another gap that doesn't close

A new study of elementary and middle school students has found that those who are the youngest in their grades score worse on standardized tests than their older classmates and are more likely to be prescribed stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The findings suggest that in a given grade, students born at the end of the calendar year may be at a distinct disadvantage. Those perceived as having academic or behavioral problems may in fact be lagging simply as a result of being forced to compete with classmates almost a full year older than them. For a child as young as 5, a span of one year can account for 20 percent of the child’s age, potentially making him or her appear significantly less mature than older classmates.

The new study found that the lower the grade, the greater the disparity. For children in the fourth grade, the researchers found that those in the youngest third of their class had an 80 to 90 percent increased risk of scoring in the lowest decile on standardized tests. They were also 50 percent more likely than the oldest third of their classmates to be prescribed stimulants for A.D.H.D. The differences diminished somewhat over time, the researchers found, but continued at least through the seventh grade.

It gets worse.

The findings dovetail with research carried out by two economists, Kelly Bedard and Elizabeth Dhuey. In looking at fourth graders around the world, the two found that the oldest children scored up to 12 percentile points higher than the youngest children. Their work, which was described in the best-selling 2008 book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, has shown a similar pattern among college students.

“At four-year colleges in the United States,” Mr. Gladwell wrote, “students belonging to the relatively youngest group in their class are underrepresented by about 11.6 percent. That initial difference in maturity doesn’t go away with time. It persists. And for thousands of students, that initial disadvantage is the difference between going to college — and having a real shot at the middle class — and not.”
Younger Students More Likely to Get A.D.H.D. Drugs
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
NOVEMBER 20, 2012, 11:25 AM

Sheesh.

C. was one of the youngest kids in his class, and at some point it dawned on me that his friends were also the youngest kids in his class -- and that the older kids seemed to be having more fun. Probably getting better grades, too.

But when I pointed out the connection, nobody believed me. The reigning view was that age of birth affected sports, but not academics, and not friendship. Academics and friendship were somehow completely and totally unrelated to biology, I guess.

Obviously I shouldn't have stopped reading Malcolm Gladwell when I did. If I'd read The Outliers, I could have at least won an argument or two.

Redshirting Kindergartners

Here's a story from today's Slate magazine about redshirting kindergartners.

"In addition, the trend toward older kindergarten among well-off families may be fueling the trend toward state laws that delay kindergarten for everyone. As Elizabeth Weil noted in a great piece on redshirting in the New York Times Magazine last year, almost half the states have pushed back their birthday cutoffs since 1975, several of them fairly recently."

"It's easy to see what the states are up to: They're worried about test scores, and they figure that older kids plus academic kindergarten will produce better ones."

"The increasing availability of public pre-K becomes, then, not the additional year of school that early childhood educators and advocates wanted for families that can't afford private preschool. Instead, pre-K, when it's offered, just replaces what the first year of kindergarten used to be."

""There is no evidence of a lasting benefit to education or earnings from being older than one's classmates," they (Deming and Dynarski) write. Another recent study, by Sandra Black of UCLA, crunched data from Norway and actually found a small boost in IQ for starting school early, but little effect on educational attainment—how well kids do in school in the long run. The place where redshirting is a proven advantage is the sports field. For example, 60 percent more Major League Baseball players are born in August than in July, and the birthday cutoff for youth baseball is July 31. But athletics, Dynarski points out, isn't academics."

"gift of time" in the NY Sun

The Sun had a front page article on the "lengthening childhood" study this morning:

The "lengthening of childhood" is having grim effects on American academic achievement.

That's the message of a new paper by Harvard researchers, who warn that there is a downside to the increasingly common practice of waiting until children are 6 to enroll them in kindergarten.

Known as "redshirting," after the practice of letting college football stars take a year off so that they can start playing for the varsity a year older, bigger, and stronger, the practice is widespread: A parent decides to hold a child back a year before beginning kindergarten, and suddenly kindergartners are taller and faster and first-graders are more literate. Manhattan private schools call the extra year "the gift of time."

The practice has grown substantially: In 1968, 96% of 6-year-olds were enrolled in first grade or above. In 2005, the number had fallen to 84%, according to the paper by the Harvard researchers, part of a series issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Not only are children being held back on an individual basis by ambitious parents hoping to give them a leg up; public schools from Maryland to Arkansas are following suit by legislating that children be older when they enter kindergarten.

[snip]

Even private school children suffer from "redshirting," the paper argues. Though they are at a very low risk of dropping out of high school, entering school a year late means losing one year of work experience and salary.

It also means one fewer year that the children, once they are adults in the workforce, will pay into America's Social Security system.

[snip]

In New York City, children must be enrolled in public school kindergarten if they turn 5 years old by December 31. For the city's private schools, the deadline is September 1. Yet private school administrators and admissions advisers said that Manhattan schools often will not accept a child younger than six. They said the schools are hoping to give students a boost in maturity before starting their formal education.

According to the paper, titled "The Lengthening of Childhood," states have followed parents in pushing up the average age of kindergartners.

