To Delay or Not Delay Kindergarten: What to Consider When Your Child's Birthday Is Close to the School Cutoff Date
Our daughter’s birthday is less than a month before the age cutoff for enrolling in kindergarten in our district. The decision of whether to delay kindergarten for a child whose birthday is close to the age cutoff is a hotly debated topic, and because of this, I agonized over the decision for months. In this post, I share the research we read, the experts we consulted, and the process we followed to make the decision that felt right for our family. My hope is that what follows provides you with resources as you navigate through this decision for your own family.
But before I share our process, I want to name two very important facts:
I will never be able to tell you what is right for your child. Neither will any other social media influencer, journalist, or cable news anchor. You are the expert on your child. Read the research, listen to the experiences of others, and talk to the pediatrician and teachers who know your child personally. There is no one-size-fits-all answer here, and nothing about my own experience should be construed to mean that I have an opinion about what you should choose for your child.
Too often, the topic of delaying kindergarten skips over the fact that this isn’t a choice for most families. Many districts don’t allow delaying kindergarten. If you live in a district that does allow it, delaying is dependent on having either the financial resources to pay for an additional year of Pre-K or the “people resources” to have someone who is able to stay home with the child. My hope for families reading this who don’t have a choice is that you are comforted by what I’ve found in the research: There are many, many factors that influence a child’s success in school. The best gift you can give your child is to be an involved parent.
Now, back to our decision. When my daughter was born in July, it never crossed my mind to delay kindergarten. While I knew that some families did, it wasn’t common practice in the schools where my husband and I both worked so it wasn’t on my mind. As she got closer to kindergarten, I became aware of how common academic redshirting is in our district. I felt conflicted between my gut feeling about my child and the choices that I was seeing other families make.
So I turned to the research. I was expecting the research to solve this dilemma for me, and I was surprised to find that the research was extremely mixed on the topic. Some research finds that older children in the grade do better academically than the younger children while other research finds that there are disadvantages for being the oldest, including higher high school dropout rates and lower lifetime wage earnings. Still other research finds that while there’s an initial advantage in early childhood for being the oldest in a class, this advantage dissipates over time as children age.
“We find that students born just after the threshold perform better at the end of primary school than students born just before it. This translates into increased placement in high ability tracks in secondary education. This difference diminishes gradually during subsequent stages, and we find no effect on the highest attained educational level.” Oosterbeek, Hessel & ter Meulen, Simon & van der Klaauw, Bas, 2021 "Long-term effects of school-starting-age rules," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C)
Much of the conflict in the research comes from the difference between evaluating the effects of a child’s age at school entry versus a child’s age at test. The “age at entry” theory suggests that older children are more prepared for the demands of school because they’ve had additional time before starting school. The “age at test” theory suggests that older children do better on tests because they’ve been alive longer and simply have had additional time. The “age at test” theory is often cited in research as the reason why early academic advantages decrease as time goes on. In kindergarten, a 6-year-old has lived 20% longer than a 5-year-old. By senior year, an 18-year-old has only lived about 5.5% longer than a 17-year-old.
“Among children in a given grade, the researcher can’t separate the effect of age at school entry from that of age at test. In a given grade, any child who starts school later is also older when she takes the test. [...] This connection poses a big problem for researchers, because age-at-test effects on test scores are strong and positive. [...] A teacher or principal observing these differences might conclude that, since older children in kindergarten do better than younger children, we should increase the kindergarten entry age. But the bottom line is that researchers cannot determine the effect of age at school entry by studying school-age children, since we can never get away from the fact that age-at-test rises in lockstep with age-at-entry. [...] Among adults, do we find a strongly positive correlation between age at school entry and earnings or IQ? No. Researchers have shown that adults in Norway and Sweden who entered school later have slightly lower earnings and IQ.” - David Deming & Susan Dynarski, 2008. "The Lengthening of Childhood," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 71-92, Summer.
In the news media, these conflicting studies are commonly found. For example, a New Yorker article citing research that the youngest children in class may actually do the best, an NPR article citing research that academic advantages of being the oldest can extend into college, and another NPR article citing research that accelerating school entry for some children provides a large advantage.
I wish I could give you a simple conclusion from the research. It would certainly make things easier. But saying that the research provides a clear takeaway just wouldn’t be an accurate summary of it.
So what do you do in the face of conflicting research? For me, I found this conflicting research oddly comforting because it confirmed my observations that all children are different and the circumstances affecting each child’s success can’t be boiled down to a single variable. The reality of a child’s success in school is likely so much more complex than simply the age that they start school.
Acknowledging these differences between children, we still had to decide what was right for our child. So here’s what we did:
We talked to her teacher. Her Pre-K teacher spent every day with her and a class full of her peers. Her insight about my daughter’s development was invaluable. (In order to prepare for this conversation, I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with your state's Pre-K standards.)
We talked to her pediatrician. Pediatrician’s are trained to look for many issues that might arise in a child’s development, and their perspective can also be an important factor in making this decision.
We watched her around her peers. Did she seem more socially and academically on par with the children who would be starting kindergarten this fall or with the ones who would start next fall? An important realization for me was that my child would never be in the middle of the ages. No matter what we chose for school, she would be on one end of the spectrum–one of the oldest or one of the youngest. So I watched her during times when she was the oldest of her peers and times when she was the youngest of her peers. It was helpful for me to observe how these situations did or didn’t impact her.
We sought the advice of other parents who have had to make a similar decision. What factors influenced their decision? Did we feel like those were factors that affected our child also?
We considered our own personal experiences working in secondary education. My husband has been a teacher and Dean of Students in middle schools and high schools for the past 18 years. He has never once noticed a trend in students’ behavior or academic performance based solely on their age. His personal experience seemed to coincide with research showing that early benefits of delaying kindergarten often dissipate as children age. (Reminder: I’m sharing our personal experience here, and certainly should not be taken as a rule for all children.)
We ultimately decided to send our daughter to kindergarten when she was eligible and not to delay a year. This was the decision that was right for our child and our family. You might go through a similar process and decide the exact opposite for your child. I wish there were a Magic 8 ball we could all use to see into our children’s futures to ensure we make all the right choices. But there isn’t. So we make the best choice we can with the information we have available at the time.
Will my daughter struggle in school because she’s the youngest? Maybe. Will she thrive in school because she’ll rise to the challenge of keeping up with older peers? Maybe. All I can say for sure is that I feel confident that we made the best decision given all the information we have, and that we will walk alongside her through life, helping her navigate the many challenges life will inevitably throw her way, regardless of how old she was when she started kindergarten.