Research on young for grade vs. old for grade (college, pre-school, scores)
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So, I have recently encountered many conflicting opinions, as well as data, on young for grade vs. old for grade benefits/detriments. There doesn't appear to be any consensus amongst the studies I've found. Some say older students always have the benefits, while others indicate that being young and having older peers is a more statistically significant factor than being the oldest in the grade. I'm interested in any research that any of you have come across, as well as personal opinions on whether you felt being young for your grade (or your child's grade) or old for your grade (or your child's grade) was a benefit or a detriment.
Obviously, there have been numerous threads on redshirting on this forum. That isn't really what I'm asking about. I'm more interested in motivation and whether anyone has any good data around whether having to work harder (younger kids with older peers) versus being the oldest (and thus, having positive self-esteem impacts, but possible boredom) impact motivation in the long term.
Obviously, someone always needs to be the youngest in the class. I'm also interested in any data/personal experiences that show evidence regarding where the youngest kids and oldest kids are developmentally furthest apart (i.e. between pre-k and kinder, between K and 1st, between 1st and 2nd?) Educators please feel free to weigh in!! While the redshirtinng topic has been extensively covered on this forum, I don't have a good sense where the largest gaps in development typically occur (i.e. between 3 and 4, 4 and 5, 5 and 6, etc.). Thanks in advance for all your help!
That is not at all obvious.
We should switch to a more Montessori like system, where kids are all working at their own pace. When I was about 10, I came across a book of my mother's on the Montessori method. I cried, to realize that there were such places in the world and I could not go to one. I was so far ahead of my "same age" peers it was ridiculous. And I was always in trouble for "reading ahead", for "showing off", and for "getting above my nut". I had a 3rd grade teacher who was literally a nightmare - I scored second highest in the ENTIRE CITY on the Metropolitan test that year - the high scorer was a high school senior. He only beat me on the math section. And she stood me up in front of the whole class and told everyone this was proof that I was a failure and would always BE a failure.
On another occasion, in the 4th grade, some student teachers came in and tested us for foreign language ability. When my turn came, I stood in front of the class and counted to 100 in Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Latin. Then I counted to 10 in French and German (because I didn't like French or German and hadn't spent as much time teaching it to myself). I had some conversational Spanish as well. I taught this to myself via the Encyclopedia Brittanica languages volumes and some "Learn Spanish" records my mother had. One of the student teachers tried to convince my teacher to allow him to come in and work with me on languages daily, and she told him (in my hearing and that of the entire class) that I was "already too big-headed" and certainly did not need someone pumping my ego up.
If kids went to the class at their own level, we would all be better off, whether you're a kid who is having trouble and lagging a bit or whether you're too far ahead of everyone else. Grouping kids by age for educational purposes is supremely stupid. There is PLENTY of evidence that this is so, in peer-reviewed professional journals. Mixed age groups are not a problem - its trying to force everyone between a certain age to all work at the same level that causes the vast majority of problems. A kid who lags at reading may be excelling at math, but they won't know it if they get held back based on their reading level. They just get it ingrained that they must be stupid over all.
... And I was always in trouble for "reading ahead", for "showing off", and for "getting above my nut". ....
Pretty much agree with your whole post. Why oh why are there teachers like that who deliberately sabotage the best students?
I want to add a comment to the "reading ahead" statement. Yep, I was always in trouble for that too. I'd be pages ahead while someone struggled through each word. Because I was reading so far ahead, the teacher would yell at me "How do you expect to learn to read if you don't keep the place like the rest of the class!" As a powerless kid I had to endure it when I wanted to yell back "do you think I'd be so many pages ahead if I couldn't read dumb....!"
2 of my kids are among the youngest in their class (Cutoff is Sept 30 and both have Sept bdays). They haven't had any issues academically or socially. In my state you cannot delay school entrance for your kid unless you have a waiver.
I was also one of the youngest in my classes, no issues either.
Last edited by Merjolie8; 02-04-2018 at 10:48 PM..
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
34,687 posts, read 57,985,728 times
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I’m all for ‘NO’ age / grade segregation!
In ALL of life!
Just like work and family!
Thankfully... worked well for our family.
Homeschooled, cared for an elderly disabled parent, volunteered in public schools and nursing homes, our kids ‘tutored’ adult students when they entered college at age 16. All are still volunteering, managing / working cross-generational and crossculturally.... as we have from day one.
So goes life..
Part of the amazing journey.
Kids are totally creative and resilient. (And very capable)
Give them the space, challenges, and freedom to shine.
