11 ms·

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

98 points by fluxic 11y ago

dang 11y ago
Url changed from http://qz.com/546832/stanford-researchers-show-were-sending-many-children-to-school-way-too-early/ http://qz.com/546832/stanford-researchers-show-were-sending-..., which points to this.
rtl49 11y ago
It's refreshing to read an article about a scientific study from a university press office that doesn't exaggerate or misinterpret its implications. Perhaps it's a luxury of prestigious schools. I suppose a reasonable hypothesis to draw from this is that a too structured environment in early childhood is destructive to mental health. But I wonder whether they're considering the possibility that being one of the older children in the class carries certain advantages that might affect the development of the child's personality. If my memory serves, Malcolm Gladwell explored this topic in the book "Outliers" when discussing differences in birth month frequency between successful Canadian hockey players and the general population, except it focused on differences in physical rather than social development between children in the same classes but different age groups. If something similar were taking place here, delaying kindergarten for the general population wouldn't solve much.
- lintiness 11y ago
  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.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    I don't know enough about Gladwell personally to make a qualified remark, but I don't see the relevance of his supposedly "statist" political views or opinions on the value of higher education. The "structure" I refer to is the traditional classroom setting: chalk board, desks, chairs, and sitting while listening to a lecture. The suggestion is that this format is less optimal for children at the age of 6, and that it might be best if they were closer to 7 before educating them in this environment. Perhaps you believe it's inappropriate for children of any age, but this really has nothing to do with this specific study or my comment. It's just an opinion on public education in general: if written at all, better as a reply to the post than my comment.
    - Gibbon1 11y ago
      Statist is a strong tell to stop wasting your timing reading drivel.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Attaching political labels to people in a comment is a very strong tell to disregard the entire comment. Telling "he's a statist! [therefore, stupid]" is not an informative argument, it's just lazy, ideological dismissal. Now what exactly is so bad about Gladwell being statist that it discredits his ideas?
        Gibbon1 11y ago
        The problem is the only people that use the word statist are self-styled followers of Any Rand[1]. And in that contexts it's always used as an ad hominem attack. So you got two strikes right there. [1]There are of course legions of armchair followers of Ayn Rand in the greater nerd community. But so what. None of those people have informed or coherent arguments about policy.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  I am actually way more sceptical about this study since the definition of self+regulation is such a slippery term IMO.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    Unfortunately, I can't access the publication at the moment. You can read the abstract here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 Whatever measurement they made that they're calling "hyperactivity," it seems to have a strong inverse association with academic achievement, so perhaps it warrants concern regardless of how well it relates to our concept of "self-regulation."
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Yeah academic achievement is not really a gold standard either for so many reasons too. I smell some political/ideological bias, but yes thats completely undocumented.
      - rtl49 11y ago
        I don't recall anyone claiming academic achievement is the ultimate evaluation of a person. However it tends to coincide with qualities that societies try to encourage in youth. Hence the interest in improving it.
        ThomPete 11y ago
        I didn't say anyone was claiming that. I simply reacted to what you wrote. "..it seems to have a strong inverse association with academic achievement.."
  - peteretep 11y ago
    From the paper: > a widely used and validated mental-health screening tool (i.e., > the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire or SDQ). The SDQ was > was explicitly designed for children and generates measures of > several distinct psychopathological constructs, some of which > are clearly related to the theorized effects of delayed school > starts. > we find that these effects are largely driven by a large > reduction (effect size = -0.70) in a single SDQ construct: the > SDQ’s inattention / hyperactivity score (i.e., a mea-sure of self > regulation).
- steven2012 11y ago
  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.
  - inthewoods 11y ago
    Indeed - it even has a term - "red shirting". I believe there is some movement in some states to limit the ability to do this. For my family, I have adopted a "play the child, not the age" approach. My oldest son was clearly ready for kindergarten at age 5, my middle son is not so we're delaying him for one year. One part of this not discussed is what cut off dates do to the process. My oldest son was born in December - while my middle son was born at the end of July. If we put him into kindergarten, he would have been one of the youngest kids. My daughter was born on September 1st, thus she will always be the oldest in the class.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    I find this fascinating. It's easy to see how this would have a cascading effect in a competitive environment. I wonder how they manage to do this without attracting attention from the authorities. I know Texas has a reputation for being a bit more individualistic, but I presume they have compulsory childhood education like the other states.
