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Editorial: Would starting school later in the day actually help teens? Let’s find out before making a rash decision

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Editorial: Would starting school later in the day actually help teens? Let’s find out before making a rash decision

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Editorial: Would starting school later in the day actually help teens? Let’s find out before making a rash decision

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The biggest question may be whether later high school start times actually result in more sleep for teen students.

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Why Are Parents Afraid of Later School Start Times?

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Why Are Parents Afraid of Later School Start Times?

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A new paper argues that using behavioral economics to ease families' fear of change could help convince them to switch up their children's routines.

All of my high-school memories, even the best ones, are tinged with exhaustion: the full-body ache of dragging myself into bed at midnight at the end of a long day of school and homework, the terror of staring down traffic lights in the hope they'd change as I raced to arrive by our 7:10 AM start time. My friends and I talked incessantly about how tired we were, and our parents talked about it, too, but no one ever seemed to float the idea that we should be making a change. It was just the way things were.

Research has shown that early school start times (7:30 a.m., for example) don't square with adolescents' sleep needs, and that later ones have positive effects on mental and physical health, as well as academic performance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have even urged policymakers to move toward later start times-scientists tend to recommend pushing the bell to 8:30 a.m.-for middle and high-school students. Still, many school districts have been mired in years-long debates over the issue.

Early start times first came about in the latter half of the 20th century, when suburban schools decided to stagger their schedules so that the same fleet of buses could serve all students, dropping off high-school students earliest. Urban schools then adopted those start-time hours, and extracurricular activities oriented themselves around this scheme, according to Terra Ziporyn, the executive director of the nonprofit Start School Later. Some policymakers have begun to rethink that custom: School districts in at least 21 states have later start times this year than they did last year with the intention of giving students more time to sleep, and schools in at least 45 states have delayed their start times in recent years. Lawmakers in California recently introduced a first-of-its-kind bill that would ban start times earlier than 8:30 AM; after failing to receive enough votes, it was shelved for next year.

Yet, according to federal data from the 2015-16 school year, over 85 percent of public high schools still start before 8:30 a.m. While few question the scientific evidence supporting later start times, many parents and administrators argue that starting school later isn't the best solution to kids' sleep-deprivation problems, citing practical concerns. They wonder what later school end times would mean for sports and after-school activities, for example, and how much additional money districts would have to spend on transportation. Because many districts stagger their transportation in order to use the same buses for all of their students, pushing back middle and high-school start times could mean paying for more buses.

But if later start times are indeed the remedy that many advocates tout it to be, why haven't the arguments in its defense prompted widespread change? The sticking point may be much simpler, and much harder to overcome, than the practical concerns: It's tough to fight against the allure of the status quo. In a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Sleep Health, a group of researchers and later start-time advocates uses tricks from the field of behavioral economics to tackle a complicated question: Why is it so hard for people to embrace change, and how can you convince someone that change is worth it?

Behavioral economics pulls from disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive science, and economics to analyze why individuals make the choices they do-especially when these decisions run counter to fact or to an understanding of the benefits of the opposite choice. Susan Malone, a senior research scientist at the Rory Meyers College of Nursing at NYU, teamed up with the behavioral economist Alison Buttenheim and Ziporyn to apply this thinking to the school start-time debate.

The authors argue that it isn't enough to simply offer scientific evidence of the advantages of later start times. Relying on the science, the paper states, "assumes that district officials and stakeholders engage in a rational decision-making process"; factors like "common biases" and "mental shortcuts" often get in the way. Behavioral economists have looked at other health issues, such as smoking and obesity, through the lens of these kinds of decision-making factors. A study on weight loss, for example, showed that behavioral-economics tricks like incentive systems with monetary rewards helped participants achieve their weight-loss goals.

The paper's first suggestion for advocates seeking to delay start times tries to poke at the staying power of the status quo. Initiatives are often most successful when they are the default option, or the option that requires no work on the part of the person making the choice. Take organ donations: In countries where donating is the default option and opting out requires active effort, donation-consent rates are higher than in countries where it isn't the default option. For parents, the threat of change can be stressful in its own particular way. Ziporyn of Start School Later noted that she has seen parents show just as much apprehension about earlier school start times as they do about later ones, which she suggested means it's mostly change that they're afraid of. With this in mind, the authors recommend shifting the burden of defense from late start times to early start times. States and regions, for example, could require districts to submit evidence-based justifications of early start times on an annual basis, while districts with later start times wouldn't have this requirement.