Research is really interesting for academic purposes. But your kid is not one size fits all. Only you can determine what is likely best for your particular kid. No researcher can do that, they know nothing about your particular kid (unless your kid is average in every way and falls right into the median in all categories - then research results will be helpful to you.
Research is really interesting for academic purposes. But your kid is not one size fits all. Only you can determine what is likely best for your particular kid. No researcher can do that, they know nothing about your particular kid (unless your kid is average in every way and falls right into the median in all categories - then research results will be helpful to you.
That is totally erroneous and without merit. Not all research is of the same quality, and not all research is even honest - but research in ALL fields is important to do, important to evaluate, and important to keep updated.
The anti-intellectual turn our society has taken recently will doom us as a nation if we don't turn it around soon. I recently read an article in Time where they were talking about the increasing use of personality tests to winnow out "undesirable employees". One of the criteria on one such test is a question about how many books per year you read. If you read more than 10 books per year that is considered an UNDESIRABLE TRAIT. The rationale for this is that if you are reading 10 books per YEAR - PER YEAR, less than one per month - you are "wasting time" that should be spent keeping up to date in your profession.
I guaran-dog-tee you that if you are not reading AT LEAST 10 books per year, you could not POSSIBLY be keeping up with your profession. For dog's sake, I read 10 books in less than a week.
We give a lot of mouth-noises to the idea that we value education in this country, but the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding around here is grossly underdone. Teachers of grades K-12 are overloaded, supplies are not forthcoming, schools staffing is comprised of roughly 45% to 50% teachers where in the 60s fully 60% of staff were teachers. Class sizes are enormous - ideally class sizes in primary school should be about 12 to 15. Not even ALASKA, where it is 15.6 (on average) meets this criteria. The nationwide average is 21 students per teacher, with many states exceeding even that (of course since 21 is an AVERAGE and some will be higher while some will be lower).
They started cutting Latin and foreign languages and arts way back in the '80s, in favor of high school football programs. All sports programs other than intramural sports should be cut from all public schools - they present an inordinate danger of injury to growing children. Football in particular, though basketball is not far behind - knee injuries when you are 15 are not going to get better as you grow older. Then those funds should be used to reinstate academic courses including the arts. Even at the college level, except for a handful of top sports programs like Notre Dame, sports programs cost more than they bring in. They have NO PLACE in grades K-12. Intramural sports and normal gym classes are more than sufficient to teach kids whatever you think it is they learn from sports.
We cannot progress as a society or a nation without a well-educated public. I swear there is a contingent in this country who want to keep us poor, ignorant, and under their thumb. Don't fall for their rhetoric. The best thing we can do for our children is make sure they have the best possible education, and that includes "silly" things like art, music, and literature, as well as sciences.
That is totally erroneous and without merit. Not all research is of the same quality, and not all research is even honest - but research in ALL fields is important to do, important to evaluate, and important to keep updated.
The anti-intellectual turn our society has taken recently will doom us as a nation if we don't turn it around soon. I recently read an article in Time where they were talking about the increasing use of personality tests to winnow out "undesirable employees". One of the criteria on one such test is a question about how many books per year you read. If you read more than 10 books per year that is considered an UNDESIRABLE TRAIT. The rationale for this is that if you are reading 10 books per YEAR - PER YEAR, less than one per month - you are "wasting time" that should be spent keeping up to date in your profession.
I guaran-dog-tee you that if you are not reading AT LEAST 10 books per year, you could not POSSIBLY be keeping up with your profession. For dog's sake, I read 10 books in less than a week.
We give a lot of mouth-noises to the idea that we value education in this country, but the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding around here is grossly underdone. Teachers of grades K-12 are overloaded, supplies are not forthcoming, schools staffing is comprised of roughly 45% to 50% teachers where in the 60s fully 60% of staff were teachers. Class sizes are enormous - ideally class sizes in primary school should be about 12 to 15. Not even ALASKA, where it is 15.6 (on average) meets this criteria. The nationwide average is 21 students per teacher, with many states exceeding even that (of course since 21 is an AVERAGE and some will be higher while some will be lower).
They started cutting Latin and foreign languages and arts way back in the '80s, in favor of high school football programs. All sports programs other than intramural sports should be cut from all public schools - they present an inordinate danger of injury to growing children. Football in particular, though basketball is not far behind - knee injuries when you are 15 are not going to get better as you grow older. Then those funds should be used to reinstate academic courses including the arts. Even at the college level, except for a handful of top sports programs like Notre Dame, sports programs cost more than they bring in. They have NO PLACE in grades K-12. Intramural sports and normal gym classes are more than sufficient to teach kids whatever you think it is they learn from sports.