- duaneb 11y ago
  > 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.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    Take a look at arXiv.org and tell me out of all of them which papers seem to stand out. There's too little time in a day and in a life for anyone to become independently aware of all happenings of personal interest. We rely on other to curate what we see, and it happens that many parties vie for our attention. Hence the development of propaganda and news aggregators, like the one you're on now. I recommend reading Edward L. Bernay's work Propaganda for a more thorough understanding about the role of "PR" in society. It's a good foundation. I actually remember reading another rather good post by Paul Graham on the subject, which you might find interesting.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      I recommend reading Edward L. Bernay's [sic] work Propaganda for a more thorough understanding about the role of "PR" in society. That's certainly a great book, though for rather unsettling reasons.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        It seems to be public domain now, so links: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html - HTML version https://wikispooks.com/w/images/1/1f/Propaganda.pdf https://wikispooks.com/w/images/1/1f/Propaganda.pdf - PDF version The introduction quote by Noam Chomsky in the fist link is... chilling. Anyway, thanks HN for recommending a free book this time (my Amazon spendings start to feel like HN tax lately).
        rtl49 11y ago
        My pleasure. I find many of the works most worth reading are in the public domain.
noja 11y ago
In which country?
- viewer5 11y ago
  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."
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  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.
jessaustin 11y ago
Current Procrustean educational practice will seem quite barbaric from the perspective of history. Many are forced into school long before they're ready, but their presence means that many others are forced to repeat lessons over and over for years that could have been mastered in months. Where education is held hostage to ideals of conformity and equality, excellence is undervalued.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  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?
  - sageikosa 11y ago
    Especially if they don't conform to expectations...
- threatofrain 11y ago
  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.
  - smokeyj 11y ago
    It'd be interesting to experiment with a model where the roles of student and teacher are interchangeable. Some form of peer learning mesh network.
    - derefr 11y ago
      I would imagine you could learn a lot about peer education from the "one-room" schoolhouses in developing countries. By necessity, there aren't enough teachers to go around, and all the students of different levels are learning together. If students manage at all in such an environment, it's because they're learning from their peers. (Maybe not in an effective manner; there's no formal encouragement of the practice and nobody is given any collaboration tools—but there are probably still learning strategies that can be derived from what students do manage to accomplish.)
jobu 11y ago
Hard to say if this is true beyond Denmark: "Dee also said while there are strong, large effects in the study, kids who delay kindergarten in Denmark have universal access to reasonably good pre-K. In the absence of consistent access to good pre-K, Dee said, children in the U.S. may not be as harmed by starting kindergarten earlier."
- illza 11y ago
  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?
CIPHERSTONE 11y ago
We started our son when he was 6 as opposed to 5 and we have zero regrets. It seems like the emotional development between 5 and 6 year old boy is generally pretty huge. Grade-wise he mainly gets A's and a B here and there. Honors classes, etc. While I don't attribute the age he started completely to this, I do think it had a rather positive impact (currently in 8th). Conversely, I think I started kindergarten at either 4 or 5 and struggled/hated school my entire life. Even had to put up with Evil Nuns. #jake #elwood Food for thought.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- devindotcom 11y ago
  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.
  - oso2k 11y ago
    I'll second devindotcom's sentiment. This seems like a "frog no legs can't hear" [0] / "inconceivable" [1] explanation. I'm a Sagittarius/November baby and I entered Kindergarten in September at 4.5 years after 18 months or 2 years of pre-school. I remember my mother had to fight with the school (where she was a teacher's aide) to get them to take me "early". I had almost no behavioral issues all through school, was a career 3.75 GPA student, graduated 5th in my high school class (3.91 GPA) at a large East Los Angeles Public High School after taking a total of 4 AP classes while playing baseball for 3 years (lettering for 2) all the while volunteering as a youth sports coach in baseball, basketball, and flag football. I attended CSULA to study Computer Science (though I was accepted to my first school, FSU and my second school, UC Irvine) and I've since gone on to work for NASA/JPL and the Air Force. My brother, who is a Pisces/March baby entered school at 5.5 years, but was similarly accomplished (3.97 GPA in high school, Lettered 4 years in Baseball and 3 years in Football, attended UCLA). My parents always struggled a little bit financially, with my father seeing his last notable raise in the 90s while I was still in high school. To put it another way, "I do not think you measured what you think you measured." [0] http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-664362.html http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-664362.htm... [1] http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Princess_Bride_That_Word.jpg.jpg http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...