Casting later start times as the norm rather than an aberration would also help the advocates' cause, according to the researchers, given that social pressure is a significant factor in human decision-making. When people see peers who are similar to them doing something, they are likely to imitate that action. One odd example: According to a study, hotel guests who are told that past guests staying in their specific room reused their towels are more likely to choose to reuse than those who are simply told that guests in the same hotel have done it. The authors suggest that people advocating for later start times in a given district find a school that did push the first bell back and put it in contact with a similar school that's conflicted on the issue.

Since the paper is a set of suggestions, it does not provide findings, and without data it's unclear whether these tools can indeed be applied to the school start-time debate. Those who oppose late start times may disagree with the study's underlying premise and dismiss behavioral-economics tricks as ineffective in the face of what they see as clear logistical concerns. And a substantial number of anecdotes do support their concerns about delaying class; some students have said they have less time to complete their homework, for example, and some school districts have noted that students feel more rushed getting to sports games or other activities after a later last bell, while others have reported traffic and overcrowding on buses, which sometimes makes students late for school.
"People don't want to be told that they're hurting their children."
Asked about the practical arguments against later start times, Ziporyn pointed to the many districts that have successfully found solutions to the logistical challenges. "When schools change their hours, all of these things adapt accordingly," she said. She noted that many schools that have moved their bell times still have students winning sports competitions and continue to see growing rates of extracurricular participation. Ziporyn also pointed to a recent RAND Corporation report predicting that later start times are economically beneficial in the long run; the report estimates that the decrease in fatal car accidents and increase in academic achievement as a result of later start times would lead to a stronger workforce and nationwide economic gains over the course of the next decade, and that immediate benefits could be seen in as soon as two years. Even those who complain about later start times tend to agree that solving the logistical challenges is possible-it's just that the solutions take time, unified leadership, and often money, resources which can be difficult for some schools to come by.

Malone, the research scientist at NYU and one of the study's authors, said that the authors knew they were embarking on something "new and different" when they decided to apply behavioral-economics principles to an issue of public policy, which often gets mired in bureaucracy and logistics, rather than a case of individual choice-making. It's also possible that for some decision-makers, the choice doesn't appear as one between what is beneficial and what is harmful; some might see it as a balancing of, say, health benefits with logistical benefits.

All in all, the authors' hope is to "create a climate in which people want to change"-a climate that may be difficult to create just by talking to parents about the scientific evidence, Ziporyn said. "People don't want to be told that they're hurting their children," she said. "It sounds like we're telling people they're bad parents. And that's not the point. The point is, this is something you want to do."

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Why Are Parents Afraid of Later School Start Times?

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A new paper argues that using behavioral economics to ease families' fear of change could help convince them to switch up their children's routines.

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Despite Proven Benefits, Starting School Later Remains a 'Tough Sell'

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Despite Proven Benefits, Starting School Later Remains a 'Tough Sell'

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"Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." This well-known proverb, say scientists from the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and the University of Nevada is only helping to make students' lives miserable. The conventional wisdom that going to bed early and getting up early leads to productivity and success is, in the case of teenagers at least, simply wrong. Paul Kelley, Steven Lockey, Russell Foster and Jonathan Kelley argue that letting students sleep and starting school later can lead to better health and academic outcomes.

Unfortunately, concerns about lack of sleep often get the brush-off from schools and even some parents who are quick to blame inattentiveness in school solely on teen behavior, laziness, general indifference, or all of the above. If only they went to bed earlier, concentration and attentiveness would improve. But in their report, the researchers say that schools are ignoring adolescent biology and are "systemically restricting the time available for sleep and causing severe and chronic sleep loss."

They're not alone. The chorus of voices in favor of schools starting later has been getting louder. In August, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued findings that lay out a stark and sobering picture of how sleep deprivation harms teenagers, a common problem among high school students especially. Adolescents who don't get enough sleep (CDC recommends 9-10 hours) have an increased risk of being overweight, suffering depression, and struggling academically.

Less than one third of U.S. students, however, are sleeping at least 8 hours on school nights and four out of five middle and high schools start their day before 8:30 a.m. A consensus has emerged among health experts that this is simply too early.

