The belief that additional time allows children to become more ready for school has affected public policy and individual practices. Prior studies estimated either associations between school entry age and academic growth or causal effects on achievement measured at one or two points. This article contributes novel causal evidence for the impacts…

The Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K Program (TN-VPK) is statewide full-day program that gives priority to children from low-income families. A regression-discontinuity design with a statewide probability sample of 155 TN-VPK classrooms and 5,189 children participating across two pre-K cohorts found positive effects at kindergarten entry with the largest…

This study investigated whether there are significant differences between reading achievements of 15-year-old students and starting age for preschool and socioeconomic factors according to the results from the PISA 2015 and 2018. The quantitative results show that there is a clear and statistically significant difference between reading test…

This study aims to make a comparison of various lessons' mean exam scores achieved at the first, second, third and fourth grade by students who started elementary school at 60-66 months and those who started at or above 69 months as these students started the elementary school at the same time after an amendment in elementary education law in…

We estimate the effects of relative age in kindergarten using data from an experiment where children of the same age were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classmates. We exploit the resulting experimental variation in relative age in conjunction with variation in expected kindergarten entry age based on birth date to account for…

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…

This research study was conducted to examine the effects of the Kindergarten Readiness program in a large suburban school district in Tennessee as measured by third grade Reading and Mathematics TCAP Achievement Test scores. In addition, the study examined the relationships between the chronological ages of the students at kindergarten entry and…

Early childhood education and school readiness is essential to preparing children to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy. Compared to other countries, however, the United States lags far behind on preschool, trailing a number of other countries in enrollment, investment, and quality. In February 2013, however, President Barack…

Evidence regarding the effect of early reading instruction on later reading achievement is unusually sparse, given the emphasis often placed on early and intensive reading instruction. Capitalising on international differences in school entry age (SEA), international reading studies may provide such evidence; however, only one quantitative…