ddlatham 11y ago
So we figured out that younger kids have a harder time sitting still and paying attention?
- corysama 11y ago
  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,”
  - ddlatham 11y ago
    Ah, thanks. The current headline is misleading, perhaps it would have been better written something like: Study finds improved self-regulation in students who delayed kindergarten enrollment.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Can you rephrase this to say that the effect was basically by shifting all learning material one year up? I.e., now the kids are starting kindergarten at the point they'd be regularly starting grade 1, yes, but they're also now getting grade 5 material when they'd be getting grade 6 material and so on? If so, that suggests to me that we've inadvertently just scheduled everything too early, and kids are getting bored and confused and acting out because they can't understand (or can barely understand, and their brains are being taxed to their limits and the stress is depleting all their dopamine.)
    - seandougall 11y ago
      There is some of that. As a result, many states have increased the enrollment age, and now have transitional kindergarten, or TK, for kids (like my daughter) who would have enrolled in kindergarten at an earlier age a few years ago than they're now eligible for. Seems to me a properly controlled study would have to compare kids who started at an earlier age, then repeated kindergarten, versus their peers who waited a year to enroll. Despite not exactly being feasible, that would measure the effect of the structured environment at a young age without getting so apples-and-oranges.
gohrt 11y ago
Study finds that the older children in a classroom are more successful. Policy Proposal: make everyone the older children in the classroom. Hmm....
- Retric 11y ago
  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.
callmeed 11y ago
We are having our son repeat 1st grade this year–not because of his academic progress but because of the social/maturity aspects this article speaks of. There were "redshirt" kids in his class last year that were almost 1 year older than him (he has a July birthday). I think it was a good decision.
- theseatoms 11y ago
  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.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    No one seems to have mentioned the fact that in USA right now most "redshirted" children are boys whose parents value athletic "success". The theory is that those boys will be more likely to make the team when they're competing against younger, less developed boys. As a July birth who ceased being the shortest kid in his class in about ninth grade, I'd say "meh".
teekert 11y ago
As a non American: What is Kindergarten? Here (Netherlands) kids start school at around 4, the first 2 classes are playing only, reading/more-serious-school starts at 6. Everything before 4 is optional (unless you have a language problem). Is Kindergarten just for playing or do kids learn to read and do math?
- derefr 11y ago
  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.
  - cortesoft 11y ago
    Some states have public preschools.
    - cgriswald 11y ago
      And there are plenty of preschools that do not have religious affiliations. May vary by region.
      - seandougall 11y ago
        In my area, tons of preschools are attached physically to, but unaffiliated with, churches. Seems many churches built in the 20th century were built with classrooms and playgrounds that they now rent out.
kenjackson 11y ago
I'd be curious to see the data difference between male and female. In some other data I recall seeing boys seemed to react better to starting late than girls did. If girls do mature earlier than boys, then I almost wonder if we should have different cutoffs for boys and girls...
- illza 11y ago
  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.
rflrob 11y ago
I wonder about causation and correlation here. Presumably children whose parents can afford to pay for an extra year of childcare before sending them off to school can provide environments that also tend to produce self-regulation. One could also imagine that if waiting a year is somehow the non-standard choice, that having parents invested enough to take that option would give similar effects.
- austenallred 11y ago
  Not to mention the fact that one year is 1/5 of your life at that point.
- ryanklee 11y ago
  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 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 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610
db48x 11y ago
Older children a more mature? Shocking.
- olympus 11y ago
  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.
  - corysama 11y ago
    The article is not comparing 5 years olds to 6 year olds. It is comparing 11 years olds who started school at 5 vs 11 year olds who started school at 6.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      But a big problem is that it's comparing 11 year olds in an easier grade with 11 year olds in a harder grade, rather than two groups that started at different ages but still have the same age<->grade mapping.
barneygumble742 11y ago
