We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children's cognitive development from age 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 versus August) that are…

Because of the regulations concerning school entry in most school systems, a child's date of birth may significantly affect his or her age at entry into school, and thus their first experience of schooling. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this paper provides a comparative analysis of the impact of a…

The authors examined long-term outcomes for children who experienced delayed entry to kindergarten or kindergarten retention. They used a cohort of 6,841 students to compare these groups to each other and typically progressing peers. First, the authors compared the groups on demographic and early childhood variables. For the long-term school-based…

Chile operates one of the oldest and largest school feeding programs in Latin America, targeting higher-calorie meals to relatively poorer schools. This paper evaluates the impact of higher-calorie meals on the education outcomes of public, rural schools and their students. It applies a regression-discontinuity design to administrative data,…

In this article, the authors discuss two interventions deployed to remediate low performing students. The first is grade level retention in which a student is required to repeat a given grade due to lack of academic or social progress. The second is academic redshirting in which a parent voluntarily delays the entrance of her child into…

Most children enter kindergarten when they are 5 years of age and move into first grade when they are 6. This time period is marked by great developmental change (Sameroff and Haith 1996), and children differ in what they can and cannot do socially, physically, and cognitively. Therefore, parents and educators are concerned whether certain…

Recent emphases on school readiness and standardized testing have resulted in educational practices with negative consequences for children. These practices include a higher school entry age, grade retention, transition programs, and the practice of enrolling children in kindergarten when they are six, rather than five, years old. (BC)

This case study describes an innovative school entry system in which children are registered at school according to their stage of development, not their age. The system was introduced by law in Hungary in 1986. In this study, an introduction is followed by a discussion of problems in curricular articulation. Problems are discussed in terms of the…