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This picture shows how improvements were made to students' happiness, energy, and tiredness. All of these factors effect how students perform in school. By pushing back the start time, these students were much better and able to be more energetic, less tired overall and more happy because of this change.

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This article discusses the increase in academic performance due to earlier start times. This is very significant as most students are not performing to the best of their abilities due to sleep deprivation. Pushing back the start times allows for students to have a better chance in succeeding academically as their brains can better retain the information.

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Later school times promote adolescent well-being

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Moving high school start times can improve student performance and general quality of life.

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This article discusses the important benefits of pushing back the school start times. It states how adolescents need at least 8.25 - 9 hours of sleep each night but most do not meet that amount. This is important because this insufficient amount of sleep leads to many health and learning risks.

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The Benefits of Healthy School Start Time Policy for Teens and Beyond

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Editor’s Note: This post is part of this year’s “Back to School” series in which our experts and guest authors discuss the need to support the health and well-being of youth as they return to school. For more, follow our hashtag #PolicyLabGoesBacktoSchool on Twitter. This fall, California will imple…

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This image displays the possible outcomes of sleep deprived students. This is important because it shows what could possibly be the outcome of the future generations. A lot of these issues can lead to many dangers and accidents at younger ages and cause severe problems.

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I believe this is important because many teens struggle with sleep deprivation and waking up early does not solve the problem. Adolescents have a natural tendency to become more energized later in the day. This means they are more tired in the mornings which is where they are expected to perform to the best of their abilities at school. A lot of pressure is put on teenagers and pushing back the start times will take this off of them.

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This article explains more of the risks students can face when they are sleep deprived. This article also talks about how adolescence at sleep go together. It talks about their sleep schedules and patterns. This article also gives solutions as to how parents, healthcare professionals, and schools can help teens get the amount of sleep they need.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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Learn how later school start times may help adolescents get sleep.

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This article talks about the pros and cons of starting school early. There are cons mainly about how this affects a teenagers mental and physical health. Early school start times put a lot of stress on teenagers. The decreased amount of sleep affects a lot of things in overall wellbeing. A teenager will have less emotional control and not be able to concentrate as much do to inadequate sleep.

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The debate surrounding the timing of school start times has been a topic of considerable interest and contention within educational circles and the broader community.

The decision to commence the school day early in the morning, or to adopt a later start time, is a multifaceted issue with far-reaching implications for students, families, and educators.

By examining the various dimensions of this debate, it becomes evident that both advantages and disadvantages exist, each carrying significant weight in shaping the educational experience and overall well-being of students.

From academic performance to physical health, the timing of the school day has the potential to exert a profound influence.

Key Takeaways

Early start times have negative effects on academic performance, including decreased alertness, concentration, and motivation.

Later start times are correlated with improved academic performance.

Early start times can have negative impacts on social and emotional well-being, including mood, stress levels, and mental health.

Early start times can disrupt natural sleep patterns and decrease productivity, impacting students' time management and overall productivity throughout the day.

Academic Performance

The timing of school start times has been shown to significantly impact students' academic performance. Research indicates that early start times may lead to decreased alertness, concentration, and motivation among students, affecting their ability to engage effectively in learning.

Conversely, later start times correlate with improved academic performance, as students are more likely to be well-rested and mentally prepared for the day ahead.

Therefore, school start times play a crucial role in shaping students' academic outcomes.

Social and Emotional Well-being

Early school start times can have a significant impact on students' social and emotional well-being, influencing factors such as mood, stress levels, and overall mental health.

Improved mood and mental health

Increased stress levels

Better social interaction

Reduced quality of sleep

Enhanced emotional regulation

Negative impact on overall well-being

Opportunities for extracurricular activities

Difficulty in managing emotions

Time Management and Productivity

How can early school start times impact students' ability to manage their time effectively and maintain productivity throughout the day?

Early school start times can disrupt students' natural sleep patterns, leading to difficulty in waking up and feeling alert in the morning. This can result in decreased productivity during morning classes and throughout the day.

Additionally, students may struggle to manage their time efficiently due to fatigue, potentially impacting their academic performance.

Family and Caregiver Logistics

When considering the early start times of schools, it's crucial to address the impact on family scheduling.

Parents and caregivers often face challenges in coordinating their own work schedules with the early school start times.

Additionally, the availability and affordability of childcare and transportation logistics become significant factors to consider in this context.

Family Scheduling Challenges

Navigating the logistics of family and caregiver scheduling when school starts early in the morning can present significant challenges for many households.

1) Coordinating morning routines for multiple children of different ages.

2) Balancing school drop-off times with parents' work schedules.

3) Finding reliable childcare options for early mornings.

4) Adjusting meal times and bedtime routines to ensure adequate rest despite the early start.

