School starting age and cognitive development
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abstract
The researchers present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and
children’s cognitive development from age 6 to 15 using a regression discontinuity design and
large-scale population-level birth and school data from the state of Florida. They estimate effects
of being relatively old for grade (being born in September versus August) that are remarkably
stable –always just around 0.2 SD difference in test scores – across a wide range of
heterogeneous groups, based on maternal education, poverty at birth, race/ethnicity, birth weight,
gestational age, and school quality. While the September-August difference in kindergarten
readiness is dramatically different by subgroup, by the time students take their first exams, the
heterogeneity in estimated effects effectively disappears. They document substantial variation in
compensatory behaviors targeted towards young for grade children. While the more affluent
families tend to redshirt their children, young for grade children from less affluent families are
more likely to be retained in grades prior to testing. School district practices regarding retention
and redshirting are correlated with improved outcomes for the groups less likely to use those
remediation approaches (i.e., retention in the case of more-affluent families and redshirting in the
case of less-affluent families.) They also study college and juvenile detention outcomes using
administrative data from a large Florida school district, and show that being an older age at
school entry increases children’s college attainment and reduces the likelihood of being
incarcerated for juvenile crime.
