-sch... ("I keep specifying 'state' and 'local' funding because the picture gets more complicated when you factor in federal funding. Once you do, almost all of the funding gaps disappear.").
You can argue that poorer students should get more funding than richer ones to help equalize other gaps. I'm not sure I agree with that. Most of that money would go to middle class teachers and administrators. I bet those kids would be better off if you just wrote them a check (or put the money in a trust fund that would then pay them an extra couple of hundred dollars every month for the rest of their lives).
There are also differences at the neighborhood level. We see that in California quite a bit.
> A yawning gulf separates even school districts serving students from similar demographic backgrounds. For example, in 2009-10, the latest data available, per-pupil revenue was $14,076 in Palo Alto versus $7,679 in Milpitas, both unified districts serving K-12 students. But clearly, affluence counts: In San Mateo County, the Woodside elementary district took in $18,894 per student, while Millbrae elementary got $7,362 per student. [1]
The latter example is a 2.5x difference in funding, within the same county. This is in part due to some local support in Woodside [2] but its more than just that. The gaps are huge.
I disagree about not equalizing gaps, because there's one scarce resource here that isn't even discussed: quality teachers. By default, quality teachers are more likely to want to work in nicer communities, and we don't need to compound that by offering to pay them less (sometimes far less) to work in underprivileged schools.
Meanwhile, giving undereducated kids money instead of education is a great way to fulfill the old adage 'a fool and their money are soon parted'.
[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/2012/02/26/some-california-school...
[2] http://www.almanacnews.com/news/2015/12/01/woodside-elementa...
Similar where I live now in Maryland: https://conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2016/04/26/chart-shows-.... Baltimore City, among the poorest, spends the second most. Surrounding Baltimore County, which is much wealthier, spends substantially less. Montgomery County, the richest in the state and a suburb of D.C., spends about the same as Prince Georges County, a much lower income county next door.
I have close family members who have been home-schooled and they are very well rounded adults.
My daughter (16) is outside the home for: piano, spanish, voice lessons, horse riding, and acting. She currently helps TA kids at a local community theater. This is not to mention the time she spends with her friends.
My son (14) is outside the home for: piano, spanish, soccer. And also to play with his friends.
They also both regularly take extra curricular classes. Just one example: http://ccee.unc.edu/youth-new/classes/bolin-creek/
I went to public school. My kids are much more socialable than I was at their age. The social environment at public school is nothing like the real world and I'm glad to have my kids skip it.
I guess my pint is that our anecdotes cancel each other out but I'm curious to know why you think homeschooling is benefitting your kids. Why do you think you are qualified to teach them the variety of subjects one learns in high school. Why do do you think they are more successful being homeschooled?
It wasn't an exhaustive list of their days.
> How do you know they are socially adept or sociable?
You'll have to take my word for it.
> Why do you think you are qualified to teach them the variety of subjects one learns in high school
We're both college educated. My wife has a masters degree. We use outside/online resources to fill in subjects outside our expertise or that we don't have time to learn ourselves first. My daughter is taking a college level chemistry class. Next year (11th grade) she'll be taking classes at community college. We have both kids take standardized tests each year to measure their progress against their peers.
But honestly, I don't know what your HS teachers were like, but I think I had maybe two competent teachers in my HS. It's not a high bar to beat, no that we'd stoop so low.
I'm assuming you've never taught high school. I haven't either. I do have a lot of experience teaching in higher ed though. I was recently paired with a high school teacher and visited his classroom. I doubt I could teach high school. It's easy to denigrate them but apparently they didn't do too bad with you.
Personally I think think it's absurd for soneone to think that they can teach without any training. There are outliers and seemingly you are one of them. Though you'll never know if you were a benefit or hindrance to your childrens' education. They are clearly successful so it's bit important whether or not it is because of your teaching or in spite of it. One thing is certain though. Your experience is not normative. What you've done has been successful but is it replicable for anything beyond a small percent of families? I'm skeptical.
