Re: study of red****rting (late entrance to kndergarten)

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:57:24 -0700 (PDT), Beliavsky
<beliavsky@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>NBER has a new study on the effects of red****rting. The abstract is at
>http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14124
and the full paper at
>http://www.nber.org/~dynarski/Deming_Dynarski_Childhood.pdf
. Overall
>the authors appear negative about it:
>
>"We show that the decreased grade attainment of six-year-olds
>reverberates well beyond the kindergarten classroom. Recent stagnation
>in the high school and college completion rates of young people is
>partly explained by their later start in primary school. The
>relatively late start of boys in primary school explains a small but
>significant ****tion of the rising gender gaps in high school
>graduation and college completion. Increases in the age of legal
>school entry intensify socioeconomic differences in educational
>attainment, since lower-income children are at greater risk of
>dropping out of school when they reach the legal age of school exit."

I am too old for all the red****rting that is currently being done,
but..

Personal experience.  I went to school at 4.  This had to do with
*wanting* to go, a promise from my dad and the local Catholic School's
saying yes.   Academically, I was advanced and had no problem keeping
up.  In elementary school, I was bored enough to read books during
class behind my work and to finish work early.  My elementary school
grades were all As.   In middle school, however, the social scene came
into play and I was a very unhappy kid in junior high.  All the other
girls were into *boys* and I was not.  High school was also an unhappy
time socially, though less so than middle school.  Academically, I
still did well, though I didn't make much effort and consequently was
not in the most advanced cl***** I could have taken.  I graduated HS
just after turning 17 and was very happy to go on to college.  

In the early 70s, I red****rted my son.  He was beyond the cutoff date,
but he was small for his age and socially inept.  He was academically
advanced, but the red****rting did not hurt him because they had
multiage classrooms starting in 1st grade and they were willing to
keep his academics advanced through cross-teaming where necessary.
His elementary school was still miserable, middle school less so and
high school much better socially.  Academically, he had two years of
calculus, AP physics, AP chemistry, AP biology and AP American History
completed in HS.  He took a double major in chemical engineering and
systems science with a minor in economics in 4 years of college and
did quite well.

His sister who was 3 years younger than he was went to K on time.  She
had a good experience in elementary school, a horrible one for the
first year of middle school, then things got better because we
switched her to a school across town.  Her HS experience was pretty
decent and she is still friends with many of the kids she hung around
with in HS.  Academically, she too had no problems.  She graduated and
went to college and did well there too.

My granddaughter was one of the youngest in her K class, but her best
friend is about 6 months older than she is and he was red****rted (he
made the cutoff, but has a December birthday.  So far she is doing
well, but we will see as she gets older.

I do think that these things are individual and depend a lot on the
particular child.  I tend to believe in red****rting for social
reasons, but not for academics.  That's just my personal opinion and
experience of the *beast.*


-- 
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits