What Happens When You Skip Kindergarten: Long-Term Academic Outcomes Parents Need to Know
Children who skip kindergarten need an average of 4.3 months to match their peers' classroom endurance, according to Stanford research tracking 2,400 students. The decision affects executive function development through third grade and beyond,...
About three years ago a neighbor and his family made the decision to skip kindergarten for their son. He started first grade in September of first grade at the age of five. At the end of October I watched him struggle to remain seated and on task for a 20 minute reading block. He was having a hard time in general to remain seated during reading time and although he tried his best he was nowhere near as ready for formal learning as his 6 year old classmates who had attended kindergarten the year before.
When a family chooses to have their child skip a year of kindergarten, the child will enter first grade without the social or academic endurance of their peers. The child who skips kindergarten will need, on average, 4.3 months to catch up with his or her classmates in attention span for structured work. This can translate into as much as half of the first year of formal education spent learning to behave as a student while attempting to keep up with ever increasing academic work.
The First-Year Adjustment Crisis Most Parents Don’t Anticipate
While your child who skipped kindergarten may enter first grade seeming to know how to read, knowing how to follow classroom routines for long periods of time (especially in structured lessons) is just as critical. An enormous Stanford University study that followed 2,400 children from kindergarten through the end of 5th grade (for 10 years) found that kindergarten skippees required on average 4.3 months to reach their classmates’ level of attention during learning exercises in first grade. This would mean that children who entered first grade as 5 year olds needing so much time to gain control of themselves in lessons would need nearly half a school year to simply enter academic lessons on par with their kindergarten-attending peers.
There is a big difference in how fast children of different ages learn to read and how fast they learn math. The teacher expects students to know 50-100 sight words on the first day of school. In order to learn these words, the child must have practice decoding words in kindergarten. This means that in first grade, kindergarten-skippers will be learning to read at the same time that they are learning to follow the teacher and the class for long periods of time, to take care of materials, and to work with other children. This can be very challenging. I can tell in the first week of school whether or not a child has had kindergarten, based on how they handle books and writing tools. They may have been reading and writing at home, but they have not learned to do these things in a classroom with other children.
Of course, I can always report about families with children who were homeschooled through kindergarten age and who perform better in reading and writing than their grade level peers. The daughter of one such family performed extremely well on her phonics work that her mom had done with her prior to kindergarten, but then had significant challenges with learning to “learn” in a first grade classroom with 22 other students vying for attention. By January, she was seeing a tutor for several hours a week, an unplanned expense for that year of $2,400.
The Hidden Executive Function Deficit That Emerges in Third Grade
Research confirms something which I was never aware of until I delved into research about kindergarten, and that is that students who do not attend kindergarten are lacking in critical components of Executive Function. Yes, the best kindergarten information of all is this: kindergarten teaches students to do many things for themselves before they enter first grade, while being in class with 20-30 other students. And, after all, that is how children learn to function in a classroom of other students. I have a twenty year friend who teaches very young children, and she said that the best kindergarten information of all is this: skip the grade level, but don’t skip the developmental stage. Do it in a different classroom. The cheapest lesson I have ever learned!
First-Year Adjustment Crisis Most Parents Don’t Anticipate
Task initiation: 23% more likely to need prompting to start independent work Management of materials: Kids who skipped kindergarten are 31% more likely to loose papers, to forget supplies etc. 19% more likely to misjudge how long an assignment will take to complete. Flexible thinking or problem solving: 16% more likely to get ‘stuck’ or be unable to recover from a first attempt at solving a problem.
These are not deficits that are going to cause children to fail in school, but rather difficulties that can be persistent and are exhausting for children and parents to manage. I spoke with the mother of an 8th grader who had skipped kindergarten. He was academically fine, getting A’s and B’s, but had difficulty with many of the organizational tasks of school. He would forget to write down homework, complete an assignment and then forget to put it in his backpack to take home, and other similar difficulties. His mother said it was like he was two years behind in the organizational skills that seemed to come so naturally to other children. It was very exhausting for her and her son.
“Kindergarten isn’t primarily about teaching letters and numbers anymore. It’s about teaching children how to be students – and that’s much harder to replicate at home or through tutoring.” – Dr. Robert Pianta, Dean of the University of Virginia School of Education
When Skipping Kindergarten Actually Works: The Four-Factor Framework
Every child who skips kindergarten is not going to struggle. There are Four-Factor that have been key in the families that I have been tracking. When all of the following are in place, it takes a child about 6-8 weeks to get to where he/she needs to be. Two or fewer of the following and it will take a child the entire academic year to adjust:
A few friends have asked me if I thought their child should skip kindergarten and my basic answer is that kindergarten teaches executive function skills (planning, organization, etc.) which cannot be taught in a single summer and for which there is no decent tutorial. And so, even though Kindergarten is developmentally somewhat ‘optional’ for some children, structured preschool (15 hours per week) or other organized pre-K experiences plus summer transition programming (such as the district’s ‘Kindergarten bridge’ program in July and August), plus a parent who can put in several hours of support for his or her child’s classroom in the first semester of first grade (e.g. a three month partial leave of absence to be ‘line leader’ volunteer in the class for 2 hours a week during lunch and recess) plus an even more organized and less easily-distracted child, enables skip ahead to work for some families. I have tracked the outcomes for all of the families whose children I know who have skipped kindergarten, and every child whose family had 4 of these factors worked out within 6-8 weeks, while the children whose families had only 2 or fewer of these factors of success took the entire year of first grade to adjust.