In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended middle and high schools delay the start of class to 8:30 a.m. or later, necessary to align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents.

"Chronic sleep loss in children and adolescents is one of the most common - and easily fixable - public health issues in the U.S. today," said Dr. Judith Owens, author of the AAP policy statement. "Delaying early school start times is one key factor that can help adolescents get the sleep they need to grow and learn."

"The teenage body is nocturnal," adds Dr. Denise Pope of Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success. "Their circadian rhythms are different from adults. So even starting school at 8:30 can make a huge difference."

Currently, only Alaska and North Dakota meet the 8:30 a.m. standard - barely. The average school start time in Alaska is 8:33. North Dakota is a couple minutes behind at 8:31. (Louisiana had the earliest start time - 7:40 a.m.)

In 2014, the University of Minnesota released a study that examined data from more than 9,000 students attending eight high schools in three states. The study found that attendance and academic performance in math, English, science and social studies improved at schools with later start times, while tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression declined. At Edina High School outside of Minneapolis - the first school in the country to shift to a later start (7:20 to 8:30 a.m.) - school counselors and nurses reported fewer students seeking help for emotional problems and physical complaints. Furthermore, 92 percent of parents in Edina said their teenagers were "easier to live with."

As most experts urge schools to begin school later than 8:30 a.m., the Oxford and Harvard researchers up the ante and recommend 10 a.m., which they say properly aligns with the "biological wake-up time" of a typical 16-year-old. That would mean 6:30 a.m. for a 10-year-old, so school for them should start somewhere between 8:30 and 9 a.m. A college freshman should have his or her first class between 11 and 11:30.

This "relatively simple step," the researchers insist, is both practical and necessary:
The synchronization of education to adolescent biology enables immediate advances in educational attainment and can be achieved with a relatively simple step that does not require new teaching methods, new testing or large additional expenditure...Good policies should be based on good evidence, and the data show that children are currently placed at an enormous disadvantage by being forced to keep to inappropriate education times.
Kelley, Lockley, and Foster acknowledge that deep-seated and largely false assumptions about teen behavior and the benefits of waking up early are obstacles to the acceptance of later school start times. Still, not many districts would describe the move as a "simple step." Legitimate, practical considerations have to be considered - the impact on bus schedules and after school programs, for example - and buy-in from educators, parents and the community is essential.

"Changing schools is hard, and getting schools to start as late as 9:00 or 9:30, when teenage bodies are actually only waking up, would be a tough sell," says Pope. "But the best thing is to take it slow and look at how changing schedules affects everyone. It's not just the students. It's teachers, bus drivers, everyone at school, and especially parents. When multiple stakeholders are around the table, you can make effective change."
Photos: Associated Press

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Despite Proven Benefits, Starting School Later Remains a 'Tough Sell' | NEA

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"Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." This well-known proverb, say scientists from the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and the University of Nevada is only helping to make students' lives miserable.

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Why All The Fuss About Changing School Start Times?

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Why All The Fuss About Changing School Start Times?

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Over the past year or two, there have been more conversations about school start times. Specifically, there has been more discussion about high school start times being too early. The topic is popping up in newspaper editorials, educational conferences and even backyard summer conversations.

Why are people talking about this now? The majority of school districts in the United States begin their school day before 8:30 a.m.; has something changed to make us think that this is no longer acceptable?

To answer the second question first, the major change over the past decade is that we have gained a better understanding and awareness of two basic scientific concepts: the importance of sleep and the natural shift in circadian rhythms in adolescence.

Societal value on sleep has shifted over the years, but recently, there's been an abundance of evidence to support the age-old wisdom that sleep is important. Lack of sleep has a direct effect on multiple short- and long-term outcomes.

Short-term negative outcomes from lack of sleep include poorer academic performance, poorer athletic performance, riskier/impulsive behaviors and increased automobile accidents. Long-term negative outcomes from lack of sleep include obesity, heart disease and growth suppression. Luckily, the opposite is true and getting sufficient sleep helps to reduce all of the above-mentioned short- and long-term consequences. How much sleep is needed? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends 8 to 10 hours of sleep for adolescents and most sleep experts believe that 8.5-9 hours seems to be the correct amount. Eight hours seems to be a critical point for preventing much of the negative outcomes mentioned above.

