According to Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, the authors of Nurture Shock, the conventional wisdom has been that in a given grade, the older children score better than younger students. As a result as many as one in five parents "redshirt" their children in kindergarten by waiting to enroll them so that they will be the eldest in the class rather than the youngest.
Family, not age, is what matters
According to UC Santa Barbara’s Kathy Bedard and Elizabeth Dhuey, "the oldest kids in eighth grade in the U.S. were ranking 4 to 8 percent higher than the youngest children in that grade." However Bronson and Merryman point to the work of scholars from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Kasey Buckley and Daniel M. Hungerman, who discovered slight differences in the seasons of the year that poor women and wealthy women give birth. Bronson and Merryman conclude:
The Nurture Shock authors further cite researchers Todd Elder and Darren H. Lubotsky who "found the driving variable wasn’t how old the kids were, but how prepared the kids were by their preschool, day care, and home environment. The better-prepared kids learned more."So it turns out those fourth and eighth graders aren’t doing better just because they’re a few months older. They’re doing better because more of them are born to mothers who are affluent, college-educated, married, and white.
Combined, the seasonal birth pattern explains at least half the achievement gap between the oldest and youngest kids in class. That 4-point advantage is more like a 2-point advantage. (Should Children Redshirt Kindergarten?)
The Bottom Line
What does all of this mean in a single sentence? How well a child performs in school depends on the family into which she was born and how well her parents prepare her for life-long learning. Is it possible that we should spend less time poring over research, and more time talking, reading, exploring, and playing games with our kids?
