School Starting Age and Cognitive Development

Abstract

We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children's cognitive development from ages 6 to 18 using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and large‐scale population‐level birth and school data from the state of Florida. We estimate effects of being old for grade (being born in September vs. August) that are remarkably stable—always around 0.2 SD difference in test scores—across a wide range of heterogeneous groups, based on maternal education, poverty at birth, race/ethnicity, birth weight, gestational age, and school quality. While the September‐August difference in kindergarten readiness is dramatically different by subgroup, by the time students take their first exams, the heterogeneity in estimated effects on test scores effectively disappears. We do, however, find significant heterogeneity in other outcome measures such as disability status and middle and high school course selections. We also document substantial variation in compensatory behaviors targeted towards young‐for‐grade children. While the more affluent families tend to redshirt their children, young‐for‐grade children from less affluent families are more likely to be retained in grades prior to testing. School district practices regarding retention and redshirting are correlated with improved outcomes for the groups less likely to use those remediation approaches (i.e., retention in the case of more affluent families and redshirting in the case of less affluent families.) Finally, we find that very few school policies or practices mitigate the test score advantage of September‐born children.

Summer‐born struggle: The effect of school starting age on health, education, and work

“…Again, the difference at the cutoff is entirely driven by diagnoses of behavioral problems, as we find no effect for learning impairments. Interestingly, the point estimates for behavioral problems are quite similar to those found for Florida by Dhuey et al (), who show that September‐born children have a 2.5–3.4% higher probability of being classified as having a “behavioral disability” (see Dhuey et al, , table 4, p. 555).…”

The Relative Age Effects in Educational Development: A Systematic Review

“…The schoolchildren who delay their enrolment in a school year score significantly higher than schoolchildren enrolled in their corresponding cohort [28]. In the direction of this research, it can be asserted that relatively older schoolchildren in a primary school class (6-12 years) score significantly higher on academic achievement tests than their relatively younger peers [13,29,30].…”

“…If the coexisting variable with relative age is a person's migration status in the country (demographic variable), immigrant or non-immigrant, it can be seen that relatively younger and immigrant schoolchildren obtain significantly lower mean scores than nonimmigrant schoolchildren of the same relative age [6]. Finally, an adequate family climate of support and involvement in the education of relatively younger schoolchildren causes the RAE on academic performance to be significantly smaller than those of schoolchildren of the same relative age but with an inadequate family climate [6,28].…”

School Starting Age and Academic Performance: An Empirical Study in Indonesia

“…Thus, one solution to provide a causal impact of school starting age, the endogeneity issues mentioned must be considered. Some studies have studied the impact of school starting age on different outcomes such as earnings, educational attainment, criminal involvement, cognitive development, and mental health (Angrist & Krueger, 1992;Cook & Kang, 2016;Dee & Sievertsen, 2018;Dhuey et al, 2019;Smith, 2009). Some researchers argue that schooling at a younger age is beneficial for improving academic performances (Pellizzari & Billari, 2012) securing higher scores on cognitive tests, and having fewer behavioral problems than older students (Mayer, 1999).…”