Positive benefits of delaying kindergarten.

While the push at the Minnesota state legislature is to get kids into institutional education at earlier and earlier ages, 3 and 4, here's a WCCO news story and Rand Corporation study suggesting delaying kindergarten has significant educational benefits.

Here's a link to the WCCO story.

Is five too young for kindergarten?

Some parents now think six is the magic age for starting school, especially for boys.

Take Edina.

More than half the boys there with summer birthdays don’t go to kindergarten until they are six years old.

The same holds true for only 20 percent of the girls.

In kindergarten classes at Edina’s Highlands Elementary there is often more than a year difference in students’ ages.

Veteran teacher Katie Oberle says emotional readiness is the most important factor parents should consider when deciding when to send a child to school. She said,

“It’s sharing, it’s being able to follow directions, it’s being able to communicate,” she said.

As for why parents make the call for boys and not girls, Oberle says boys, as a group, often trail in key areas.

“Boys tend to be…a little less mature, but it mostly tends to be in their verbal language skills,” Oberle says.

Studies on the topic differ.

A 2006 University of California study says children who are older in kindergarten do better. They are placed in more advanced classes, and that advantage just builds as they get older.

 According to the Rand Corporation study:

Entering Kindergarten Later Significantly Boosts Test Scores at Entry

To understand the cognitive effects of entering kindergarten later, Datar looked at academic achievement as measured by math and reading test scores on standardized tests. The results indicate that delaying kindergarten entrance is associated with a significant increase in math and reading scores at kindergarten entry. A one-year delay in kindergarten entrance increases math and reading scores by 6 points and more than 5 points, respectively. Also, the findings suggest that previous studies that failed to account for the selection bias underestimate the effect of delaying kindergarten age.

Benefits Do Not Fade and Are Even Greater for Disadvantaged Children

As noted earlier, there is concern that any positive benefits may not persist and that forcing disadvantaged children to wait a year may thus be counter-productive. However, as the figure shows, these concerns seem unfounded.

Scores on standardized tests administered at two time points — once at the start of kindergarten and again at the end of first grade — were examined. The dots reflect the mean score for children entering at either age 5 or 6; as discussed earlier, we see that children entering later do better. The x’s reflect the gain in the test score across the two assessment periods. We find that the initial advantage not only persists but in fact increases by half a point in math and by a point in reading during the first two years in school. This suggests that delaying kindergarten entrance has a positive effect on test score gains in the early school years.

The figure also shows that the benefits of delaying kindergarten are even greater for children from poor families. Delaying kindergarten entrance from age 5 to age 6 increases the math and reading test score gains among poor children — the distance between the dots and the x’s. This is most notable in looking at math score gains — poor children entering at age 5 have almost no gain, while those entering at age 6 have a noticeable gain — but it is also true for reading scores. By contrast, both younger and older entrants from families that are not poor gain the same amount across testing periods.

Other studies, writings I've seen suggest that the academic benefits of delaying kindergarten disappear by the 3rd grade.  That's similar to the academic results of kids who attend preschool programs and all day kindergarten compared to students who don't.  It's a wash by the third grade as well.  If that's the case, then the added cost savings of students not attending kindergarten is a net plus.  I suspect another benefit is kids who delay kindergarten are better able to cope with the negative influences they encounter in an institutional learning setting.  (Other studies point to the more aggressive, anti-social behavior the more time kids spend in preschool programs.) 

The Minnesota legislature, in it's one size fits all approach to education, is pouring millions into incentivizing parents to put their children into preschool and all day kindergarten.  They may just be moving in the direction an increasing number of parents prefer not to go.

No surprise: Study links sex on TV to teen pregnancies

A study by the Rand Corporation says there's link between teenagers watching sex on TV with pregnancy.

The RAND Corp. study is the first of its kind to identify a link between teenagers’ exposure to sexual content on TV and teen pregnancies. The study, released Monday and published in the November edition of the journal Pediatrics, found that teens exposed to high levels of sexual content on television were twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy in the following three years as teens with limited exposure.

The study’s authors are quick to point out that the factors leading to teen pregnancies are varied and complex — but they say it’s important for parents, teachers and pediatricians to understand that TV can be one of them.

“We were surprised to find this link,” said Anita Chandra, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. “But teens spend a good amount of their time watching television — an average of three hours a day — and we don’t know a lot about its impact on their health decisions …

“We don’t think that [TV] is necessarily more significant than some of the family and neighborhood factors that can lead to teen pregnancies. But even when we removed all the other factors, we still saw a compelling link between a high exposure to sexual content on television and teen pregnancies.”

In the debate over pornography and obscenity laws, opponents argue there's no linkage with the sexual abuse of women and other social problems resulting from out of control sex. I've always found these arguments to defy common sense. If advertisers spend millions and billions of dollars for 30 second ads or print ads in newspapers to influence behavior then why should we assume there's no linkage between sexually violent and other forms of pornography with such social problems as rape, abuse and promiscuity.

Now there's evidence suggesting that sexual messages and scenes on television impact teenagers. Again common sense would say there's a linkage between sex on TV and teen pregnancies.

What should be done about it? Of course parents need to teach and train their kids to be discerning TV viewers, yet that doesn't go far enough. Because sexually explicit material is so ubiquitous and pervasive in society and impacting not just on teenagers but adults, it's appropriate for standards to be implemented regarding acceptable and unacceptable content. Exactly what was done for so many years on television and the movies.

Of course, that's unacceptable with the anything goes mentality of so many in society.

What's the response of the National Association of Broadcasting? They released a statement saying:

Though NAB has not had a chance to review the report, it’s worth noting that broadcasters encourage parents and caregivers to use the V-chip and other program blocking technologies that would screen out shows that are inappropriate for children. We would also point out that broadcast television is generally far less explicit than programming found on cable, satellite and on the Internet.”

In other words, they don't want any further restrictions or self police the content and messaging on the network programs.

I think sex saturated messages are a form of cultural pollution which harms people in just as real ways as environmental pollution. It damages and destroys lives and relationships. Just ask a family or a teenager what the impact of an unplanned, out of wedlock teen pregnancy had on their lives.

Yet in today's society, anything hinting at moral standards is immediately ignored or dismissed. We as people and a society are poorer as a result.