We cannot progress as a society or a nation without a well-educated public. I swear there is a contingent in this country who want to keep us poor, ignorant, and under their thumb. Don't fall for their rhetoric. The best thing we can do for our children is make sure they have the best possible education, and that includes "silly" things like art, music, and literature, as well as sciences.
All that reading should result in better comprehension. I did not say research should not be done, or that it should be ignored. I said it should not be the basis upon which a parent makes parenting decisions for a specific child. It is useful for academic discussion and further research. It can also be useful setting policy and establishing procedure where they cater to the median, but it does not provide guidance as to what is right for a specific child.
One problem many people have is they decide what the point is before reading something and then their predetermination prevents them from being able to understand the point that is actually there. I think this is happening here, but do not feel bad, it is a common problem. Probably 50% or more do this. (No that is not a study, it is a WAG).
I have no idea what weird place you work that tells you not to read ten books per year. You need to find a new employer. That place has control issues. The number of books you read a year has no bearing on anything at all unless you are not getting your work done because you are reading. Some books are 120 pages long and have pictures. Or you could read the PDR or the OED, not that either one would help you all that much, but you would be crazy to read ten books of that size and dullness a week or even a year. Reading in general is important. Whether you read books or articles, or studies, or something else, is less so. However massive volume of reading does not make you better at anything except maybe reading (or it should anyway).
What really annoys me is an oft purported superiority amongst book worms. "I read more books than you therefore I am better in every way." While reading is important and useful it is not a replacement for doing. If you only read and never do, you will never really learn what anything is actually like. Just theory.
I stay up in my profession just fine and I try to avoid reading any books about my profession (except fiction - I like John Grisham even though his stories are totally inaccurate as to how things work in a courtroom). What I do is not found in a book anywhere and a book is not going to help much with most aspects of it (there are some good books on negotiating and one on writing in plain English that are helpful at the early stages).
I cannot read ten books in a week, I am too busy working. If you are reading ten books in a week, I can guarnatdongdigtee you that you could not work in our company. You are spending too much time reading books. (Unless you do not sleep and have no human relationships outside of work). We need people to do stuff, not to read about doing stuff.
I have a surprise for you. Parenting is not found in a book either. A huge number of the parenting books are very wrong. You could read ten parenting books a day and still be a terrible parent. In fact it is more likely, because you should be focusing on your kids, not on books. They convey theories supported by data from surveys. Not something that works in real life applications with your particular kids. Want proof? Dig into how the author's children are doing. There are some who are doing well. Other would surprise you. Those authors should have spend more time engaging their kids and less time writing books about parenting. A few of the books have some useful information applicable to some but not all kids. The rest belong in the trash can. Kids are not one size fits all. A parent must discern what their kid is like and what works. That discernment does not come from ten books a week, in fact, good parenting is virtually impossible if you are spending all of your free time reading books.
Yes Latin is important. I took three years of it in college thinking it would be useful. It was useful for two things. Our law school had Tshirts that said "Michigan Law - Res Ipsa Loquitur" I was able to discern that was intended to mean "The Thing Speaks For Itself" Of course I also learned that in torts or evidence class. I also learned that no one alive knows how to pronounce Latin. The Church pronounces it one way, academia another. My professor believed the Church Latin was likely more accurate, but no one knows. it is quite important to learn to pronounce words in a dead language that no one knows how to pronounce correctly. Otherwise, Latin was pretty much a waste of time.
Oh btw, I think your caps lock key is malfunctioning. In all your reading OF TEN books every WEEK, have YOU EVER read any BOOK that has RANDOMLY CApITaLIzED words or LeTTerS all over the place? It MAkES it very difficult TO read. That is something you can learn form reading a lot of books.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 02-05-2018 at 02:23 PM..
The data on this is extremely skewed by the sample. It's not a random sampling of kids who enter kindergarten early or late.
The ones who go in young are deemed by their parents - and their preschool teachers - to be ready for kinder. So while they have an August birthday (or whatever the cut off is for that school district), they'll go in to kindergarten with the full belief that they'll do fine.
Kids who are held back and start the next year often do that because the parents are told "well, he's just not quite ready for kinder, and would benefit from a little maturity". In fact, those kids (often boys) have a personality that doesn't align with behaviors that make for a really successful public school student, and they won't have developed that personality by next year either.
