Should School have a Later Start Time

Did you know that adolescents may not be getting enough sleep and it is not even there fault and it is not the late night video games either. Because of this lack of sleep teens may be having trouble with their grades. Studies show that how the adolescent chemical make up during the years of 13-18 need more sleep. Along with facts showing school having a later start time could tremendously help these sleep deprived adolescents improve their grades along with their behavior. James Maas, PH.D. a expert on sleep says that tring to educate teens in the morning doesn’t do any good for them. Therefore schools should have a later start time.

Parents Do Not Support School Starting Later Half of parents don’t support school starting later because of how after school activities will be affected and some parents work schedules might have to change. Along with if schools started later it would push after school activities like sports and other possible clubs to be at a later time. By doing this students might have a hard time participating in these activities and finding time to study or complete homework assignments and still getting to bed at a reasonable time.

This is not the case though because of how adolescents melatonin changes from child to teen to adult for adolecents it is already difficult for them to try to go to bed early and even harder for them to wake up early so what may seem like to a parent is too late to be staying up might be just right for the teen. So if after school activities would run later it would be better for the teens because they could still get to sleep and everything they need to get done at a decent time for them even if again it seems too late to the parent. Research shows that most adolescents go through a sleep phase delay, this means that teens are more likely to stay awake at later times and wake up at later times. Typically to adolescents a more natural time to fall asleep in their internal clocks they will fall asleep around 11 p.m. or later because they may feel wide awake around normal bedtime for younger children and adults even though they are exhausted. So if school started later and activities ran later it would be better for teens’ internal clocks and their sleep phase delay.

Improving Academic Performance If school started later it would improve adolescents academic performance. This would be true because adolescents spend a large amount time in school but they are not able to get the best out of their learning that they could be getting because sleep deprivation impairs the abilities to be alert, sole problems, pay attention, retin information, and even cope with stress. Amy Wolfen Ph.D and Mary Carkandon Ph.D in 1998 did a survey on about 3,000 high school students and they found that the students reported having low grades like C’s,D’s, or F’s got 25 minutes less sleep than student reporting getting high grades like A’s and B’s.

Also, the students getting lower grades got to bed 40 minutes later than the students getting higher grades. The University of Minnesota did a study confirming that school having a later start time will have positive effects on students academic performance. Two different school districts were studied one changed their start time to 8:30 a.m. and the other changed their start time to 8:40 a.m. When the students from these schools where compared to students that came from a school that had earlier start times, the students coming from the two school districts with later start times reported getting higher grades. So to help high school students with their grades it would be beiffitial if schools started at a later time. Adolescents Require More Sleep The biology of adolescent sleep requires around eight and a half to nine and a fourth hours of sleep every night.

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