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Forced to Redshirt: Quasi-Experimental Impacts of Delayed Kindergarten Entry

We provide causal estimates of the effects of delayed kindergarten entry on achievement outcomes by exploiting a policy change in the birthdate enrollment cutoff in North Carolina that forced children born in a six-week window to redshirt. Using multiple peer group comparisons, we identify impacts on achievement and gifted or disability identifications in third through fifth grades. Delayed entry provides small benefits to students’ math and reading achievement, and reduced identification of a disability; these impacts operate through cohort position and age advantages, and not from hold-out year experiences. Redshirting differentially benefitted low-income students, but further disadvantaged non-white students.

Keywords
Redshirting, Relative Age, Kindergarten entry, achievement
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/mb5s-p142

EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:

Jenkins, Jade M., and C. Kevin Fortner. (). Forced to Redshirt: Quasi-Experimental Impacts of Delayed Kindergarten Entry. (EdWorkingPaper: 19-120). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/mb5s-p142

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