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Abstract
Economists have identified a substantial adult wage premium attached to high school leadership activity. Unresolved is the extent to which it constitutes human capital acquisition or proxies for an ‘‘innate’’ unobserved skill. We document a determinant of high school leadership activity that is associated purely with school structure, rather than genetics or family background – a student’s relative age. State-specific school entry cut-offs induce systematic within grade variation in student maturity, which in turn generates differences in leadership activity. We find that the relatively oldest students are 4–11 percent more likely to be high school leaders.
What makes a leader? Relative age and high school leadership (pdf file)
Elizabeth Dhueya, , Stephen Lipscombb
Economics of Education Review 27 (2008) 173–183
I've seen this over and over and over and over ........ again.
relative age effect
high school leadership, wages, and relative age
redshirting kids
redshirting & tournament settings
8 comments:
When I read stuff like this I think, oh great, another reason for parents to keep their kids out of kindergarten until they are six or even seven. I have a difficult time getting on board with holding children back before you even give them a chance.
I guess that this supposed 4-11% edge older students had when I was in high school didn't significantly impact me. I was one of the youngest in my class. There was only one other student in my graduating class younger than I was and she is a resounding financial success now that she an adult.
Despite my age, I still ended up on student council, as senior class president, and the leader of a number of other clubs and programs at school. I also had a part-time job.
Maturity, I think, may not always be instrinsically tied to chronological age. Parenting environment, expectations, and parameters were a much stronger influence in my case, at least.
As further cause for my sceptism, my eldest daughter has always been the youngest in her grade. It hasn't seemed to affect her drive to be the leader thus far. I'll have to check back when she's in high school, I guess.
Here we go again is right. It's exactly stuff like this report that put me in a position to challenge the pre-kindergarten placement decision at her first school. As soon as they saw her age, they determined she wasn't ready. Once they actually spent time with her in class, they were forced to admit that they were wrong. She was leaps ahead of most if not all of her older classmates not just in her ability but socially as well.
The conclusion of this report is the takeaway message that administrator's will craftily use to dismiss a parent's wishes. Other parents will quote it as justification as to why Johnny is turning seven in kindergarten.
It only takes is something like this:
Based on the current state of the research, we believe the most appropriate policy recommendation is to better inform parents of the effects associated with being relatively young.
I shouldn't have read that report. I keep thinking what a bunch of hooey it is. How many of those older students are boys? My guess would be that the majority are. What qualities motivated parents and administrators to hold these older students back in the first place? Could it be that these very qualities turn out, in the end, to be conducive to leadership? (I'm thinking of a rambunctious, active, squirmy kid who will be a handful for the teacher.) I'm sure that there a leadership qualities that are developed over time, but so much has to do with personality and certain charisma that's difficult to pin down.
OK, I guess I won't send you the hard copy!
(I'm joking -- I'll send if you're interested. Haven't read it myself.)
We've experienced this effect to the max. The older boys are completely dominant, and it's demoralizing for the young ones. (C., btw, is in the young category.)
I'll ask him today whether there are any exceptions to the rule. So far I can't think of any.
Since the girls are all much more mature than the boys anyway, the young boys in the class are way down on the bottom of the totem pole.
I'd put money on it that if you looked at the grades these kids are getting, the young boys have significantly lower GPAs than the older boys. (I do know 2 exceptions to that, but those kids are heavily tutored & monitored - much more heavily tutored & monitored than C.)
I wonder if this is less significant for girls in middle school because they're automatically more mature?
This phenomenon was true for me, but not for Ed.
The dominant girls in my schools were born one day after the birthday cut-off!
Now I'm thinking about my youngest sister, who was born 1 day before the cut-off & was always the youngest in the class....she was so shy it might have been good for her to be the oldest, not the youngest...
The problem with being older is that you then have a 14 year old in middle school, which is a nightmare as far as I'm concerned.
I believe that this research may hold more true for boys than girls. Just a gut feeling. I also believe that birth order probably has more to say (as in the case of your youngest sister) than age in every case. Some children are just shy. They will be just as shy the next year. Of course, I have no research to prove anything I say.
And yes. A 14 year old in middle school is a nightmare!
absolutely - my sister was shy, period
That was her temperament.
I've got to put up a post about middle school soon here....
I'm now completely against middle school, period. Forget the "middle school model," I'm against it because I think it is INSANE to age-segregate "young adolescents."
One of the things I've finally realized is happening is that the girls aren't just developing sexually, they're developing "maternally," too.'
C. told me a couple of weeks ago that one of the "hottest" girls (hot in the boys' eyes) "likes to hug the short boys."
Last year C. had told me, speaking of the same girl, that she had said something to him along the lines of, "You're cute and sweet" -- it was a "baby" comment. She was seeing him as young and cuddly, something like that.
He was upset about it. He felt put down ---
Graduation night I saw this girl from afar and she looked like she was about 20 years old. Very tall, very big-breasted, etc.
But here's the funny thing: to an adult, she didn't read "hot."
She read "maternal." From a distance, she looks like a nice young woman who will be a nice young mother one day.
It suddenly occurred to me that when a girl's hormones are "coming in," it's not just sexual desire and romantic longings that are coming in....maternal feelings must be "coming in," too.
It all fits.
She likes to hug the short boys. C's friends are very short. They're so short, they look much younger than they actually are. And a few of them, including C., aren't that far along in puberty. Those are the kids she's hugging.
I think that when she told Chris he was cute and sweet she was telling the truth -- he's nowhere near her in terms of physical development, and, yes, he still is somewhat cute and sweet, even now. (Thank God he's tall, at least.)
So here these girls are, locked up in a school with same-age peers, their hormones coming in....and the only focus they have is same-age boys.
If they were in a K-8 school, the girls who are strongly drawn to children could be helping out with the little ones.
I have more to say on this subject (I read an interesting dissertation that compared boys in K-8 to boys in middle schools).
In a nutshell, I now think the middle school age-segregated set-up is the single worst arrangement our public schools could have come up with.
So....add in to all of that the fact that C. and his group -- all of whom are the youngest in the class -- also have to contend with boys who are a full year older than they are ----
It's amazing these kids have got any self-esteem at all at this point.
In a nutshell, I now think the middle school age-segregated set-up is the single worst arrangement our public schools could have come up with.
Absolutely. And they keep breaking them up even further. We've got K-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-12. It's so disjointed and disruptive.
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