In Pasco County, Florida, parents don’t like “new behavior expectation charts that suggest conforming to peer pressure is positive, and that running in school is anarchy,” reports Jeffrey Solochek for the Tampa Bay Times. The superintendent has put the new behavior system on hold. The chart was posted in a kindergarten class, writes Peter Greene in a Curmudgucation post on “five-year-old anarchists.” “Equating considerate, compliant and conforms is just bizarre,” he writes. A

Compulsory education laws should be repealed argues Republican Paul Mosley, a first-year Arizona legislator and the father of seven. People used to see education as a privilege, he told the Arizona Capitol Times. “Now we basically force it down everybody’s throats. . . . the kids who don’t want to be there are a larger distraction to the kids who do want to be there.” “A dozen states are trying to keep children in school longer, from making kindergarten mandatory to raising t

“Redshirting” five-year-olds may do more harm than good, concludes a study published in Education Next. The academic advantages of being older disappear by high school, write Diane Schanzenbach, a Northwestern education professor, and Stephanie Larson, director of Rose Hall Montessori School in Wilmette, Illinois. “Redshirted children can be educationally and socially harmed by being with others who are performing and behaving at lower developmental levels.” Younger students

Kids who wait a year to start kindergarten show significant long-term benefits, concludes a Stanford study of Danish children. “Delaying kindergarten for one year reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73 percent for an average child at age 11,” reported co-author Thomas Dee, a Stanford education professor. Lower levels of inattention and hpyeractivity correlated with higher academic achievement. About 20 percent of U.S. children start kindergarten at age six instead of age