This is very timely for me. Just this morning I was on the phone talking to the school district about how strict the cutoff date is. Most of US is set to Sep. 1 (9 months after the new year). My kids were born in mid-Sep. I read two lengthy papers on late start-age and better school/social performance. The article was discussing parents wanting their children to start early in order to enter the job market early by a year. This is nuts! It's such a trivial issue. I'm conflicted; I really don't want to pay $20k for another year of daycare but I also don't want my twins to be have issues in school. Speaking of, instead of diagnosing kids with ADHD, why not hold them back by a year. There could be additional benefits of holding kids back based on their development. I was always the youngest kid in class and I struggled through school and I always knew that I should be with the class behind me.
- pageld 11y ago
  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.
  - barneygumble742 11y ago
    To me the extra year in a job is trivial because I spent close to 9 years in school, working part-time to pay for college/grad school. And who knows what the future holds? However, I am hoping that by the time they're in high school, they will take dual-enrollment classes and finish college a year early; something I wasn't able to do. I have twins and I spoke to my wife last night about this...whatever happens, we both wish for them to be in the same grade. We would hate for our daughter to skip a grade because she's developed faster...which is also not fair to her.
jonsen 11y ago
There are things you learn in school. There are things you don't learn in school. Some of the things you don't learn in school are important. If school takes all a child's resources important things will not be learned. School has a head start capturing the children in the morning taking the best part of their day. One more year outside school could therefore be an enormous benefit. If there is a good learning environment outside school.
wyager 11y ago
I imagine that waiting a year to enroll can have a very high opportunity cost, especially for accelerated kids. I started kindergarten a year early and it was definitely the right choice for me. I would probably have died of boredom a bit later on if I'd followed the usual age-based grade prescription.
mucker 11y ago
Imagine the effects of never going to elementary school at all...
alasdair_ 11y ago
My stepdaughters both started when they were six. This became an enormous issue when they turned eighteen and we realised that one of them really needed to repeat their final year but couldn't because they were too old. Had she been entered at five years old, she would have been much more likely to graduate.
Smushman 11y ago
In other news, a new study proves that delaying enrollment in kindergarten to age 33 results in a tenfold increase in attention spans and learning potentiation.
sbov 11y ago
There was a study linked here before that showed that while older children of the same grade do better up to high school, younger children do better in college and life beyond. A theory being that the difficulties younger children face in schooling better prepare them for the real world. So what do you optimize for?
- Swizec 11y ago
  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.
analog31 11y ago
Let's not overlook the economic effect of delaying kindergarten by a year. But my main objection is simply that kindergarten has turned into an artificial environment where self regulation is the primary survival skill. Another approach is to take kids as they are, a year earlier, by adapting the kindergarten environment.
aptimpropriety 11y ago
I was young for my year after being pushed ahead a grade. I did fine academically, socially, etc. Two factors that make me want to start my future kids late: -Social maturity: it's way easier to handle social dynamics with a year extra of emotional maturity. Particularly important in high school and college -Physical maturity: older kids often perform very well in high school sports. I, for example, grew and gained ~15-20lbs after I graduated high school (playing sports). That would have made my HS sports career much different, and therefore college prospects as well I don't see any reason to starting kids early for upper/middle class folks, besides parent's bragging rights.
joedavison 11y ago
Waldorf education (Steiner school) has been saying this forever. Formal learning does not begin before age 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education#Pre-school_and_kindergarten:_to_age_6.2F7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education#Pre-school_a...
- jes5199 11y ago
  yeah but they also say that computers should be avoided because they are influenced by the demon Ahriman
  - illza 11y ago
    Well, their reasoning may be faulty, but I'm not entirely sure the result is wrong. In my opinion, computers should be avoided (in schools) when the teachers have no idea what they're doing or how they're doing it. There's so much technology in schools when a simple blackboard would get the job done and save more time. Most elementary teachers don't have the time or interest to learn enough technology to keep up with the changes from year to year. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for kids having access to computers. I'd just like for them to be able to get their questions answered or get real help when they run into a problem.
  - joedavison 11y ago
    Steiner's esoteric views are hardly a part of the day to day discussion at any Waldorf scool. Rather (from Wikipedia): "Waldorf kindergarten and lower grades generally discourage pupils' use of electronic media such as television and computers.[38] There are a variety of reasons for this: use of these is understood to conflict with young children's developmental needs,[50] media users tend to be physically inactive, and these media often contain inappropriate or undesirable content which may hamper rather than exercise the imagination."