Childcare Availability

Coordinating childcare for early morning school drop-offs can be a challenging aspect of family and caregiver logistics, requiring careful planning and consideration.

Finding reliable and trustworthy caregivers who are available during early morning hours can be difficult for working parents.

Additionally, the logistics of transporting children to school before regular daycare or childcare centers open can pose a significant challenge for many families.

Transportation Logistics

Securing reliable transportation for early morning school drop-offs can pose significant logistical challenges for many families and caregivers.

1) Coordinating with multiple caregivers or family members to ensure someone is available for the school run.

2) Navigating heavy traffic during peak rush hour times.

3) Finding suitable transportation for families without access to a personal vehicle.

4) Balancing school drop-offs with work or other household responsibilities.

Physical Health and Well-being

The physical health and well-being of students are significantly impacted by the timing of their school day.

Factors such as sleep and alertness, exercise and nutrition, and mental health effects play crucial roles in determining their overall physical well-being.

It is important to consider these aspects when evaluating the pros and cons of starting school early in the morning.

Sleep and Alertness

Adequate sleep is crucial for maintaining physical health and well-being, especially in the context of early school start times.

Insufficient sleep can lead to decreased alertness, impacting students' ability to focus and learn. This can result in reduced academic performance and increased risk of accidents.

Furthermore, inadequate sleep has been linked to mood disturbances and behavioral issues, negatively affecting overall well-being.

It's essential to prioritize sufficient rest for students' optimal functioning.

Exercise and Nutrition

Given the critical role of sleep in maintaining physical health and well-being, it is important to consider the impact of exercise and nutrition on students' overall wellness, particularly in the context of early school start times.

Adequate nutrition and regular exercise are essential for students to maintain energy levels, cognitive function, and overall physical health.

Early school start times may disrupt students' ability to engage in healthy exercise and nutritional habits, potentially impacting their well-being.

Mental Health Effects

Students' mental health and overall well-being can be significantly impacted by early school start times, influencing their ability to maintain physical and mental wellness. This can lead to increased levels of stress and anxiety, disrupted sleep patterns and fatigue, difficulty concentrating and retaining information, and impaired mood regulation and emotional stability.

Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

The timing of school start times has a significant impact on the sleep patterns and circadian rhythms of students. Early start times can lead to sleep deprivation, affecting the quality and quantity of sleep. This disruption to the circadian rhythm can result in difficulties falling asleep at night and increased drowsiness during the day.

As a result, students may experience reduced alertness, impaired cognitive function, and negative effects on overall well-being.

Extracurricular Participation

Extracurricular participation can have a significant impact on students' energy levels, especially when they are required to start school early in the morning.

The time constraints of early school start times may also limit the availability for students to engage in extracurricular activities.

Therefore, it is important to consider the implications of early school start times on students' ability to participate in a wide range of activities outside the classroom.

Impact on Energy Levels

Early morning school start times can significantly impact students' energy levels, potentially affecting their participation in extracurricular activities. This can lead to:

1. Fatigue during after-school clubs or sports.

2. Decreased enthusiasm for creative pursuits like music or art.

3. Limited engagement in academic or skill-building programs.

4. Reduced ability to focus and collaborate in group projects or team activities.

Time for Activities

Having examined the impact of early morning school start times on students' energy levels, it is essential to consider how this may affect their availability and participation in extracurricular activities.

Early start times can limit the time students have for extracurricular activities, leading to decreased participation. This can impact their overall development, as extracurricular activities play a crucial role in fostering skills, social connections, and personal growth outside of academics.

Transportation and Commuting Challenges

The logistical challenges of transportation and commuting can significantly impact the experience of students who start school early in the morning. This can manifest as overcrowded buses and trains, leading to discomfort and potential tardiness. Additionally, heavy traffic can cause stress and anxiety for students and parents alike. In rural areas, limited public transportation options can make it difficult for students to reach school on time. Finally, there are safety concerns for students traveling during early morning hours.

Nutrition and Eating Habits

The timing of school start times can have a significant impact on students' nutrition and eating habits, influencing their ability to maintain a healthy and balanced diet throughout the day.

Early start times may lead to rushed or skipped breakfast, impacting cognitive function and overall energy levels.

Additionally, students may be more inclined to consume unhealthy snacks or fast food later in the day due to inadequate time for proper meals.

Long-term Impact on Learning

Long-term academic performance may be influenced by the timing of school start times, potentially affecting students' cognitive development and overall educational outcomes.

1) Students who start school later show improved academic performance.

2) Early start times may lead to decreased attention span and reduced memory retention.

3) Cognitive abilities, such as problem-solving and information processing, could be negatively impacted.

4) Long-term educational attainment may be influenced by early morning fatigue.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the decision to start school early in the morning has both benefits and drawbacks. It impacts academic performance, social and emotional well-being, time management, family logistics, physical health, extracurricular participation, transportation challenges, and nutrition.