You keep asking this. It's an absurd question. I'm their parent. I see them every day. I watch them interact with other kids. I see my son stand up for the next door neighbor younger brother against his older brother. I see my daughter keep the peace at a sleep over party with a dozen friends and wildly different personalities. Besides that, you imply that public school confers sociability to children, an assertion with which I disagree. I'll go further: my kids have friends who are both "schoolers" and homeschoolers, and as a rule, it's the home school kids who are more polite, more sociable, more well adjusted.
> but apparently they didn't do too bad with you
I have done okay in spite of high school, not because of it. They were the worst years of my life.
> Personally I think think it's absurd for soneone to think that they can teach without any training.
My cousin is a special ed teacher, and an excellent one at that. She teaches in D.C. I couldn't do what she does, and I haven't claimed that anyone could.
Home schooling is a different situation. It requires dedication on the part of the parent (like doing anything well of course), but it's not that hard. There is a wide variety in how parents approach home schooling, from unschooling at one end, to very disciplined like a traditional school taught at home at the other end. We're somewhere in the middle. Our kids have a lesson plan each year. They have a daily check list of items. We leave it up to them to manage their day. Here's today's:
I'm writing from experience, not just about my own kids, but having family who are teachers and having been involved in the home school community as well as reflecting about my own experience in public school and that of my siblings. I never claimed home school was for everybody, but I think you over estimate its difficulty and give way too much credit to public schooling. I think you underestimate how much time is wasted in public school, and completely discount things like bullying and cliques. My K-12 school years were an awful social environment filled with horrible kids and mostly disinterested teachers, and were nothing like the real world.
> They are clearly successful so it's bit important whether or not it is because of your teaching or in spite of it.
This is condescending to the point that I feel like you're trolling. I have nothing else to say.
Not saying it never makes sense, but I will do a LOT to avoid that being the best option for my kids.
Both kids went to Montessori and my daughter started first grade public school, where she went from loving school to starting to lose her joy of learning. My wife decided she could do a better job, and she has.
I can't speak to anyone else's experience, but for our family it was the right decision, and I'd place my kids' education and socialization against anyone's.
But I can tutor my one child, better than a trained teacher can teach them in a class of 30. That's the real comparison. In a 5-hour elementary school day, if the teacher did nothing but tutor students serially they'd each get 10 minutes. I can beat that in the first half-hour of a home-schooled day.
Its no wonder that home-schooled kids often outstrip their public-school mates. My buddy's 14-year-old was ready for college (admitted to State college) because of this. It wasn't just that he was very smart and motivated. Its about the attention and monitoring that can be accomplished.
A century ago there was another name for home-schooling: it was called 'schooling'. Until public education got invented, it was pretty much the only way.
We've been lucky. We don't need two incomes. My wife as it turns out is a good teacher and she enjoys it. Our kids are good students and enjoy home schooling. We live in a community with tons of educational resources available outside the home.
From the public school establishment, mostly. I'm sure you can find worst case examples of kids who've spent the last five years in the family living room, but I've never met home-schooled children who weren't better socialized than their public school counterparts. The big drawback of traditional schooling is the children are all the same age, which prevents them from modeling their behavior on more mature children.
My next line is,
> I know, hard to tell, right? Ever since I stopped tucking my jeans into my socks, no one guesses that I was home schooled!"
My point is this: I believe you are experiencing a selection bias. When someone that you meet is very poorly socialized, you might dig a little to try to understand why. If this person was homeschooled, you add a tally to the "homeschooled && poorly socialized" count.
Repeat enough times, and you might have many, many marks in that box.
The problem is, when you meet a well-socialized person, you are less likely to _also_ dig and find out if that person was home schooled or not.
It may also surprise you to learn that in many home schooling communities, especially today, there is heavy emphasis on "socializing", and the kids can often learn things that public schoolers cannot.