Adolescence Circadian Rhythm The concept of circadian rhythm changes in adolescence is not new to anyone; in fact, almost all adults have experienced this during adolescence and should be able to relate. We know that during the teen years, melatonin, a hormone released by the pineal gland in the brain to help initiate sleep, has its release shifted two to three hours later than it was in childhood. The result of this shift in melatonin release means that teens who previously had been able to fall asleep between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. now cannot fall asleep until 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. It also means that these teens have a hard time waking up before 7 a.m., since the melatonin release often continues in teens through sunrise. This shift in melatonin release has been documented to occur worldwide and is not a new phenomenon. Once teens become young adults in their early to mid-20s, the melatonin release often shifts back to follow a more typical adult sleep schedule.

Taken together, these two facts have changed much of our thinking about adolescence, sleep and school start times. If we know adolescents need a minimum of eight hours of sleep to prevent the consequences listed above and we know that they cannot fall asleep until 10:30 to 11 p.m., then we know we shouldn't wake them up until 6:30 to 7 a.m. at the earliest. Working from there, we know that we should be giving them time to get up, eat breakfast, get ready for school and then time to commute to school, usually on the school bus. Those calculations result in the general recommendations for starting school for middle and high schoolers no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics published its policy statement, entitled "School Start Times for Adolescence," in which the authors expertly reviewed the data surrounding sleep and changes in adolescent circadian rhythms, and recommended that middle and high school start times not begin before 8:30 a.m. The CDC, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and many other national health organizations have also made the same recommendations.

Educators have long recognized that in districts where high school starts early, many of the students are either late for school or are not paying attention during the first and second periods of the day. Parents have long recognized that their adolescents seem exhausted and are difficult to wake up in the morning, resulting in them rushing their teens to school. So how did we get here and why haven't we changed anything?

Why Do High Schools Start Earlier? First, it's important to recognize that the science mentioned above is evidence- based and there are no real opposing viewpoints. There has not been any rationale that adolescents receive better education when they start schools early and it has not always been this way. The big push to move high schools to an earlier start time began in the 1970s and 1980s. As towns grew, schools became larger and transportation needs increased. As a cost-savings technique, towns turned to tiered busing systems, using fewer buses and bus drivers and having them repeat multiple loops with staggered start times. By convention, high schools often were shifted earlier and that process continues through the present day. Today, many towns have three staggered start times and often begin the high school students earliest and the younger elementary school students latest.

Though there is no benefit to starting school earlier for high school students, there has been a benefit to ending school earlier. Athletics typically benefits from earlier school end times, by allowing more time for practice and transportation to away games. Other benefits of ending school times earlier for adolescents include allowing more time to get to after-school jobs, helping with child care for younger siblings and allowing use of the school by other community organizations.

Now to answer the first question: Why are people talking about this now? As we have become more aware of the importance of sleep and the changes in adolescent circadian rhythms, school administrators and boards of education have begun to re-think school policies to see if they can help solve these problems. Keeping student health, education and well-being as the driving principle, they have found solutions to the three common problems that most districts face when considering the issue of school start times: transportation, athletic schedules and resistance to change.

The Obstacles Small towns and big cities have both been successful in finding ways to make this change. In many towns, transportation has been the first hurdle. Schools have been successful in solving the transportation dilemma in multiple ways, including swapping schedules and having the younger children start school first and the older ones later, tightening bus routes or reducing tiers and finding the money to offset the increase in transportation costs.

Athletics, a priority for many parents and educators and often a seemingly huge hurdle, has been successfully managed by school districts as well. Rotating bell schedules, implementing Option 2 programs allowing high school sports to count in place of gym, eliminating waste from the schedule and creating as early a school end as possible have been some of the solutions. Athletic directors have also looked to create efficiencies in practices, limiting them to 90 minutes, game transportation and to create more serial game play with freshman, junior varsity and varsity teams playing at the same time on separate fields.

Last, changing school start schedules, which families, teachers and the community base their home life schedule around, is often difficult. Successful districts have accomplished this change though open communication, explaining the rationale, inviting input and allowing time to adjust people's schedules.