98 points by fluxic 11y ago

dang 11y ago

Url changed from http://qz.com/546832/stanford-researchers-show-were-sending-many-children-to-school-way-too-early/ http://qz.com/546832/stanford-researchers-show-were-sending-..., which points to this.

rtl49 11y ago

It's refreshing to read an article about a scientific study from a university press office that doesn't exaggerate or misinterpret its implications. Perhaps it's a luxury of prestigious schools. I suppose a reasonable hypothesis to draw from this is that a too structured environment in early childhood is destructive to mental health. But I wonder whether they're considering the possibility that being one of the older children in the class carries certain advantages that might affect the development of the child's personality. If my memory serves, Malcolm Gladwell explored this topic in the book "Outliers" when discussing differences in birth month frequency between successful Canadian hockey players and the general population, except it focused on differences in physical rather than social development between children in the same classes but different age groups. If something similar were taking place here, delaying kindergarten for the general population wouldn't solve much.

lintiness 11y ago
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.
- rtl49 11y ago
  I don't know enough about Gladwell personally to make a qualified remark, but I don't see the relevance of his supposedly "statist" political views or opinions on the value of higher education. The "structure" I refer to is the traditional classroom setting: chalk board, desks, chairs, and sitting while listening to a lecture. The suggestion is that this format is less optimal for children at the age of 6, and that it might be best if they were closer to 7 before educating them in this environment. Perhaps you believe it's inappropriate for children of any age, but this really has nothing to do with this specific study or my comment. It's just an opinion on public education in general: if written at all, better as a reply to the post than my comment.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    Statist is a strong tell to stop wasting your timing reading drivel.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Attaching political labels to people in a comment is a very strong tell to disregard the entire comment. Telling "he's a statist! [therefore, stupid]" is not an informative argument, it's just lazy, ideological dismissal. Now what exactly is so bad about Gladwell being statist that it discredits his ideas?
      - Gibbon1 11y ago
        The problem is the only people that use the word statist are self-styled followers of Any Rand[1]. And in that contexts it's always used as an ad hominem attack. So you got two strikes right there. [1]There are of course legions of armchair followers of Ayn Rand in the greater nerd community. But so what. None of those people have informed or coherent arguments about policy.
ThomPete 11y ago
I am actually way more sceptical about this study since the definition of self+regulation is such a slippery term IMO.
- rtl49 11y ago
  Unfortunately, I can't access the publication at the moment. You can read the abstract here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610 Whatever measurement they made that they're calling "hyperactivity," it seems to have a strong inverse association with academic achievement, so perhaps it warrants concern regardless of how well it relates to our concept of "self-regulation."
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Yeah academic achievement is not really a gold standard either for so many reasons too. I smell some political/ideological bias, but yes thats completely undocumented.
    - rtl49 11y ago
      I don't recall anyone claiming academic achievement is the ultimate evaluation of a person. However it tends to coincide with qualities that societies try to encourage in youth. Hence the interest in improving it.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        I didn't say anyone was claiming that. I simply reacted to what you wrote. "..it seems to have a strong inverse association with academic achievement.."
- peteretep 11y ago
  From the paper: > a widely used and validated mental-health screening tool (i.e., > the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire or SDQ). The SDQ was > was explicitly designed for children and generates measures of > several distinct psychopathological constructs, some of which > are clearly related to the theorized effects of delayed school > starts. > we find that these effects are largely driven by a large > reduction (effect size = -0.70) in a single SDQ construct: the > SDQ’s inattention / hyperactivity score (i.e., a mea-sure of self > regulation).
steven2012 11y ago
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.
- inthewoods 11y ago
  Indeed - it even has a term - "red shirting". I believe there is some movement in some states to limit the ability to do this. For my family, I have adopted a "play the child, not the age" approach. My oldest son was clearly ready for kindergarten at age 5, my middle son is not so we're delaying him for one year. One part of this not discussed is what cut off dates do to the process. My oldest son was born in December - while my middle son was born at the end of July. If we put him into kindergarten, he would have been one of the youngest kids. My daughter was born on September 1st, thus she will always be the oldest in the class.
- rtl49 11y ago
  I find this fascinating. It's easy to see how this would have a cascading effect in a competitive environment. I wonder how they manage to do this without attracting attention from the authorities. I know Texas has a reputation for being a bit more individualistic, but I presume they have compulsory childhood education like the other states.
duaneb 11y ago
> 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.
- rtl49 11y ago
  Take a look at arXiv.org and tell me out of all of them which papers seem to stand out. There's too little time in a day and in a life for anyone to become independently aware of all happenings of personal interest. We rely on other to curate what we see, and it happens that many parties vie for our attention. Hence the development of propaganda and news aggregators, like the one you're on now. I recommend reading Edward L. Bernay's work Propaganda for a more thorough understanding about the role of "PR" in society. It's a good foundation. I actually remember reading another rather good post by Paul Graham on the subject, which you might find interesting.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    I recommend reading Edward L. Bernay's [sic] work Propaganda for a more thorough understanding about the role of "PR" in society. That's certainly a great book, though for rather unsettling reasons.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It seems to be public domain now, so links: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html - HTML version https://wikispooks.com/w/images/1/1f/Propaganda.pdf https://wikispooks.com/w/images/1/1f/Propaganda.pdf - PDF version The introduction quote by Noam Chomsky in the fist link is... chilling. Anyway, thanks HN for recommending a free book this time (my Amazon spendings start to feel like HN tax lately).
      - rtl49 11y ago
        My pleasure. I find many of the works most worth reading are in the public domain.

