The Relationship of Delayed Entrance at School Entry to Academic Achievement and to Placement Rates in Special Education

The issue of when children should enter school to ensure later academic success continues to be of concern to educators, administrators, and parents. Numerous studies investigating the age effects on achievement of the youngest and oldest students within a grade have found some achievement differences in favor of the older students. The differences are usually not evident after the primary grades. The practice of voluntarily delaying a child\u27s entrance to kindergarten, to avoid being the youngest within a grade, has become more commonplace in the past few years. The present study, modeled after a previous study, compared 74 delayed entrants (those who were age six when entering school) to 189 young entrants (those who were age five when entering school) in grades three, six, and nine, on the variables of academic achievement as measured by the SRA Survey of Basic Skills, and on rates of placement in special education. Results from the present study reveal significant differences on three achievement measures (composite, reading, and language) between the delayed and young entrants in favor of the young entrants. No significant results were found between the delayed and young entrants for placement rates in special education. The issues related to delaying entrance to school were discussed