“You can’t start school at 7 years old. You can’t make that time up.”
So says Missouri state legislator Ian Mackey, from St. Louis County. Rep. Mackey is a lawyer, but he has experience as an early childhood educator, both here in the Ozarks, where he was raised, and while earning his JD. He appears to be a strong advocate for quality education, which is pleasing to see in the state legislature.
In January, Mackey introduced a bill to lower the mandatory age for beginning school in Missouri from 7 to 5. (More details on ‘mandatory age’ below). The bill is not currently on the legislative calendar, but let’s examine the issue.
Mackey is convinced that starting school at 7 puts a child “behind” after which they are “not going to catch up. Evidence and experience demonstrate that a child’s early years are formative for their long-term development.”
I will agree with that last phrase wholeheartedly, but there are so many more factors to a child’s long-term development than academic ones. One of those factors is a child’s ‘readiness’ to start school, which is not determined by age alone.
I am willing to believe Mackey’s goals are well-intentioned, but I question his logic – and his evidence. At least a couple of important pieces of information need to be considered.
(1) Important clarifications about mandatory age requirement
In Missouri, it is only required that parents and guardians enroll students in public/private schools (or state their intentions to home-school) by age 7 at the latest. This is an upper limit only.
A child may start school (kindergarten) earlier if they have turned 5 by the first day of school. This is the more traditional age we are probably used to. The 5 to 7 window gives parents some time and discretion in school-starting decisions. This window seems like a very wise thing.
Mackey’s bill would have lowered that upper limit to 5 rather than 7, essentially closing that discretionary window completely. Parents, who theoretically have a better idea of their own child’s readiness, would have little, if any, control in the matter.
(2) The research doesn’t necessarily agree with Mackey’s (uncited) “evidence and experience”. Indeed, it can suggest exactly the opposite.
In a 2017 study out of Stanford University, for example, investigators Thomas Dee and Hans Henrik Sievertsen found that children whose parents waited to enroll them in kindergarten by age 6 (instead of 5) had “measurably better scores on tests of self-control by the time they were 7 and 11. [This study found kids] who started kindergarten a year later than average students had 73% better scores on tests of their hyperactivity and inattention four years later.”
(To me, this can’t help but lead to more and better learning, which in turn, allows students to ‘catch up’ to any perceived gaps caused by starting later.)
Further, as pointed out in the article (https://www.businessinsider.com/school-start-age-2017-3), schools in Nordic countries typically don’t start as early as we do.
“In Finland, for example, it isn’t uncommon for kids to begin formal schooling at age 8. Much of their childhood is spent either at home or in a form of pre-kindergarten, where the biggest emphases are on playtime and social skills. Traditional subjects don’t enter the picture until later.
The approach seems to pay off, and well past their 11th birthdays. Students in Finland (and other Nordic countries) are some of the top-performing nations in the annual PISA education rankings though they do still lag behind many of the academic-intensive countries in Asia.”
I am pleased to have a legislator with educational experience in Jefferson City, and we can applaud his laudable priorities of quality education for all students. But perhaps we need to think twice before closing the age/readiness window for starting school.
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