Harvard University economist John Friedman says he and a group of colleagues found that students who progress during their kindergarten year from attaining an average score on the Stanford Achievement Test to attaining a score in the 60th percentile can expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than students whose scores remain average.
Students who learn more in kindergarten are more likely to go to college than students with similar backgrounds. Those who learn more in kindergarten are also less likely to become single parents, more likely to own a home by age 28 and more likely to save for retirement earlier in their work lives.
“Kindergarten interventions matter a great deal for long-term outcomes,” said Friedman. “For instance, being in a smaller class for two years increases the probability of attending college by 2 percent.
“We find that both smaller class sizes and teachers with more experience improve long-term outcomes,” he said. “We believe that other teacher characteristics, as well as various characteristics of a student’s peers, also have significant impacts on later life outcomes, but the data did not allow us to measure those effects well.”
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