noja 11y ago

In which country?

viewer5 11y ago
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."
deleted 11y ago
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dragonwriter 11y ago
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.

jessaustin 11y ago

Current Procrustean educational practice will seem quite barbaric from the perspective of history. Many are forced into school long before they're ready, but their presence means that many others are forced to repeat lessons over and over for years that could have been mastered in months. Where education is held hostage to ideals of conformity and equality, excellence is undervalued.

sliverstorm 11y ago
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?
- sageikosa 11y ago
  Especially if they don't conform to expectations...
threatofrain 11y ago
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.
- smokeyj 11y ago
  It'd be interesting to experiment with a model where the roles of student and teacher are interchangeable. Some form of peer learning mesh network.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I would imagine you could learn a lot about peer education from the "one-room" schoolhouses in developing countries. By necessity, there aren't enough teachers to go around, and all the students of different levels are learning together. If students manage at all in such an environment, it's because they're learning from their peers. (Maybe not in an effective manner; there's no formal encouragement of the practice and nobody is given any collaboration tools—but there are probably still learning strategies that can be derived from what students do manage to accomplish.)

jobu 11y ago

Hard to say if this is true beyond Denmark: "Dee also said while there are strong, large effects in the study, kids who delay kindergarten in Denmark have universal access to reasonably good pre-K. In the absence of consistent access to good pre-K, Dee said, children in the U.S. may not be as harmed by starting kindergarten earlier."

illza 11y ago
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?

CIPHERSTONE 11y ago

We started our son when he was 6 as opposed to 5 and we have zero regrets. It seems like the emotional development between 5 and 6 year old boy is generally pretty huge. Grade-wise he mainly gets A's and a B here and there. Honors classes, etc. While I don't attribute the age he started completely to this, I do think it had a rather positive impact (currently in 8th). Conversely, I think I started kindergarten at either 4 or 5 and struggled/hated school my entire life. Even had to put up with Evil Nuns. #jake #elwood Food for thought.

deleted 11y ago
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devindotcom 11y ago
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.
- oso2k 11y ago
  I'll second devindotcom's sentiment. This seems like a "frog no legs can't hear" [0] / "inconceivable" [1] explanation. I'm a Sagittarius/November baby and I entered Kindergarten in September at 4.5 years after 18 months or 2 years of pre-school. I remember my mother had to fight with the school (where she was a teacher's aide) to get them to take me "early". I had almost no behavioral issues all through school, was a career 3.75 GPA student, graduated 5th in my high school class (3.91 GPA) at a large East Los Angeles Public High School after taking a total of 4 AP classes while playing baseball for 3 years (lettering for 2) all the while volunteering as a youth sports coach in baseball, basketball, and flag football. I attended CSULA to study Computer Science (though I was accepted to my first school, FSU and my second school, UC Irvine) and I've since gone on to work for NASA/JPL and the Air Force. My brother, who is a Pisces/March baby entered school at 5.5 years, but was similarly accomplished (3.97 GPA in high school, Lettered 4 years in Baseball and 3 years in Football, attended UCLA). My parents always struggled a little bit financially, with my father seeing his last notable raise in the 90s while I was still in high school. To put it another way, "I do not think you measured what you think you measured." [0] http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-664362.html http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-664362.htm... [1] http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Princess_Bride_That_Word.jpg.jpg http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...