As an example, I was able to begin working when I turned 16. I didn't work tons, but I was available to work in hours other kids were not, so I was always working around adults. I quickly refined how to interact with adults and learn from them.
Public schools segregate kids by age, so the only adults they interact with are teachers/administrators, not adults in more "peer" relationships.
My hypothesis is that with home schooling, assuming that the kids aren't cloistered in the home, the result is simply that they have more exposure to seeing adults interacting with each other as adults, and therefore are more accustomed to that form of interacting.
When I was young the home schooled kids did seem a bit off, but by the time I got to college the trend seemed to that they were consistently more mature and "ready" for the adult world than average.
That said, I would not tell people to home school unless they were prepared for it. Kids can still have positive experiences at public school; it just depends on the kid.
EDIT: for clarity
If "doing the best we can" is too low of a standard for research, then it's all garbage. Yes, there are many problems with some of the research out there, but you deal with it, not ignore it all. The purpose is to reduce uncertainty, not "get the right answer".
Edit: Not to mention that if you want to publish "tradition", don't call it "science".
Academically I did so-so. Less of a problem with ability than boredom. I got into a good college solely on my standardized test scores. In college I had a B average.
One advantage that I remember from being a year older than my classmates was that I was considerably larger. I was large for my age, and a year older to boot. Despite being bookish and a nerd, before that was considered a good thing, no one would mess with me. Plus I went to kindergarten with, and was friends with kids that were up to two years older.
A lot of that faded away as we all got older and the differences evened out. But the main advantage, in retrospect is that I always considered my self an outlier. I didn't need peer support to be interested in things and didn't really care much about what everyone around me was doing. I expected to do the unexpected. I got into computers and computer graphics in the late '70s when no one had even heard of such a thing. I was playing with the internet long before it became a thing, or was even very useful. I started my own business a year out of school was doing entrepreneur type things until I hit forty.
(A downside is that I would often get bored with something _before_ it became a thing, and would have moved on to the new shiny before something got viable.)
These days I'm involved in education, university level and adult education, and it's interesting to see the mix in student's ages at the other end of the education cycle. Older students, especially those that have been out of school for a while, are much more motivated and serious about their subjects. I suspect there is quite a bit of selection bias here, as those not serious aren't likely to try and get more education. But I also see some younger students who are delighted to suddenly be in a place where they can take their education seriously and stretch their abilities.
Maturity and age are correlated but not causal. I could easily believe that success in school is strongly correlated with maturity (I have observed that students that are less mature than their peers are disciplined more often and teased by their peers, both have a strong correlation with poor scholastic achievement) and that children whose maturity is lagging their peers, will do better if they are only started in school when their maturity supports it, however I have also observed that children seem to be maturing at later and later ages.
Given the preponderance of evidence of children in the 19th and 20th century demonstrating much higher levels of responsibility and maturity at a younger age[1] it seems that there is more at work here than just 'age.'
Finally, in the study[2] doesn't break it down across socio-economic groups rather, from their abstract : " We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design based on exact dates of birth and the fact that, in Denmark, children typically enroll in school during the calendar year in which they turn six. We find that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention/hyperactivity at age 7 (effect size = -0.7), a measure of self regulation with strong negative links to student achievement"
I'm going to guess that the physical number of years a person has at the start of their school career is not as big an impact on whether or not they have self control issues as the parenting impact on the first 5 - 6 years of their life.
[1] It is also possible that immature children in the 19th and early 20th century simply died early.
I seem to recall that most studies show the advantage of this practice fades over the years. As the article suggests, class is heavily correlated here with the practice (more likely to be able to afford another year of childcare).
[0]: http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Ace_RimmerWe did an experiment and sent our youngest to school when she was 5 years old. She was home schooled using some apps and books - in her own time and depending on her mood. Now, her teacher says she's one of the brightest in the class, a quick learner filled with creativity.
I think it's important for kids to learn the fundamentals in school correctly. If delaying my kid a year helps them feel and be more mature and adept to handle school, I'm for it, and maybe I'll also give them that gap year or two after high school to see the world and explore it a bit before they get ready to tackle the books in college.