So that makes it nearly impossible to statistically assess whether being older is beneficial. Because you don't start with your sample randomly being assigned into either group - old for their class, or young for their class. They're placed in those two categories in most part by their abilities and personality.
I think you could actually chart this: students who enter school as the youngest students are likely to be smaller, but more cooperative/ready to learn students, and those who enter a year after they could have are likely to be the more difficult students who struggle academically. Because that's the breakdown of what these kids abilities were at 4 years old.
And that's probably more pronounced in affluent school districts, where parents can easily choose to put kids in daycare another year or stay home with them another year without worrying the cost.
This.
The reason that you're not finding much by way of useful published research on this particular question is because it is difficult to control for potentially confounding variables when designing a study that will effectively explore this. There are just a whole lot of factors that relate to whether the age one starts schooling is considered to be detrimental or beneficial. It also depends greatly on who is doing the considering, and whether a specific outcome is even considered a benefit or a detriment.
Pretty much agree with your whole post. Why oh why are there teachers like that who deliberately sabotage the best students?
I want to add a comment to the "reading ahead" statement. Yep, I was always in trouble for that too. I'd be pages ahead while someone struggled through each word. Because I was reading so far ahead, the teacher would yell at me "How do you expect to learn to read if you don't keep the place like the rest of the class!" As a powerless kid I had to endure it when I wanted to yell back "do you think I'd be so many pages ahead if I couldn't read dumb....!"
In Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House there is a story called "Harrison Bergeron." It starts out:
Quote:
Originally Posted by HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarterthan anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
In the story, people were "handicapped" so that they could not excel.
I think many teachers believe in the wrong kind of equality. The equality should be of opportunity, not of result. The fact that my IQ was 79, or moron level, should not have entitled me to any special advantages.
That is totally erroneous and without merit. Not all research is of the same quality, and not all research is even honest - but research in ALL fields is important to do, important to evaluate, and important to keep updated.
The anti-intellectual turn our society has taken recently will doom us as a nation if we don't turn it around soon. I recently read an article in Time where they were talking about the increasing use of personality tests to winnow out "undesirable employees". One of the criteria on one such test is a question about how many books per year you read. If you read more than 10 books per year that is considered an UNDESIRABLE TRAIT. The rationale for this is that if you are reading 10 books per YEAR - PER YEAR, less than one per month - you are "wasting time" that should be spent keeping up to date in your profession.
I guaran-dog-tee you that if you are not reading AT LEAST 10 books per year, you could not POSSIBLY be keeping up with your profession. For dog's sake, I read 10 books in less than a week.
We give a lot of mouth-noises to the idea that we value education in this country, but the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding around here is grossly underdone. Teachers of grades K-12 are overloaded, supplies are not forthcoming, schools staffing is comprised of roughly 45% to 50% teachers where in the 60s fully 60% of staff were teachers. Class sizes are enormous - ideally class sizes in primary school should be about 12 to 15. Not even ALASKA, where it is 15.6 (on average) meets this criteria. The nationwide average is 21 students per teacher, with many states exceeding even that (of course since 21 is an AVERAGE and some will be higher while some will be lower).
They started cutting Latin and foreign languages and arts way back in the '80s, in favor of high school football programs. All sports programs other than intramural sports should be cut from all public schools - they present an inordinate danger of injury to growing children. Football in particular, though basketball is not far behind - knee injuries when you are 15 are not going to get better as you grow older. Then those funds should be used to reinstate academic courses including the arts. Even at the college level, except for a handful of top sports programs like Notre Dame, sports programs cost more than they bring in. They have NO PLACE in grades K-12. Intramural sports and normal gym classes are more than sufficient to teach kids whatever you think it is they learn from sports.
We cannot progress as a society or a nation without a well-educated public. I swear there is a contingent in this country who want to keep us poor, ignorant, and under their thumb. Don't fall for their rhetoric. The best thing we can do for our children is make sure they have the best possible education, and that includes "silly" things like art, music, and literature, as well as sciences.
Football (and other sports) have long been a part of high school. Gale Sayers and Joe Namath graduated from my husband's and my high schools respectively in 1961. My husband's high school also had a stellar basketball team in the 1960s. See: The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central - University of Nebraska Press : Nebraska Press
"The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central
High School Basketball at the '68 Racial Divide
Steve Marantz"
That's not why the arts were dropped in some schools, though that was not the case in my kids' schools, and I don't know where it is happening. Ditto foreign languages, since they seem to be a requirement for many colleges.
