  Two families among my neighbors will be holding their kids back, so I can attest that this trend is pretty strong.
This is a great article, that presents both sides, but really says parents shouldn't do it. Here are the highlights, but go read it all if you have the time because it covers other good considerations regarding school and kids approaching school age. urlLink The New York Times > Education Life > Older (but Smarter? ) : "But just as significant is the trend of holding back preschoolers who aren't struggling at all.
To provide what some believe to be an academic edge in today's competitive classrooms, or even an athletic foot up, many parents postpone their children's entry into kindergarten so they are older in the grade than their peers. When that happens, the age gap within one class is often 16 months or more. ''I understand why parents don't want their child to be that much younger and I feel for them,'' Mrs. Vogelsperger said. ''Teachers can teach within a 12-month span and address the needs of their students,'' she explained.
''But if there's a 16-month gap there's such a wide range of capabilities that it becomes more difficult to teach.''... " ..."Whatever slight academic advantages older students might have in the early years typically evaporate by third grade, experts say. In a 2002 report, Deborah Stipek, dean of the School of Education at Stanford, found that existing research showed that on average older children did not academically outperform their younger peers.
Nor are there social or emotional benefits to being older in the grade, her own research has found. ''It's one of the conventional wisdoms that take hold in our society that parents are giving their children a great advantage if they're older,'' she said. ''But there's real data out there showing that for most children that's not true, and parents should know there's a downside if their children are intellectually capable of handling kindergarten. '' For one, older children who are ready for a more challenging program can become bored and misbehave in class.
Dr. Robert S. Byrd, a pediatrician at the University of California Davis Medical Center, analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics for 9,079 children ages 7 to 17. He found that teenagers who were older in their grade because they had started school late were twice as likely to have behavior problems as classmates who had entered at the usual age.
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