Entering kindergarten is one form of accelerating one's path through schooling. The unique needs of young learners require policies for early entrance to kindergarten to be flexible, and options for parents to be accessible and equitable across school districts and communities. In this article, the author discusses state policies for early…

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…

Self-care ability and social skills are potential areas of difficulty for preschool children. However, values about young children's self-care ability are different worldwide. This longitudinal study examined the influence of early self-care ability on social skills at the end of the preschool years. Participants were 509 children recruited from…

There is growing evidence that school starting age impacts children's likelihood of receiving special education services, but less is known about variations in this effect. Using a regression discontinuity design, I found that the youngest students in a kindergarten cohort are 40% more likely (p < 0.001) to be placed in special education than…

Background/Context: The age at which children can enter kindergarten continues to be discussed in both educational research and practice, and the debate for whether to increase kindergarten entry age remains active on both sides. A critical oversight has been the lack of attention paid towards entry age for those students who begin school with a…

This paper argues that play should be central to children's lives throughout early childhood, including their time in school. First, it charts the history of early childhood education in Scotland through four stages: (1) pioneer of kindergarten; (2) early adopter of formal education; (3) promise of a recalibration through Curriculum for…

Redshirting gives younger athletes an additional year to develop skills and extends their playing eligibility, since colleges allow these freshmen five years to attend and compete. On the other end of the student age spectrum, many parents of preschoolers have bought into this concept, choosing to delay their child's entry into kindergarten for a…

School administrators and teachers create a culture for high learning and achievement when they partner with parents to make decisions regarding the optimal age to begin formal schooling. The age that students begin school has decreased across the globe; however, the United States has various eligibility dates for school entry that require…

We aimed to investigate stress response regulation, temperament, cognitive and language abilities and family SES in children who entered kindergarten before two years of age. Whilst childrens stress regulatory systems are vulnerable to environmental influences little is known about how temperament and family characteristics impact on stress…

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…

In evaluating the role of kindergarten entry age, previous researchers have not examined the entry-age effects for English language learners (ELL). Additionally, little work has assessed the role of entry age on both achievement and social-emotional outcomes. This study is the first to do both simultaneously. The authors used data from a…

Although good visual capacity is essential for children's learning, we have limited understanding of the various visual functions among school starters. In order to extend this knowledge, a small-scale study was undertaken involving 24 preschool children age 5-6 years who completed a test battery originally designed for visual impairment…

Prior research evaluating school entry age effects has largely overlooked the effects on social-behavioral skills despite the growing recognition of returns to such skills. This study is the first to examine the effects of kindergarten entry age on children's social-behavioral outcomes using 9 years of panel data on a national sample of U.S.…

Relationships between exposure to preschool education and children's academic and social outcomes have been documented in Western countries. There is a lack of comparable research in China, where preschool education is relatively formal, but rather flexible in arrangement. We conducted research at six public kindergartens in a large Chinese city…