Later School Start Time Essay Example
Today the average high school student wakes up at 6am and starts school at 7:30am. Many teenagers go to school sleep deprived, which is surprisingly normal at this point. Coming from a high school student’s point of view, it's exhausting to wake up so early every morning in the midst of winter after hours of homework the day before and go to school. With sports, extracurriculars, and work students barely have time to do the piles of homework for their seven classes resulting in time taken away from their sleep. Both the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics say that middle and high schools should begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. As a matter of fact many studies show that schools that start later improve student’s academic performance, physical health, attention span, and etc. High schools should delay their start times by at least two hours in order for students to be well rested, to improve their attention span, as well as improve their academic performance.
Many studies have shown that teenager’s brains don’t fully function until about 10am. According to Baltimore sun ,“Teenagers brains' developmental time does not start until 10 or 11 in the morning. This is the same reason why adults can get up at 6 a.m. and hit the ground running — adults developmental time starts earlier.” Teenager’s brains and bodies aren’t developed and functioning up to where an adult’s is, which is why waking a teenager up at 6am is the equivalent of waking an adult up at 4am. Teenagers need at least 8-10 hours of sleep a night and the average teenager is getting about 6.5-7.5 hours of sleep according to The Better Health channel. With schools starting at least two hours later this will allow teenagers to get the amount of sleep they need resulting in them being less sleep deprived during the day.
Since teenagers' brains are not fully functioning before 10am this means that their academic performance is not up to their full potential which will affect their grades. Using college-level data from Clemson University, (Angela K. Dills and Rey Hernandez-Julian 2008) find that students perform better in classes that meet later in the day. Another study from (David Goldstein et al. 2007) proves that by finding that scores on intelligence tests are significantly lower during the early morning hours than in the afternoon. Using the line graph data from this study, early classes have a much lower line height in the 80-90% than the middle and late classes. The line height is higher in the 60% score than the 80% score range. With this being said, students performed better in the evening proving later classes significantly improved grades and academic performance.
With students being well rested, it also improves student’s ability to focus better in school. In 2014, Westbrook highschool located in Connecticut changed their start times from 7 AM to 9AM, and they have seen a lot of improvement. One parent at Westbrook highschool says, “My son isn’t a very good morning person and later start times have helped him with that, plus with the homework he's able to get that done to be better prepared for the next day. He is also testing better and has improved academically.” Another study conducted in Seattle Washington also shows how later start times benefited students. Researchers used wrist monitors to measure how long two different groups of sophomores slept. One group was monitored in 2016 prior to the later start time changes and the other was monitored in 2017 when school started an hour later. Students who started classes later slept in an extra thirty-four minutes than before and their grades improved 4.5%. Senior Hazel Orzosky says, “I feel the later start times just helped me complete my school work but also be more interested in what I was learning.” The biology teacher at this school says, “I’ve seen far less absents and tardies in 1st period since the start times were changed and I see kids are generally more engaged in the work in the class and very much more willing to participate than in the past.” These studies proved how later start times are benefiting highschool students. Although the idea of pushing back start times will benefit students academically, mentally and sleep wise, this will also push back end times for students resulting in loss of time for extracurricular activities and jobs. While this is a problem, with longer sleep time in the morning students will have more energy, which can lead to an increase of productivity during their after school activities and can benefit them. Waking up early and doing seven hours of school and then afterschool activities is more exhausting than waking up later with more energy and doing seven hours of school then afterschool activities.
Based on all these studies, its proven that earlier start times have more of a negative impact on students’s than positive. Teenagers would be more awake at a later time and ready to learn. The few schools that have pushed their school start times back have seen major changes in student’s growth. If schools could find a way to push start times to a later start time, schools would start seeing drastic changes in student’s school performance, energy, and attention span.