More and more schools are successfully implementing this and leading this way for other schools. Data from these schools after they have changed start times support the success of the program and help to dispel many of the myths that people mention when discussing the difficulty of changing school start times. The data supports that when you delay school start times, bedtimes do not change and that students gain an average of almost a minute of sleep for every minute of delayed school start times. Tardiness, absences and automobile accidents decrease and academic performance increases. Best of all, parents report that their teens are in better moods and are more pleasant to be around.

Legislators have been weighing in too. California recently approved legislation that mandates school start times for high schools begin at 8:30 a.m. or later. New Jersey recently passed legislation to pilot a four-year study of later school start times in five districts. Things are starting to move in the right direction.

A Board's Priority What should a school board do now? The evidence is clear - if our job is to create the most successful environment for an adolescent to learn, grow and prosper, we should be finding ways to allow them to sleep more and not start school earlier than necessary.

Ideally, this would be legislated at a state or federal level, compelling all schools to be consistent with these recommendations for school start times. However, legislation is difficult. In 2018, both the California state Assembly and state Senate passed legislation for later school start times, only to have it vetoed by the governor. The rationale for the veto, although all the lawmakers supported the concept of delayed school start times, was that they thought the decision should be a local one.

So the decision is in the hands of the board of education. There is clear evidence that a change in policy regarding school start times can have a direct and immediate positive impact on the adolescents in the district. The obstacles to making the change are known, but surmountable. This is a problem where science and common sense are on the same side and in most cases, bright committed adults can come together as a community to find solutions and create a healthier and better learning environment for our teens. And after all, isn't that the priority of all of us?

Dr. Bert Mandelbaum is a pediatrician with Princeton Nassau Pediatrics; the chairman of the department of pediatrics at Penn Medicine Princeton Health Center; and school physician for the Montgomery Township school district.

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Why All The Fuss About Changing School Start Times? - New Jersey School Boards Association

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Over the past year or two, there have been more conversations about school start times. Specifically, there has been more discussion about high school start times being too early. The topic is popping up in newspaper editorials, educational conferences and even backyard summer conversations. Why are people talking about this now?

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Later start time for teens improves grades, mood, and safety

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Later start time for teens improves grades, mood, and safety

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New research shows that high school students benefit in many ways from later start times.
It all began with a phone call 20 years ago to the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota in August 1996. The superintendent of Minnesota's Edina School District was reaching out to CAREI, seeking to discover if the new change in the start time of their high school - from 7:20 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. - would have any effect. I took that call. When I learned the reason for the change - namely, that the district's later start time purported to address developmental changes in the teenage brain related to sleep - I was skeptical. As a former teacher, school principal, and district office administrator in special education, I thought I had heard it all when it came to explaining teenage behavior. This association between brain development and teenagers was new to me.

But as we started our yearlong study, the evidence began piling up. Our research team found amazing changes were happening. Students were now awake the first hour of class, the principal reported fewer disciplinary incidents in the halls and lunchroom, and students reported less depression and feelings of greater efficacy. Over 92% of the parents said their kids were "easier to live with."

As the early findings from Edina were being reported, the Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent and school board decided a year later, in 1997, that they, too, would change the start times of their seven comprehensive high schools from 7:20 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. This change affected 52,000 K-12 students. The multitiered busing schedule moved elementary students to the earliest times, with high school and middle school students shifting to the later times. The outcomes for the Minneapolis students were similar to those for Edina, although the settings - urban as opposed to suburban - couldn't have been more different.
The medical research behind the change
What we know about human development and, most recently, about the maturation of the teenage brain lends credence to the fact that "it's a matter of biology, not choice" that teenagers are unable to fall asleep before about 10:45 p.m. and that their brains remain in sleep mode until about 8 a.m. This delay in the circadian rhythms for teenagers is directly related to hormonal changes during puberty. Most teens experience this so-called sleep phase shift only during adolescence; the shift will disappear as teens enter their 20s.

