Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Frequency of grade-skipping in the U.S.

The U.S. Census collects data on school enrollment by age, and the file

http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/2009/tab02-01.xls
Table 2. Single Grade of Enrollment and High School Graduation Status for People 3 Years Old and Over, by Sex, Age (Single Years for 3 to 24 Years), Race, and Hispanic Origin: October 2009

tells you that 78,000 3-year-olds were enrolled in KG in 2009 (compared to 3,068,000 5-year-olds). Similar data is given up through the first two years of graduate school.

Not sure what to do with this data, just think it is interesting.

But no 4-year-olds in 1st grade. Interesting.

That is interesting data.

I wonder, though, if the reason for not including additional data (represented in the table as "-") is... insufficient numbers?

The reason that I mention that is that I know that those numbers are not zero. I know this because DD is in one of those empty boxes. Er-- or 'was' in the 2009-2010 school year, anyway, which would have been her 8th grade year.

She was ten-- so does this mean that there were less than a thousand students like her in that census year?

Ahh-- nevermind. I found the footnote. That symbol means that the value rounds to zero (in thousands, presumably). So there were fewer than 501 students in any of those categories.

Particularly fascinating is 15 yo cohort-- there were significant numbers of those students at all collegiate levels, apparently, because there were enough of them to produce a "1" for college juniors, and a "12" (again, both in thousands, or rounding to that value in thousands, more properly) in first-year post-graduate programs.

I find that fascinating, particularly since the earlier values would not seem to support those kinds of numbers. Perhaps those PG students were never enrolled in regular schools when they were younger?

That makes some sense to me, given the barriers that we've encountered just in practical terms in having a child who has been accelerated out of the two-sigma distribution roughly apparent in the numbers for K through 12. If we were to have opted for an additional acceleration (which academically was a possibility), it would have stretched the fit to the breaking point in a couple of other areas. So at that point, homeschool or other alternative schooling begins to look like the most realistic and reasonable solution.

It would be fascinating to know, though, where those 12K kids in first-year graduate studies actually came from.

I'd bet significantly more than my traditional shiny new nickel that virtually every one of those 78,000 kids are "parent misunderstood the question" or other data quality issues.

A good chunk of the apparently-young-for-grade kids may be in California, or other late-cutoff states. The December 31 cutoff (vs August / September in much of the country) means that a 5yo-in-October 1st grader hasn't been skipped.

I'm quite surprised (to the extent that believing data quality is a significant concern) that 1-2% of kids in every grade from 2nd on up are either double-skipped or single-skipped in a state with a late cutoff.

My children went to a Catholic school where the year before 1st grade was labeled K2 and the year before that K1, instead of "preschool". Many of the 78,000 3yo kids are probably in preschool labeled as "Kindergarten 1".

K1 in the Boston public schools is described at http://www.countdowntokindergarten.org/bpsoverview.html .

ETA: Boston has a small number of "K0" seats "primarily for three-year-old children with special needs, but there are some general education seats in K0 classrooms so that the classes can be integrated."

I'm guessing that is most common in the NE United States and in the northern tier. That is like the Canadian system, by the way, where 3yo children are routinely placed in "JK," classes, meaning "junior kindergarten, year one." Those kids are not really 'accelerated' at all, but that would reflect an ambiguity in the way the question is asked. It's the rough equivalent of "preschool" here in most of the United States.

Between our local age cut-off (Dec 31, not sept), and that we have 2 yrs kindergarten, and that red-shirting is effectively illegal, I found a LOT of stuff on here really confusing for a while. DS7mo, when he's supposed to start full day kindergarten, will be 3 yrs 8 mos. You can immagine how it seems strange to think about starting a kid a year early with our system!

Oh, and by the time he starts, it will be full-day kindy, too. Not half days.

Thanks for posting, Bostonian.

It looks like about 1% of each cohort is double-skipped (or maybe single-skipped with a very late birthday) -- I would not have guessed it was that high. It looks like the frequency has grown over time.

The 12,000 15-yr-old graduate students who come from nowhere are also interesting. That can't all be people who don't understand the form, can it?

Data that was from the schools themselves would be better. The NCES seems a likely source, but I could not find it quickly.

Here is the same CPS data for Oct 2000:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/2000/tab02.txt

Here it is for 1981:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/1981/tab15.pdf

Double skipping seems to have become a lot more common.


Other years can be found here:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/index.html

and here:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/previous/index.html

Ah, the next to last link you provided gives us useful additional information. The October 2010 data was derived from 54,000 households, and extrapolated out to 293 million people, of whom about 91 million were ages 3-25. If you figure 2 kids in that age range per household, 100,000 actual kids get projected onto 90 million total kids. Each kid surveyed equates to 900 projected kids. So it only takes a couple of wrong answers to get a number on the chart. (Alternatively, it only takes a couple of extreme outliers to generate "accurate" data that isn't properly representative of the population.)

There were 7,000 projected 15yo first year grad students from the October 2010 data. But in October 2009, the most-advanced 14yos were only in 11th grade - and there were 12,000 of them. So unless half the 14yo 11th graders skip senior year and the entirety of college, and go straight to grad school, then yes, I think there are a non-trivial number of people who misunderstand the form (or for whom the interviewer records the wrong answer).

There were 14,000 projected 16yo first and second year grad students in October 2010. But in October 2009, there were only 15,000 15yo first-year college students (and no 15yos with higher standing).

As another data point, in 2009, there were 342,000 black grad students in the US, according to the Department of Education. (http://thefreshxpress.com/2011/06/new-african-american-graduate-enrollment-statistics-released/) The Census data reports 479,000 black grad students - 0.8% (4,000) of whom were 15 years old, and none of whom were 16-19. (It looks to me from the tables by race that white people misrepresent grad school status at higher rates, but I couldn't find a second source of that population size online - and I really think that if anyone believed 1% of black grad students were 15 years old, it would be all over the press. Particularly when a 15yo college graduate of any race tends to attract some press.)

My guess as to the misunderstanding is "first year of graduate school vs first year of high school."

Likewise, my guess as to many of the "wow, look at all the kids who double-skip" is a misunderstanding of "grade in school" vs "years in school."

I also suspect that there aren't really 10,000 40-somethings actively enrolled in 6th grade. (As opposed to "dropped out of school in or after 6th grade.")

Ahhhhh.. interesting. So a single incorrect answer gets amplified by an additive factor of 0.9 in the chart itself.


It's pretty easy to see that it wouldn't take too many errors of understanding (or entry) to give some pretty odd results.


Alternatively, if those 14yo's (assuming for a moment that this value is reasonably accurate) were taking AP coursework... then second year post-secondary makes a fair degree of sense the following fall (since they may well have been considered non-freshman via credit accumulation).

It's still probably inaccurate, since I doubt seriously that there are that many 14yo's taking that many AP courses and graduating 3 years ahead of their age cohort. I seriously doubt that they or their parents would misconstrue "graduate" school as "post-secondary" but you never know. It's probably where at least a few of those answers come from.

There are people (generally quite low SES and educational attainment) who don't even really understand that there is schooling beyond college, so "graduate" to them automatically means 'high school.'