I think another dimension of this whole thing does boil down to the natural nature and tendencies of the child. Would also recommend everyone to watch "The Beginning of Life" on Netflix if you haven't already, a very eye-opening perspective on kids, education, and how living situations differ for kids around the world, very eye-opening.
Based on news stories and personal observation in various datasets, there is a lot more sex going on in the holiday season and dead of winter, as births spike July-September. Late night activity starts slowing down in February. I've always been curious if kids born in these peaks get less attention, are more likely to be unplanned, less likely to breastfeed, are more miserable in the heat, etc.
Birthdate heatmap: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2145471/How-common...
She would have been better off with another year of her daycare centre.
I'm not a fan of it, but for lower income families it may actually be a god-send.
The length is still short though, as is normal kindergarten, so they're only at school for about 5 hours.
However I don't remember the extra kindergarden year and how nice it probably was compared to school. I'd guess this was more important, but I'm not sure. After all it's 1 year (an important year though, becuase childhood is so very important), against 13 years that might have been better.
Finishing school a year earlier I don't see as a benefit. It took me extra year after school to really know what to do further anyways.
Majority of NHL players have late birthdays. It means kids that are just slightly older than teammates by just a few months have advantage over early birthday team mates. This advantage helps them advance over younger ones (just by a few months) through their young hockey career and eventually to NHL career.
Correlation is not causation.
The argument for the compounding effects of physical advantage relative to peers is a lot stronger than the supposition that parents would happen to have children on certain months.
Otherwise, you can just walk trough data sets until you find one that meets your conclusion.
What happens in the "end"?
Why wouldn't you want to get to the stage where you have freedom to make your own decisions, to control how you spend your time, to earn and spend your own income, as quickly as possible?
How has any of this made you better off? You make it sound as if "taking two years off" in your late teens/early twenties is a major issue.
Personally, I wish I would have seen more of the world after high school and before college.
Am I the only one reminded of fizz-buzz by this sentence?
When I finally got to school, I was bored out of my mind though. I taught myself how to read, and my classmates were still sounding out words at a painfully slow pace. I could solve addition problems mentally, and my classmates were counting with their fingers. I finished the worksheets right away (within 30 seconds), and my classmates couldn't tell basic shapes apart in the fifteen minutes of time they had to do the worksheet.
My IQ was tested at above the 0.1% percentile, and the school refused to identify me as academically gifted so that they wouldn't have to spend the money (as obligated by the state for "gifted students") on enriching me, so the administration "trained" the teachers to say that I was bright but not gifted. It eventually came down to my parents having to threaten them with a (no contest) lawsuit because there was such a disparity in the results of the IQ test that my school gave me and the IQ test that a local, nationally renowned psychologist gave me.
Of course, I had to sit around and wait for my classmates to "catch up," and the teachers wouldn't even let me read other books or get ahead. Some of the stories we read had Spanish translations, so I learned the Spanish. I'd literally just tap my foot and watch the clock go from 8 AM to 3 PM every day. Terrible. They wouldn't even give me more books to read (how hard is it to just toss six year-old me a book and let me go "off task"?).
Schools excel at pulling the highs down to average and fail at pulling the lows up to average. I've seen so many examples of this by now I'm happily surprised every time there is a contrary one.
It seems odd that we still let nature dictate the schedule to this degree, and that so little thought seems to go into why.
Our whole sense of time is so steeped in accident and tradition that hardly anybody ever stops to ask questions such as 'why is it that we get paid per week or per month' and 'why is it that the earth revolving around the sun once' makes X, Y or Z happen which is not related at all?
The degree to which accidental items shape our economies and perceptions is odd, to say the least.
(See Kramer in Dojo as the obligatory Seinfeld reference)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/wh...
I met someone who was the youngest in his grade and he wished he was held back.
I think it definitely depends on the individual.