Teens need about 9.25 hours of sleep each night, a difficult amount to obtain when the brain doesn't enter sleep mode until about 10:45 p.m. and when students must awaken early for a school day that begins before 8:30 a.m. Medical research has shown dramatic negative effects of sleep deprivation, especially in people who are chronically sleep-deprived. Depression, obesity, substance use and abuse, and increased car crashes are just some of the serious consequences. From the early 1990s to now, the medical research findings about the sleep needs of teens became a significant body of knowledge (Carskadon, Acebo, & Jenni, 2004; Jenni, Achermann, & Carskadon, 2005).
From a slow start to a movement
High schools across the United States began grappling with the possibility of changing start times one school and district at a time. In the early 2000s, few schools had made the shift. Those that did were not inclined to be studied. Many believed that a public examination of the change would be fraught with politics, and they feared the change would be found to have no benefits (Wahlstrom, 1999).

Nevertheless, from 2000 to 2010, more than 400 superintendents and principals contacted me for information and guidance. They had questions about a later start time's effect on grades and sports and on how to solve transportation issues. This was a time of cautious inquiry, with school leaders wondering how their school boards or community would react. Administrators needed factual information from both the medical and education research worlds about brain development and how the two sources of information intersect.

By 2005, more than 250 high schools in the United States had made the shift to a later start time, according to early data collected by the National Sleep Foundation. Early research from 1996 through 2002 revealed that absences, tardiness, and sleepiness in school had significantly declined with later start times and that students' moods and feelings of efficacy had improved (Wahlstrom, 2002). It still remained unclear, however, how the change in time affected grades. No Child Left Behind provided an impetus for collecting achievement data and measuring effects over time.

During this time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was monitoring the mounting research evidence of the role of sleep in teens' mental and physical health and began voicing concerns for the health of sleep-deprived teens. In 2010, they issued a call for a larger study to be conducted over several years on the outcomes for high schools that moved to later start times.

I was awarded that grant to study the outcomes over three years in high schools in several locations across the United States. Even though hundreds of schools changed to a later start time, only a few were willing to participate in data collection with students and parents and then engage in the resulting public scrutiny from the findings. Then as now, the politics of managing a community's perception of the change is more than most superintendents want to deal with.
A look at eight schools with later start times
Eight high schools in five school districts in three states - Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming - agreed to participate in the CDC-funded study, which I conducted from 2010 to 2013 (Wahlstrom et al., 2014). The start times of the high schools ranged from 8:00 a.m. to 8:55 a.m. We surveyed more than 9,000 students in grades 9-12 on their sleep habits, mood, study habits, substance use, and cocurricular activities. We also looked at academic variables, such as grades earned, attendance, tardiness, and standardized test results.

The eight high schools had a range of demographic characteristics, raising confidence that the outcomes aren't associated with a particular group of students. Percentages of students of color in the schools ranged from 10% to 40%, the free and reduced-price lunch rate ranged from 10% to 34%, and graduation rates ranged from 81% to 97%.
Academic outcomes
The analysis involved examining student data by school and grade level before and after the time change. We found significant decreases in absences and tardiness in all grades 9-12 in the school districts that had instituted the latest school start times of 8:35 and 8:55 a.m. - in one district, there was a 66% drop in tardiness.

An interesting difference emerged when we compared the outcomes of schools starting at 8:00-8:30 a.m. with those of the school with the latest start time of 8:55 a.m. Examining grades earned before and after the time change, we found:

Statistically significant increases in the 1st-period grade point average in one or more core courses of English, math, social studies, and science in three districts with start times from 8:00-8:35 a.m.

Significant increases in grade point average in all 1st-period core courses for all semesters in all grades in Jackson Hole High School in Wyoming, with a start time of 8:55 a.m.

The evidence shows that the later the start time, the greater the academic benefits.
Health and activities outcomes
A seminal analysis of the data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey revealed that eight or more hours of sleep appear to be a tipping point in the at-risk behaviors of teenagers (McKnight-Eily et al., 2011). Cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use declined by 8% to 14% when teens slept eight or more hours each night, with depression and sexual activity also declining by 9% to 11%. Thus, the closer a school's start time comes to enabling eight or more hours of sleep each school night, the greater the reduction in risky teen behaviors. Figure 1 shows the percentage of high school students in our study who slept at least eight hours on school nights by school start time.

In our study, we found the same patterns of benefit for the health of teens with a later start time. Among the 9,395 students in our study, those who slept eight or more hours each night were significantly less likely to:

Report symptoms of depression;

Fall asleep in class;

Drink caffeinated beverages;

Have a phone or computer in their bedroom; and

Do dangerous things without thinking.

