During the past several decades there has been a trend toward making the cutoff date earlier, so that children enter kindergarten older on average than was once the case.īPercentage of 16 measurement epochs of child in center care. This is the date by which children must turn 5 if they are to enter kindergarten. The modal cutoff date is the beginning of September, just about the time school begins (see Table 1 in Stipek, 2002). Although school entry also varies across the United States, with cutoff birth dates for enrollment typically set by the state, children in traditional American schools begin kindergarten at about age 5, placing the United States in the earlier portion of school-entry ages when compared with other countries. In Sweden, children enter school at age 7, in England they begin school between 4 and 5 years of age, and in New Zealand children begin school on their fifth birthday, rather than on a specific uniform date in the fall. School entry is set at 6 in Russia, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, and Germany. This advantage of our longitudinal design is not reflected in most research on this issue, yet it is critical for understanding the unique effect of age.Įxactly when children enroll in kindergarten varies around the world ( Meisels, 1992). Of importance is the fact that we evaluated the effects of the age of entry after controlling for the children’s prior experiences at home and in child care and their performance in academic and social functioning just prior to school entry.
In this study we examined variations in children’s academic and social outcomes through third grade as a function of age of entry to school, as well as age-of-entry cutoffs used in many states. In short, age of entry to school figures prominently in teacher and parent belief systems about children’s school readiness, as well as in policy-related decision making about who secures the benefits of publicly funded education.
Given that, within a 12-month year, older children tend to show more advanced developmental skills than younger children, changes in age of entry can have effects on the percentages of children who meet certain academic or skill standards and can boost a district’s standing on certain metrics ( Vecchiotti, 2001). It is an index society uses as an eligibility or selection mechanism for access to public resources and, consequently, an index that triggers potential benefits of stimulation gained by attendance in school. Kindergarten teachers identify age as a factor that figures prominently in definitions and beliefs about readiness for kindergarten, and age is often used as a post hoc explanation for decisions to retain children in kindergarten ( National Center for Education Statistics, 1993a).Īge of entry to school is also of considerable policy importance (Meisels, 1992, 1999). When parents are surveyed about their children’s school readiness and enrollment, one of the most frequent questions noted is whether their child is too young to enroll (e.g., West, Hauske, & Collins, 1993). Perhaps no other issue appears so frequently and dominantly in parents’ discussions of school readiness or school districts’ readiness policies as that of the age at which children are eligible (or required) to start kindergarten. Age of entry proved unrelated to socioemotional functioning.
Furthermore, children who entered kindergarten at older ages evinced greater increases over time on 4 W-J subtests (i.e., Letter-Word Recognition, Applied Problems, Memory for Sentences, Picture Vocabulary) and outperformed children who started kindergarten at younger ages on 2 W-J subtests in 3rd grade (i.e., Applied Problems, Picture Vocabulary). With family background factors and experience in child care in the first 54 months of life controlled, hierarchical linear modeling (growth curve) analysis revealed that children who entered kindergarten at younger ages had higher (estimated) scores in kindergarten on the Woodcock-Johnson (W-J) Letter-Word Recognition subtest but received lower ratings from kindergarten teachers on Language and Literacy and Mathematical Thinking scales. Children’s academic achievement and socioemotional development were measured repeatedly from the age of 54 months through 3rd grade. Data on more than 900 children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were analyzed to examine the effect of age of entry to kindergarten on children’s functioning in early elementary school.
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