In the last 30 years, nearly half of all states have increased the age at which a child can legally enter kindergarten. Maryland and Arkansas have both moved their cutoff dates to September 1 and there is currently a bill in the New York State Assembly to do the same.

Ms. Dynarski said there are several reasons why public schools might be starting children in school at an older age.

One is that high-stakes testing and No Child Left Behind have put pressure on states to drive exam scores higher. When policy makers notice that redshirted children get higher test scores, they propose that their states move the cutoff dates to earlier in the year — usually to September 1.

"The older kids do better," Ms. Dynarski said. "That doesn't mean that the kids doing better are doing so because they entered later. That might be misleading to policy makers."

[snip]

"If you have a summer birthday, private schools will frequently say you're too young, you need to wait a year," the president of the private school admissions firm Abacus Educational Consulting, Emily Glickman, said.

The headmaster at Grace Church School in Greenwich Village, George Davison, estimated that more than a third of his first-graders are 7 years old. He said the older ages are a deliberate choice, made to ensure that the children are "happier and healthier."

[snip]

"Sometimes, developmentally, it makes sense for them to wait a year, particularly for boys," she said. "You're never doing a bad thing by waiting a year."

'Lengthening Childhood' Has A Downside, Study Says
by ANNA PHILLIPS, Special to the Sun | July 21, 2008

The problem here is that we fit the kids to the schools, instead of fitting the schools to the kids.

Somehow, Siegfried Engelmann was able to teach academic content to pre-schoolers without a lot of hoopla about maturity and scores and whatnot.

We need a science of teaching & we need it fast.

relative age effects - references

from The Lengthening of Childhood
David Deming
Susan Dynarski
Working Paper 14124
June 2008

Angrist, Joshua D., and Alan B. Krueger. 1991. “Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?" (pdf file) Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(4): 979–1014.

Angrist, Joshua D., and Alan B. Krueger. 1992. “The Effect of Age at School Entry on Educational Attainment: An Application of Instrumental Variables with Moments from Two Samples.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 87(418): 328–36. (pdf file)

Ariès, Philippe. 1962. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Random House.

Barnsley, R. H., and A. H. Thompson. 1988. Birthdate and Success in Minor Hockey: The Key to the NHL. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 20(2): 167–76.

Barnsley, R. H., A. H. Thompson, and P. E. Barnsley. 1985. Hockey Success and Birthdate: The Relative Age Effect. Journal of the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, November–December, pp. 23–28.

Bedard, Kelly, and Elizabeth Dhuey. 2006. “The Persistence of Early Childhood Maturity: International Evidence of Long-Run Age Effects.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(4):
1437–72.

Bedard, Kelly, and Elizabeth Dhuey. 2007. “Is September Better than January? The Effect of Minimum School Entry Age Laws on Skill Accumulation.” (pdf file)

Black, Sandra, Paul Devereaux, and Kjell Salvanes. 2008. “Too Young to Leave the Nest? The Effects of School Starting Age.” NBER Working Paper 13969.

Bracey, Gerald. 1989. “Age and Achievement.” Phi Delta Kappan, 70(9): 732.

Card, David, and Thomas Lemieux. 2001. “Dropout and Enrollment Trends in the Postwar Period: What Went Wrong in the 1970s?” In Risky Behavior among Youths: An Economic Analysis, ed. Jonathan Gruber, chap. 9. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cascio, Elizabeth. 2005. “School Progression and the Grade Distribution of Students: Evidence from the Current Population Survey.” IZA Discussion Paper 1747.

Cascio, Elizabeth, and Diane Schanzenbach. 2007. “First in the Class? Age and the Education Production Function.” NBER Working Paper 13663.

College Board. 2005. “Advanced Placement Report to the Nation.”

Crosser, Sandra. 1998. “He Has a Summer Birthday: The Kindergarten Entrance Age
Dilemma.” ERIC Digest ED423079 1998-09-00. (pdf file)

Danziger, Sheldon, and Cecilia Rouse, eds. 2007. The Price of Independence: The Economics of Early Adulthood. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Datar, Ashlesha. 2006. “Does Delaying Kindergarten Entrance Give Children a Head Start?” Economics of Education Review, 25(1): 43–62.

Dee, Thomas. 2004. “Are There Civic Returns to Education?” Journal of Public Economics, 88(9): 1697–720.

Dhuey, Elizabeth, and Stephen Lipscomb. 2007. “Disabled or Young? Relative Age and
Special Education Diagnoses in Schools.” (pdf file)

Dobkin, Carlos, and Fernando Ferreira. 2007. “Do School Entry Laws Affect Educational
Attainment and Labor Market Outcomes?”

Elder, Todd, and Darren Lubotsky. Forthcoming. “Kindergarten Entrance Age and Children’s Achievement: Impacts of State Policies, Family Background, and Peers.” Journal of Human Resources.

Elson, John. 1989. “The Redshirt Solution.” TIME Magazine, November13.

Frederick, Carl, and Robert Hauser. 2006. “Have We Put an End to Social Promotion?
Changes in Grade Retention Rates among Children Ages 6 to 17 from 1972 to 2003.”
(pdf file)

Fredriksson, Peter, and Bjorn Ockert. 2005. “Is Early Learning Really More Productive? The Effect of School Starting Age on School and Labor Market Performance.” IZA Discussion Paper 1659, Institute for the Study of Labor.

