We all want to succeed in life, and when we become parents, we want to do everything we can to make sure our kids are successful, too. Now a new study says there's a single decision many parents make that can effect whether their kids have an advantage or a disadvantage for much of their entire academic career.
The question is a simple one, and it's well-known to any mom or dad whose child has a late birthday: Do you enroll your child in school as soon as he or she is eligible, or do you wait a year?
If you read no further, know this: For all the complexity and controversy in this issue, researchers at Stanford University say that kids whose parents hold them back a year have significant advantages over their peers.
In other words, in the "red-shirting versus not red-shirting" battle," red-shirting wins, hands down. Here's why.
Out of control--a 'persistent' result
Many parents make this decision based on the whether their kids will benefit academically by waiting a year or not. But the science on testable academic performance yields frustrating, inconsistent results.
That's why Stanford researchers decided to set their sights on something different. Cast aside the test scores; how did being among the oldest kids or the youngest kids in the class affect things like mental health, discipline, and self-control? (All of which can ultimately have a greater effect on qualitative academic achievement.)
To assess the effect, which was reported recently in Quartz, they studied the experiences of elementary school students in Denmark, segmenting them into groups whose parents had enrolled them during the school year in which they were first eligible, and those whose parents decided to hold them back for a year.
Result? Kids who delayed attending kindergarten to the later year were far more likely to be able to pay attention in school and had "dramatically higher levels of self-control" than their peers. And that advantage was sustained for years afterward.
"We found that delaying kindergarten for one year reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73 percent for an average child at age 11," Thomas Dee, one of the co-authors, said. "And it virtually eliminated the probability that an average child at that age would have an 'abnormal,' or higher-than-normal rating for the inattentive-hyperactive behavioral measure."
The 'relative age effect'
Even if you don't have kids, and even if you don't remember your elementary school years particularly well, this whole debate might ring a bell. It was discussed thoroughly in the media a decade ago, after Malcolm Gladwell came out with his book, Outliers.
Malcolm studied the National Hockey League (he's Canadian; go figure), and noticed a statistical anomaly about the number of players who were born in January and February. He traced it back to the fact that in Canada, youth hockey leagues most often used January 1 as the birthday cutoff date.
That meant that kids who were born in January and February were always the oldest kids in their age-group. Sure, that meant they were more mature and physically developed, but there was another advantage. Their advanced physiology led to more playing time and coaching attention. That in turn, led to more success on the ice.
The phenomenon, called the relative age effect, also occurs in academia. Previous studies have suggested that children with a late start, and whose birthdays were earlier in the year than their classmates, were more likely to attend college, and less likely to be put on a vocational track (as opposed to an academic track) in school.
Bill Murphy Jr.
The INC