The good news is that students who participate in clubs, sports, or other organized activities are significantly less likely to use tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, drink soda or energy drinks, or report depression. On the flipside, we also found that students who participate in clubs or other organized activities or work at a job for pay are significantly more likely to get insufficient sleep (fewer than eight hours a night). Further, the more days each week that students spend practicing or doing sports before school, the lower the self-reported grades. Thus, given what we now know, creating a balance between students' sleep needs and their interests outside of school is important.

When schools have a later start time, which enables students to obtain eight or more hours of sleep, students are more likely to reap the benefits - unless they wake up often during the night to engage with social media. Students who reported more bedroom distractions were significantly more likely to get insufficient (fewer than eight hours) of sleep on school nights. In our study, we found that 87.6% of those surveyed kept a cell phone in their bedroom, which could easily wake them with a beep when messages come through. Thus, a later start time isn't in itself the panacea for reducing sleep deprivation in teenagers.
Car crash data
Car accidents are the greatest cause of accident death in teens; more than 2,700 teens are killed in car crashes each year. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data (n.d.), during 2006, a teen died in a traffic crash an average of once every hour on weekends and nearly once every two hours during the week. Sleep deprivation is linked with car crashes for all drivers and is a particular problem for teenagers, who are inexperienced drivers. A person who is sleep-deprived has reduced reaction times, slower eye movements, and decreased ability to make quick decisions. In fact, a person with fewer than four hours of sleep has the same driving characteristics as someone who is legally drunk with a blood alcohol content of .08%. Sleep-deprived teen drivers are not only a danger to themselves but also a danger to anyone who shares the road with them.

Our study collected car crash data from the three states' departments of public safety. We examined crash data for September through May for teens in the schools before and after the time change was initiated. After the change to a later start time, the number of car crashes in the five districts studied decreased by 13%. Reductions ranged from 6% to 70%, with the greatest reduction seen in the first year of the change in Jackson Hole, Wyo., which had the latest start time of 8:55 a.m. Given this compelling information, it's no wonder that the CDC, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all issued policy statements that endorse a high school start time of no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
Some recommendations
Given what we've learned from our research, we have a few recommendations for schools and districts considering changing their high school start times.
Go for the latest start time.
Research findings suggest that districts that make a modest move to a later start time for example, from 7:25 a.m. to 7:55 a.m. or from 7:35 a.m. to 8:05 a.m. experience modest benefits but also experience the same amount of community disruption as districts that make the change to start at 8:30 or later. In other words, the benefits are proportional to the amount of time change. Thus, when district leaders discuss whether to implement a later high school start time, they should select the maximum change possible. To make the change in stages or as a pilot will only lengthen the time, by years, that the community will have to deal with the disruption.

The first year of a districtwide change will be an adjustment for everyone. However, once new routines have been in place for a year, districts that have made the shift have not voted to return the high school to the earlier start times.
Some concerns are real; others just imagined.
In every community, people expressed concerns about the possible negative effects of implementing a later start time in their schools. These issues can often polarize the views of community members and paralyze decision making. Our investigation found that some of those concerns have a real basis and are best addressed before the time change, whereas other concerns never materialized.

Here are some issues that need attention:

Athletic schedules that may result in a student athlete missing part of a class at the end of the day.

Because of a rearranged bus schedule, younger children may have to take an earlier bus to school when it may still be dark.

Arranging child care for younger children before and after school may be more difficult.

Parents' work schedules may not easily align with the new start time.

The later start time may coincide with local rush-hour traffic, creating the need to discuss with the local traffic safety officials how traffic flow can be improved.

Here are some common worries that never materialized in the districts we studied:

The later start time may result in less participation in sports and fewer games won.

Because they get up later in the morning, teens may choose to stay up later at night.

Participation in after-school activities may decline.

Students might have difficulty arriving on time to after-school employment.

Transportation costs may increase.