Freeman, Richard. 1976. The Overeducated American. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Glamser, Francis D., and John Vincent. 2004. “The Relative Age Effect among Elite
American Youth Soccer Players.” Journal of Sport Behavior, March 1.

Graue, Elizabeth. 2006. “Engineering the Perfect Kindergarten.” Teachers College Record,
September 13.

Graue, Elizabeth, and James DiPerna. 2000. “Redshirting and Early Retention: Who Gets the ‘Gift of Time’ and What are Its Outcomes?” American Educational Research Journal, 37(2): 509–34.

Grondin, Simon, and Jochen Much. 2001. “Unequal Competition as an Impediment to
Personal Development: A Review of the Relative Age Effect in Sport.” Developmental Review,
21(2): 147–61.

Heckman, James, and Paul LaFontaine. 2007. “The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels.” NBER Working Paper 13670.

Heckman, James, and Dimitriy Masterov. 2007. “The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children.” Review of Agricultural Economics, 29(3): 446–93.

Kett, Joseph. 2003. “Reflections on the History of Adolescence in America.” The History of the Family, 8(3): 355–73.

Kirp, David. 2007. The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lincove, Jane, and Gary Painter. 2006. “Does the Age that Children Start Kindergarten
Matter? Evidence of Long-Term Educational and Social Outcomes.” Educational Evaluation
and Policy Analysis, 28(2):153–79. (pdf file)

Lleras-Muney, Adriana. 2005. “The Relationship between Education and Adult Mortality in the United States.” Review of Economic Studies 72(1): 189–221. (pdf file)

Lochner, Lance, and Enrico Moretti. 2004. “The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence
from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports.” American Economic Review, 94(1): 155–89.

Mayer, Susan, and David Knutson. 1999. “Does the Timing of School Affect How Much
Children Learn?” In Earning and Learning: How Schools Matter, ed. Susan Mayer and Paul
Peterson, 79–104. Washington, DC: Brookings.

Milligan, Kevin, Enrico Moretti, and Philip Oreopoulos. 2004. “Does Education Improve Citizenship? Evidence from the U.S. and the U.K.” Journal of Public Economics, 88(9–10): 1667–95.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. 1983. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

Oreopoulos, Philip. 2007. “Do Dropouts Drop Out Too Soon? Wealth, Health and Happiness from Compulsory Schooling.” Journal of Public Economics, 91(11–12): 2213–29.

Oreopoulos, Philip. Forthcoming. “Should We Raise the Minimum School Leaving Age to Help Disadvantaged Youth? Evidence from Recent Changes to Compulsory Schooling in the United States.” In An Economic Framework for Understanding and Assisting Disadvantaged Youth, ed. Jonathan Gruber.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2004. Education at Glance:
OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD.

Puhani, Patrick, and Andrea Weber. 2007. “Does the Early Bird Catch the Worm?
Instrumental Variable Estimates of Early Educational Effects of Age of School Entry in
Germany.” Empirical Economics, 32(2–3): 359–86. (pdf file)

Shepard, Lorrie, and Mary Lee Smith. 1988. “Escalating Academic Demand in Kindergarten: Counterproductive Policies.” The Elementary School Journal, 89(2):134–45.

Shepard, Lorrie, and Mary Lee Smith. 1989. “Introduction and Overview.” In Lorrie Shepard and Mary Lee Smith, eds., Flunking Grades: Research and Policies on Retention. New York: Taylor and Francis.

Stevenson, Betsy, and Justin Wolfers. 2007. “Marriage and Divorce: Changes and Their
Driving Forces.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(2):27–52.

Stipek, Deborah. 2002. “At What Age Should Children Enter Kindergarten? A Question for
Policy Makers and Parents.” Social Policy Report, 16(2): 3–16.

Spira, Greg. 2008. “The Boys of Late Summer: Why Do So Many Pro Baseball Players Have
August Birthdays?” Slate Magazine, posted April 16.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 2007. The
Condition of Education 2007. (NCES 2007–064). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office.

Vinovskis, M. 1995. “School Readiness and Early Childhood Education.” In Learning from the
Past, ed. Diane Ravitch and Maris A. Vinovskis, chap. 10. Baltimore, MA: John Hopkins
University Press.

Weil, Elizabeth. 2007. “When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?” New York Times Magazine,
Sunday, June 3.

Whittaker, William. 2005. “Child Labor in America: History, Policy, and Legislative Issues.”
CRS Report for Congress, Order code RL31501, Congressional Research Service.


and:

Werner, F. Helsen, Van Winckel, Jan, and Williams, Mark. "The relative age effect in youth soccer across Europe."Journal of Sports Sciences, June 2005; 23(6): 629 – 636.

Daiji Kawaguchi. The Effect of Age at School Entry on Education and Income, June 2006 ESRI Discussion Paper Series No.162, Economic and Social Research Institute Cabinet Office Tokyo, Japan. (pdf file)