Consideration must be given to the long-term impact on learning. Like a delicate balance of scales, the timing of the school day can tip the scales in favor of certain outcomes, affecting students in various ways.

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Pros and Cons of Starting School Early in the Morning - EducationalWave

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The debate surrounding the timing of school start times has been a topic of considerable interest and contention within educational circles and the broader

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This image shows when most schools start in each state. A majority of schools start either before 7:45 or in-between 7:45 - 8:15 a.m. This is still way too early for most teenagers. Sleep is crucial to their health and if schools are starting this early, they are unhealthy and could be at risk of developing health issues in the future.

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What I hope happens next is parents and schools will take initiatives to helping teens and their children getting the right amount of sleep and having good academic performance. Schools can adjust the times and the amount of work they give the students so it creates less pressure. Parents can try and help their kids with work and try to manage a good sleep schedule with them.

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This image is a simplified version of the cycle most teens endure on a weekly basis. Many adolescents go to bed late due to lots of homework and extra activities outside of school. This leads to them cramming in homework late at night. The more homework they have, the later they go to bed which leads them tired in the mornings and not able to succeed academically.

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This is important to me because being an eight grader myself, I can say that I have pulled many all nighters doing work like other students have. I ended up feeling tired and underprepared the next day due to this. By other kids in my grade reporting that they got worse grades from having less sleep, it means that there are students struggling to meet good standards and they need to have more sleep in order to be focused.

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This article talks about how teens can suffer from chronic sleep disorder which is linked to many severe health risks. This is caused by the lack of sleep. Teenagers sleep phase delays are also a big thing that links to sleep deprivation. Teens are more awake in later parts of the day. They go to bed later and wake up later. School messes up the natural sleep cycle of growing adolescents which is important to their overall health and wellbeing.

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Perhaps no one dreads setting their alarm clocks to rise for the start of the new school year more than teenagers.

The nation's average public high school start time is 8:07 a.m.; nearly 10 percent begin before 7:30 a.m. Either start time likely requires teens to rise by at least 7:00 am-a time identified by health experts as part of adolescents' peak sleepy hours. That's thanks largely to a natural change in teens' circadian rhythm-the " sleep-wake phase delay "-which results in later sleep onset and wake times. The result is a significant mismatch between this demographic's preferred sleep time and social demands: namely, school.

This is not breaking news. In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement recommending that school districts push start times to 8:30 a.m. or later for middle and high schools in an effort to help adolescents achieve the recommended eight-and-a-half to 10 hours of sleep per night-a goal that approximately three-quarters of teenage students fall short of on school nights.

Chronic sleep deprivation is bad for teens. It's been linked to a number of physical and mental health risks, lowered academic performance, and overall poorer quality of life. And while plenty of factors contribute to teens' insufficient sleep, researchers have pinpointed early school start times as a key, and modifiable, contributor to the problem. But despite the well-documented and publicized research in favor of later school start times for adolescents and teens, countless districts resist the change-often citing barriers such as existing bus and sports schedules and before- and after-school daycare disruptions for younger students.

Challenging the status quo

Phyllis Payne, a public health educator and advocate for healthy sleep among teens, has heard all of these excuses and more.

Some of them stand out for their seeming absurdity. "School officials have told us, 'We have too many waterways' and 'Our schools are at too many altitudes,'' said Payne, implementation director at Start School Later, a nonprofit organization that has helped hundreds of school districts nationwide change to later start times. "I tell them it can be done."

Payne should know. As a co-founder of the advocacy group SLEEP in Fairfax, Va., Payne supported Fairfax County school system, one of the nation's largest districts, as it undertook the initiative to move its high school start times about an hour later, to either 8:00 or 8:10 am. Even with 1,600 buses transporting about 170,000 students to 200 different schools, the district made the change effective for the 2015-2016 academic year.

"The real challenge is that it's different than what people are used to doing," Payne said, referring to later start times. Overcoming resistance to change is often the first step in making it happen. Beyond that, there's no single 'magic bullet' to moving to a later start time, she explained. But, say those who've been involved in the transition, the following factors are key.

Leadership buy-in

"When superintendents set it up [schedule change] as a must-have for the teens in the community, then their teams come together," Payne said.

Convincing superintendents that it's a priority is simple once they take the time to learn about the science behind it, Payne explained. Simply taking a glimpse at the AAP's long, curated list of adverse effects of chronic sleep loss in adolescents is fairly convincing, which includes increased rates of motor vehicle crashes; increased risk for anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation; cognitive deficits, especially with more complex tasks; and lower academic achievement.

"Once they become aware of how important this is they'll want to get this done," she said.

