School Success And Age Of Entry Into Kindergarten For English Language Learners PDF Download

The purpose of this study was to investigate the issue of whether or not kindergarten entrance age makes a difference in school success. Some parents delay their child's kindergarten entrance. Students whose kindergarten entrance was delayed are one year or more older than peers in the same classroom, which may give them an advantage (through advanced development) or a disadvantage (through delayed exposure to academics). This study fills a gap in the current literature because it used a longitudinal design and examined the difference in scores over time with the consideration over potential covariates. The specific research questions were: Are there academic advantages in delaying a child's kindergarten entrance as evidenced by academic assessments in third grade, fifth grade, and eighth grade after taking potential covariates into account? Secondly, do students whose kindergarten entrance was delayed, exhibit different behaviors in kindergarten after controlling for potential covariates? This study used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), Kindergarten (K) Class of 1998-1999 dataset to answer the research questions. The ECLS-K is a large-scale and longitudinal dataset providing nationally representative and generalizable data from approximately 16,000 kindergarten students. Analysis of covariance was used to answer the two research questions. The data analysis to answer the first research question examined the change over time in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge assessments administered in grades kindergarten, first, third, fifth, and eighth. The second research question examined change over time in problematic behaviors as reported by the teacher. The results of this study determined that children whose kindergarten entrance was delayed had an initial advantage in kindergarten in reading, mathematics, general knowledge, and they had fewer problematic behaviors. However, the younger students had a significantly steeper slope of learning. The consideration of covariates did not affect the results. The findings of this study have implications regarding delaying a child's kindergarten entrance, policy decisions, teachers' delivery of instruction, and curricular expectations in early childhood classrooms.