So Notre Dame can keep their football program but most of the other colleges have to give theirs up? Frankly I don't like college sports being a farm system for the pros; that is mostly the case in football and basketball.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
All that reading should result in better comprehension. I did not say research should not be done, or that it should be ignored. I said it should not be the basis upon which a parent makes parenting decisions for a specific child. It is useful for academic discussion and further research. It can also be useful setting policy and establishing procedure where they cater to the median, but it does not provide guidance as to what is right for a specific child.
One problem many people have is they decide what the point is before reading something and then their predetermination prevents them from being able to understand the point that is actually there. I think this is happening here, but do not feel bad, it is a common problem. Probably 50% or more do this. (No that is not a study, it is a WAG).
I have no idea what weird place you work that tells you not to read ten books per year. You need to find a new employer. That place has control issues. The number of books you read a year has no bearing on anything at all unless you are not getting your work done because you are reading. Some books are 120 pages long and have pictures. Or you could read the PDR or the OED, not that either one would help you all that much, but you would be crazy to read ten books of that size and dullness a week or even a year. Reading in general is important. Whether you read books or articles, or studies, or something else, is less so. However massive volume of reading does not make you better at anything except maybe reading (or it should anyway).
What really annoys me is an oft purported superiority amongst book worms. "I read more books than you therefore I am better in every way." While reading is important and useful it is not a replacement for doing. If you only read and never do, you will never really learn what anything is actually like. Just theory.
I stay up in my profession just fine and I try to avoid reading any books about my profession (except fiction - I like John Grisham even though his stories are totally inaccurate as to how things work in a courtroom). What I do is not found in a book anywhere and a book is not going to help much with most aspects of it (there are some good books on negotiating and one on writing in plain English that are helpful at the early stages).
I cannot read ten books in a week, I am too busy working. If you are reading ten books in a week, I can guarnatdongdigtee you that you could not work in our company. You are spending too much time reading books. (Unless you do not sleep and have no human relationships outside of work). We need people to do stuff, not to read about doing stuff.
I have a surprise for you. Parenting is not found in a book either. A huge number of the parenting books are very wrong. You could read ten parenting books a day and still be a terrible parent. In fact it is more likely, because you should be focusing on your kids, not on books. They convey theories supported by data from surveys. Not something that works in real life applications with your particular kids. Want proof? Dig into how the author's children are doing. There are some who are doing well. Other would surprise you. Those authors should have spend more time engaging their kids and less time writing books about parenting. A few of the books have some useful information applicable to some but not all kids. The rest belong in the trash can. Kids are not one size fits all. A parent must discern what their kid is like and what works. That discernment does not come from ten books a week, in fact, good parenting is virtually impossible if you are spending all of your free time reading books.
Yes Latin is important. I took three years of it in college thinking it would be useful. It was useful for two things. Our law school had Tshirts that said "Michigan Law - Res Ipsa Loquitur" I was able to discern that was intended to mean "The Thing Speaks For Itself" Of course I also learned that in torts or evidence class. I also learned that no one alive knows how to pronounce Latin. The Church pronounces it one way, academia another. My professor believed the Church Latin was likely more accurate, but no one knows. it is quite important to learn to pronounce words in a dead language that no one knows how to pronounce correctly. Otherwise, Latin was pretty much a waste of time.
Oh btw, I think your caps lock key is malfunctioning. In all your reading OF TEN books every WEEK, have YOU EVER read any BOOK that has RANDOMLY CApITaLIzED words or LeTTerS all over the place? It MAkES it very difficult TO read. That is something you can learn form reading a lot of books.
Well, whadda ya know, we agree on a few things, especially the bold.
Re: bold #2- My local paper once reported on a parenting talk given by a so-called parenting expert. I forget just what parenting mantra he was spouting, but it had to do with getting kids to quit whining in the stores about wanting every darn thing they saw. A reporter challenged the speaker. She played the kid in a store. She said she wanted an expensive truck. The speaker said, "You can have this truck or that truck. You cannot have the truck you want." The reporter said, "Me want THIS truck". After several rounds, the speaker told her, "You're not doing this right". I wish I'd been there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
In Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House there is a story called "Harrison Bergeron." It starts out:
In the story, people were "handicapped" so that they could not excel.
I think many teachers believe in the wrong kind of equality. The equality should be of opportunity, not of result. The fact that my IQ was 79, or moron level, should not have entitled me to any special advantages.
I had no idea Vonnegut was a Libertarian.
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