ddlatham 11y ago

So we figured out that younger kids have a harder time sitting still and paying attention?

corysama 11y ago
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,”
- ddlatham 11y ago
  Ah, thanks. The current headline is misleading, perhaps it would have been better written something like: Study finds improved self-regulation in students who delayed kindergarten enrollment.
- derefr 11y ago
  Can you rephrase this to say that the effect was basically by shifting all learning material one year up? I.e., now the kids are starting kindergarten at the point they'd be regularly starting grade 1, yes, but they're also now getting grade 5 material when they'd be getting grade 6 material and so on? If so, that suggests to me that we've inadvertently just scheduled everything too early, and kids are getting bored and confused and acting out because they can't understand (or can barely understand, and their brains are being taxed to their limits and the stress is depleting all their dopamine.)
  - seandougall 11y ago
    There is some of that. As a result, many states have increased the enrollment age, and now have transitional kindergarten, or TK, for kids (like my daughter) who would have enrolled in kindergarten at an earlier age a few years ago than they're now eligible for. Seems to me a properly controlled study would have to compare kids who started at an earlier age, then repeated kindergarten, versus their peers who waited a year to enroll. Despite not exactly being feasible, that would measure the effect of the structured environment at a young age without getting so apples-and-oranges.

gohrt 11y ago

Study finds that the older children in a classroom are more successful. Policy Proposal: make everyone the older children in the classroom. Hmm....

Retric 11y ago
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.

callmeed 11y ago

We are having our son repeat 1st grade this year–not because of his academic progress but because of the social/maturity aspects this article speaks of. There were "redshirt" kids in his class last year that were almost 1 year older than him (he has a July birthday). I think it was a good decision.

theseatoms 11y ago
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.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  No one seems to have mentioned the fact that in USA right now most "redshirted" children are boys whose parents value athletic "success". The theory is that those boys will be more likely to make the team when they're competing against younger, less developed boys. As a July birth who ceased being the shortest kid in his class in about ninth grade, I'd say "meh".

teekert 11y ago

As a non American: What is Kindergarten? Here (Netherlands) kids start school at around 4, the first 2 classes are playing only, reading/more-serious-school starts at 6. Everything before 4 is optional (unless you have a language problem). Is Kindergarten just for playing or do kids learn to read and do math?

derefr 11y ago
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.
- cortesoft 11y ago
  Some states have public preschools.
  - cgriswald 11y ago
    And there are plenty of preschools that do not have religious affiliations. May vary by region.
    - seandougall 11y ago
      In my area, tons of preschools are attached physically to, but unaffiliated with, churches. Seems many churches built in the 20th century were built with classrooms and playgrounds that they now rent out.

kenjackson 11y ago

I'd be curious to see the data difference between male and female. In some other data I recall seeing boys seemed to react better to starting late than girls did. If girls do mature earlier than boys, then I almost wonder if we should have different cutoffs for boys and girls...

illza 11y ago
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.

rflrob 11y ago

I wonder about causation and correlation here. Presumably children whose parents can afford to pay for an extra year of childcare before sending them off to school can provide environments that also tend to produce self-regulation. One could also imagine that if waiting a year is somehow the non-standard choice, that having parents invested enough to take that option would give similar effects.

austenallred 11y ago
Not to mention the fact that one year is 1/5 of your life at that point.
ryanklee 11y ago
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 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 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21610

db48x 11y ago

Older children a more mature? Shocking.

olympus 11y ago
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.
- corysama 11y ago
  The article is not comparing 5 years olds to 6 year olds. It is comparing 11 years olds who started school at 5 vs 11 year olds who started school at 6.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    But a big problem is that it's comparing 11 year olds in an easier grade with 11 year olds in a harder grade, rather than two groups that started at different ages but still have the same age<->grade mapping.