Thinking holistically

Anne Arundel County, Md., schools, with 85,000 students, discussed for years the possibility of moving to a later start time for high school students, said spokesperson Bob Mosier.

That discussion evolved over the years from one that focused exclusively on high school start times to one that instead referenced what they began to term "healthier school start and dismissal times."

"You can't just pick up and change your high school times in isolation," said Mosier, whose district in 2022-2023 instituted a new high school start time of 8:30 a.m., about an hour later than previous years. Every division is affected, as evidenced by his district's need to ramp up after-school child care offerings to families with younger children once the new schedule was put in place.

With the previous, earlier high school dismissal time, high school students could be available to babysit younger siblings. In some instances, parents' work schedules had to shift to accommodate the schedule changes.

"We had plenty of families who needed child care after the change who hadn't before," Mosier said.

To help address the issue, the district organized and held a childcare fair for parents.

Payne acknowledged similarly detailed planning in supporting Fairfax County's move to later high school start times. "We examined all kinds of minutia," said Payne. It involved everything from analyzing traffic patterns to involving the local police department to plan for changes to crossing guard schedules.

Strong communication

Working through the details of a forthcoming schedule change is part of the solution. Communicating these details to stakeholders is as critical, Mosier explained. Anne Arundel County schools spent months preparing families for the pending change. They used multiple avenues of messaging: phone, email, text, and websites in both English and Spanish that explained the pending schedule change, why it was happening, and how families would be affected. In addition, each of the district's board members created a short video explaining the rationale behind the new start time and invoking the sleep science supporting it.

"Everyone knew it was happening," Mosier said. "No one was surprised."

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Teens Need to Start School Later. No More Excuses, Experts Say

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These two large school systems shifted to later start times for secondary schools and they say your district can, too.

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This article talks about how teenagers need more sleep as it increases their performance at school. School performance is linked to being alert throughout the day and that is caused by having energy. If students do not get the proper amount of sleep, they do not have enough energy to function through the day.

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We can all relate to the dreaded early morning alarm, and the oh-so tempting snooze button.Sufficient sleep is critical for health, cognitive function, and overall quality of life. Chronic sleep deprivation can be detrimental to physical health, behavior and mental wellbeing at any stage of life, and especially in adolescence. To make things worse, the onset of puberty lengthens the biological clocks of teens, decreasing sensitivity to light in the morning. Adolescents are predisposed to later sleeping times, but are still expected to wake up early in the morning for class. The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 2007 surveyed 12,154 high school students across the US and reported 68.9% of students getting an insufficient amount of sleep (less than 7 hours of sleep per night).

Scientists from the University of Washington are working with high schools in Seattle to address this growing problem. Start times for 2 different high schools were moved approximately 1 hour later (from 7:50 am to 8:45 am). The study used wrist activity monitors to record the sleep-wake cycles of approximately 90 students, before and after the change in school start time. The wrist monitors were worn by the students all day for a period of two weeks, and recordedlight and motion data every 15 seconds - this was used to determine when the students were awake or asleep.

Scientists found that a delayed school start time resulted in a 34 minute increase in the median sleep duration ; students went to sleep around the same time each night, but slept in longer. This was associated with an increase in grades and attendance; however only one semester of first period biology class was considered, and the improvement in attendance was only observed for one of the schools with more economically disadvantaged students. Interestingly, the 55 minute delay in start time did not result in a 55 minute gain in sleep time, suggesting that there are additional factors delaying bedtime. It would be interesting for future experiments to include interventions addressing evening screen time, which is known to negatively impact sleep quality. It would also be important to evaluate any potential improvements in physical and mental health.

Managing Correspondent: Jeremy Gungabeesoon

News Article: Teens get more sleep with later school start time, researchers find . ScienceDaily

Original Article: Sleepmore in Seattle: Later school start times are associated with more sleep and better performance in high school students . Science Advances

Image Credit: dreams.co.uk

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Later school start times may help improve school performance - Science in the News

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We can all relate to the dreaded early morning alarm, and the oh-so tempting snooze button. Sufficient sleep is critical for health, cognitive function, and overall quality of life. Chronic sleep deprivation can be detrimental to physical health, behavior and mental wellbeing at any stage of life, and especially in adolescence.

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This effects me because I am a student who has definitely not gotten enough sleeps some school nights. I felt really tired and was not able to perform and act like I normally do. This is also effects me because it hurts me to know that other kids my age or older are suffering from potentially bigger health risks caused by sleep deprivation.

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What did I learn from doing this research?

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What did I learn from doing this research?

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I learned that sleep deprivation is a serious issue and it is linked to many things regarding school start times. I learned that pushing back the start times will help teens be more alert and be able to perform to the academic standards they need to meet. Lastly, I learned that there can be serious health problems due to lack of sleep and that teenagers have a natural sleep schedule that should not be interrupted.