Is Delayed School Entry Harmful for Children With Disabilities? Evidence From North Carolina

• In Event: Academics in the Earliest Years of Formal Schooling: Building Evidence for Policy and Practice

Abstract

Objective

In recent years, increasing numbers of parents have been choosing to delay their child’s entry into kindergarten, commonly referred to as “redshirting”. In addition, several states have increased their age cutoffs for kindergarten entry, requiring that children be at least five years old at the start of kindergarten. This trend has been influenced by both evidence suggesting positive effects of entering school at an older age, and marked increases in educational accountability. However results of research on the effects of age at school entry are equivocal, including evidence that delaying entry to school may be detrimental for children, especially for at-risk populations. Indeed, there exists a strong empirical basis for early educational interventions for impoverished children and children with special needs (Yoshikawa et al., 2013).

Data and methods

We use recent (2006-2014) statewide micro-level census data from North Carolina, including student’s exact birthdates and information from kindergarten through 3rd grade to examine differences in the incidence and type of disability designations amongst children who enter kindergarten on time and those who are redshirted, and test for differences in student achievement on reading and mathematics exams at the end of 3rd grade by disability designation. North Carolina public schools use ten specific disability designations: Autism Spectrum disorders, Deaf-Blind, Deaf & Hard of Hearing, Emotional, Intellectual, Significant Cognitive, Specific Learning, Speech-Language Impairments, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Visual Impairments. We also estimate selection models to test whether parents’ decisions to delay their child’s entry into kindergarten are associated with the type or severity of children’s later designated disability. We include student, classroom, and school-level covariates, along with district-level fixed effects to account for differences in disability testing policies.

Results and implications

Preliminary results indicate that redshirted students were overwhelmingly more likely to be designated by their school as having a disability - up to 2.8 times the risk of being designated as disabled. Furthermore, students who were both redshirted and disabled were associated with significantly lower math and reading achievement (0.2 SD) at the end of 3rd grade compared with disabled children who entered kindergarten on time.
Our study has several important policy implications. First, this study will provide information on whether test score outcomes for disabled redshirted students vary substantially across categories of disability. If certain disability categories are more negatively related to third grade outcomes, these findings could facilitate targeted dissemination of the negative effects of redshirting and the importance of on-time school enrollment for children within the categories of disability associated with diminished outcomes. Finally, this can help to inform state-level implementation of IDEA services. Preliminary results indicate that children with disabilities are better off starting elementary school as soon as they are eligible rather than spending an additional year “redshirted”, thereby delaying kindergarten entry. Results also highlight the role of public schools in delivering services to children with disabilities.

Authors

• Kevin Fortner, Georgia State University

• Jade Jenkins, University of California - Irvine