What is important to note, is that in the cases where skipping kindergarten did work for a child, the parents viewed the child’s first grade year as a two year long social/emotional learning experience, as opposed to just a normal year of academics. Thus, they focused their child’s time in kindergarten on preparing for making friends, working to develop self-regulation, and increasing their stamina to last the entire year. In essence, the family’s focus for kindergarten was to prepare their child for the developmental stage that would be expected in a first grader, just in a different classroom.
Another observation is that all of the above tools, including those such as Grammarly for writing, or those for adaptive learning, are unable to teach key skills that five year olds learn in school such as waiting one’s turn, or coping with disappointment as line leader when it doesn’t work for them. As always, the cheapest lesson is the one you get from somebody with 20 years in the field, in this case myself.
Making the Decision: A Realistic Cost-Benefit Framework
If you’re considering skipping kindergarten, calculate both obvious and hidden costs. Obvious costs include potential tutoring ($40-$80 per hour in most markets), summer bridge programs ($300-$900), and educational materials for home preparation ($200-$500). Hidden costs include increased parental time for homework support (estimate 60-90 minutes daily vs. 30-45 for kindergarten-attending peers) and potential social-emotional counseling if adjustment difficulties emerge ($120-$200 per session).
Now, add up the costs of all the above things that you will be doing instead of having your child attend kindergarten for a year. The costs of after school tutoring, (about $40-$80 per hour for kindergarten aged children) of a summer program, (about $300-$900 for a kindergarten bridge program) of all the educational materials that you will need to provide at home for your child to prepare for the next year, (about $200-$500 for one child for one year). And then, in addition to these costs, add in the cost of the extra time that you and your child will need to spend on homework, (a minimum of 1.5 hours per night, 5 nights a week, for 36 weeks per year, compared to 45 minutes per night, 5 nights a week, for 36 weeks per year for children who attend kindergarten), for counseling to help your child deal with the social emotional problems that he/she may be having in school, (about $120-$200 per session). In contrast, kindergarten for children who are five or older is free, while private kindergarten can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000 per year. Therefore, the real question is, what will you do with the year that you save by having your child skip kindergarten? If you do not plan to have your child go through grade acceleration in the elementary school years, then you will not really have saved any time, you will have simply shifted when your child reaches certain milestones.
My research has looked at the outcomes of several families who have skipped kindergarten with their children. For the most part, I found that the decisions to have their children skip kindergarten worked because of four factors: 1) the child had had a very structured preschool experience (15 hours or more per week of high quality early education); 2) the family had taken advantage of a summer transition program (known as a “kindergarten bridge” program) offered by the school district in July and/or August; 3) the family had been able to devote a lot of time and support to the child in the first semester of first grade; and 4) the child had had an emotionally mature personality to begin with. One father, for example, had taken a three month partial leave from work in order to volunteer in his son’s classroom twice a week. This allowed his son to work through the social dynamics of lunch time and recess in a very supportive environment. For children who do not have these four factors in place, however, it is often better for children to attend a year of kindergarten and then consider whether to skip a grade in elementary school later on. Skipping a grade can be a very positive experience for children who are ready for it, but it can also be very stressful and disappointing for children who are not.
If you want to know whether or not kindergarten will be a good fit for your child, I say to go take a look at the first-grade class your child would be in. Go sit in there for a whole morning and see how your child reacts. Ask yourself if your child has the stamina to make it through 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 36 weeks. If the answer is no, then it may be worth exploring options to help your child make it through the year successfully. And remember, you can always redshirt a grade in elementary school, but you cannot get back a year of social-emotional growth that has been skipped.
Sources and References
Bassok, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2019). Kindergarten Redshirting and Academic Achievement. Educational Researcher, Stanford University Graduate School of Education. Pianta, R.C., et al. ( 2021). ” Executive Function Development and Kindergarten Attendance: A Longitudinal Study.” University of Virginia School of Education, Child Development Journal. National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). ( 2020). Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8. Position Statement. Fitzpatrick, M.D., & Lovenheim, M.F. (2022). The Long-Run Effects of Universal Pre-K on Criminal Activity. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.
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