Later School Start Times

Students spend a large part of their day in the classroom during the school year. Medical experts have found that to focus for such a long time, students need to be well rested. Because of a combination of late bedtime and early school start time, many students do not get the recommended amount of sleep. Experts argue that preteens and teenagers are biologically programmed to stay up later, and the best way to ensure they get enough rest is to move the school day to a later time. This recommendation has been followed by many schools in the United States. Although the later start has reportedly helped, the new start time has encountered other problems with some schools and students. High school students in Seattle are sleeping more— a median of 34 minutes more a night— as the school district pushed back class starting at 7:50 a.m.

At 8.45 a.m. A new study shows up in autumn 2016. Moreover, when school began later, grades and attendance increased, and tardiness decreased. Earlier studies have shown that sleep deprivation can lead to depression, stress, suicidal thoughts, delinquent behavior, obesity, car crashes and poor academic performance. The average American teenager is deprived of chronic sleep— a condition identified as a public health issue by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2014 when it called on middle and high schools to delay class starting at least 8:30 a.m.

Hundreds of U.S. schools have turned into a schedule later. This article talks about how their findings contradicts the common belief that if they can sleep later in the morning, teens will simply go to bed later. Indeed, the study found that even those who stayed up a little later had more sleep than teens who had to get up for classes in the early morning. When classes began in high schools at 8:30 a.m. Or later, it was more likely that teens would get the recommended amount of sleep. The findings showed that they spent an average of 46 more minutes in bed than did teens whose schools started classes between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m.

Teens who had the earliest school start times did tend to go to bed earlier than those whose classes started at 8:30 a.m. or later, but they still didn't get the recommended amount of sleep, the study found. One theory is that their sleep was inhibited by anticipating an early wake-up, Buxton said in a news release from the university.

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