barneygumble742 11y ago

This is very timely for me. Just this morning I was on the phone talking to the school district about how strict the cutoff date is. Most of US is set to Sep. 1 (9 months after the new year). My kids were born in mid-Sep. I read two lengthy papers on late start-age and better school/social performance. The article was discussing parents wanting their children to start early in order to enter the job market early by a year. This is nuts! It's such a trivial issue. I'm conflicted; I really don't want to pay $20k for another year of daycare but I also don't want my twins to be have issues in school. Speaking of, instead of diagnosing kids with ADHD, why not hold them back by a year. There could be additional benefits of holding kids back based on their development. I was always the youngest kid in class and I struggled through school and I always knew that I should be with the class behind me.

pageld 11y ago
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.
- barneygumble742 11y ago
  To me the extra year in a job is trivial because I spent close to 9 years in school, working part-time to pay for college/grad school. And who knows what the future holds? However, I am hoping that by the time they're in high school, they will take dual-enrollment classes and finish college a year early; something I wasn't able to do. I have twins and I spoke to my wife last night about this...whatever happens, we both wish for them to be in the same grade. We would hate for our daughter to skip a grade because she's developed faster...which is also not fair to her.

jonsen 11y ago

There are things you learn in school. There are things you don't learn in school. Some of the things you don't learn in school are important. If school takes all a child's resources important things will not be learned. School has a head start capturing the children in the morning taking the best part of their day. One more year outside school could therefore be an enormous benefit. If there is a good learning environment outside school.

wyager 11y ago

I imagine that waiting a year to enroll can have a very high opportunity cost, especially for accelerated kids. I started kindergarten a year early and it was definitely the right choice for me. I would probably have died of boredom a bit later on if I'd followed the usual age-based grade prescription.

mucker 11y ago

Imagine the effects of never going to elementary school at all...

alasdair_ 11y ago

My stepdaughters both started when they were six. This became an enormous issue when they turned eighteen and we realised that one of them really needed to repeat their final year but couldn't because they were too old. Had she been entered at five years old, she would have been much more likely to graduate.

Smushman 11y ago

In other news, a new study proves that delaying enrollment in kindergarten to age 33 results in a tenfold increase in attention spans and learning potentiation.

sbov 11y ago

There was a study linked here before that showed that while older children of the same grade do better up to high school, younger children do better in college and life beyond. A theory being that the difficulties younger children face in schooling better prepare them for the real world. So what do you optimize for?

Swizec 11y ago
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.

analog31 11y ago

Let's not overlook the economic effect of delaying kindergarten by a year. But my main objection is simply that kindergarten has turned into an artificial environment where self regulation is the primary survival skill. Another approach is to take kids as they are, a year earlier, by adapting the kindergarten environment.

aptimpropriety 11y ago

I was young for my year after being pushed ahead a grade. I did fine academically, socially, etc. Two factors that make me want to start my future kids late: -Social maturity: it's way easier to handle social dynamics with a year extra of emotional maturity. Particularly important in high school and college -Physical maturity: older kids often perform very well in high school sports. I, for example, grew and gained ~15-20lbs after I graduated high school (playing sports). That would have made my HS sports career much different, and therefore college prospects as well I don't see any reason to starting kids early for upper/middle class folks, besides parent's bragging rights.

joedavison 11y ago

Waldorf education (Steiner school) has been saying this forever. Formal learning does not begin before age 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education#Pre-school_and_kindergarten:_to_age_6.2F7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education#Pre-school_a...

jes5199 11y ago
yeah but they also say that computers should be avoided because they are influenced by the demon Ahriman
- illza 11y ago
  Well, their reasoning may be faulty, but I'm not entirely sure the result is wrong. In my opinion, computers should be avoided (in schools) when the teachers have no idea what they're doing or how they're doing it. There's so much technology in schools when a simple blackboard would get the job done and save more time. Most elementary teachers don't have the time or interest to learn enough technology to keep up with the changes from year to year. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for kids having access to computers. I'd just like for them to be able to get their questions answered or get real help when they run into a problem.
- joedavison 11y ago
  Steiner's esoteric views are hardly a part of the day to day discussion at any Waldorf scool. Rather (from Wikipedia): "Waldorf kindergarten and lower grades generally discourage pupils' use of electronic media such as television and computers.[38] There are a variety of reasons for this: use of these is understood to conflict with young children's developmental needs,[50] media users tend to be physically inactive, and these media often contain inappropriate or undesirable content which may hamper rather than exercise the imagination."