Transportation - the timing and cost - is usually the biggest hurdle. Creative alternatives for student transportation are usually the best way to address the problem. Some districts shifted to multiage busing, while others moved to a wheel-and-spoke busing pattern. Also, concerns about sports can unnecessarily derail the discussion. In the schools we studied, there was no negative effect to the sports program or to the number of wins a school experienced after changing to a later start time. Child care before and after school is an issue that supportive alternatives can help resolve, such as providing more options for fee-based care at each elementary school. Ultimately, involving and educating all members of the community are essential for successful change.
Where policy and research intersect
The body of evidence concerning the academic benefits of a later start time for high school students is compelling. Also, the medical research into the function of the brain in memory, learning, and cognition is robust, while the link between sleep and mental health is unequivocal. Finally, we can't ignore recent studies on the decrease in car crashes involving teens with greater amounts of sleep. Implementing a later high school start time acknowledges the vital relationship between school policies and the research on human development. Rarely do those two worlds intersect so directly.
Next steps
Schools and districts that are considering changing the start time of a high school must engage a wide range of stakeholders in the discussion. Administrators and teachers need to discuss how the sleep needs of students intersect with school activities, such as the timing of homework assignments. Parents need to become better informed about the importance of sleep and how to support good sleep hygiene at home, including removing technology devices from their child's bedroom at bedtime. Finally, the most successful transitions to a later start time have brought into the process community health care providers, such as pediatricians; community activities directors, such as parks and recreation leaders; and public safety officials.

It's taken 20 years for schools across the United States to fully engage in the movement to change high school start times. Education decision makers have begun to realize that teens aren't lazy and that they are, instead, in a unique time in their development where they need substantial amounts of sleep. That recognition is driving the changes in start times (see www.startschoollater.net/) that we're now seeing in 44 U.S. states and in hundreds of schools and districts.

Teens face an incredibly challenging world. Together, school leaders and parents have the responsibility to create the best possible conditions for them in which to grow and thrive. Implementing later high school start times is a significant change that positively affects their health, safety, and learning. If we have that will, we can find the way.
References
Carskadon, M.A., Acebo, C., & Jenni, O. (2004). Regulation of adolescent sleep: Implications for behavior. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1021, 276-291.

Jenni O., Achermann P., & Carskadon M. (2005). Homeostatic sleep regulation in adolescents. Sleep, 28 (11), 1446-1454.

McKnight-Eily, L.R., Eaton, D.K., Lowry, R., Croft, J.B., Presley-Cantrell, L., & Perry, G.S. (2011). Relationships between hours of sleep and health-risk behaviors in U.S. adolescent students. Preventive Medicine, 53, 271-273.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (n.d.). Teen drivers: Additional resources. Washington, DC: Author. www.nhtsa.org.

Wahlstrom, K. (1999, January). The prickly politics of school starting times. Phi Delta Kappan, 80 (5), 344-347.

Wahlstrom, K. (2002, December). Changing times: Findings from the first longitudinal study of later high school start times. NASSP Bulletin, 86 (633), 3-21.

Wahlstrom, K., Dretzke, B., Gordon, M., Peterson, K., Edwards, K., & Gdula, J. (2014). Examining the impact of later school start times on the health and academic performance of high school students: A multisite study. St Paul, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement. http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/162769

Originally published in December 2016/January 2017 Phi Delta Kappan 98 (4), 8-14. © 2016 Phi Delta Kappa International. All rights reserved.

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Later start time for teens improves grades, mood, and safety - kappanonline.org

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New research shows that high school students benefit in many ways from later start times.

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Sleepless No More In Seattle — Later School Start Time Pays Off For Teens

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Sleepless No More In Seattle — Later School Start Time Pays Off For Teens

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Many American teenagers try to put in a full day of school, homework, after-school activities, sports and college prep on too little sleep. As evidence grows that chronic sleep deprivation puts teens at risk for physical and mental health problems, there is increasing pressure on school districts around the country to consider a later start time.

In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in.

Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes.

"This study shows a significant improvement in the sleep duration of students, all by delaying school start times so they're more in line with the natural wake-up times of adolescents," says senior author Horacio de la Iglesia, a University of Washington researcher and professor of biology.

The study also found an improvement in grades and a reduction in tardiness and absences.

Seattle's switch to later start times is still unusual for school districts around the country, where school typically starts around 8 a.m. In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement calling on school districts to move start times to 8:30 a.m. or later for middle and high schools so that students can get at least 8 1/2 hours of sleep a night. But according to the National Center For Education Statistics, only 17 percent of public middle and high schools, including some school districts in Minnesota and Kentucky, start at 8:30 a.m. or later.

Getting a little extra sleep in the morning can be vital for teens, explains de la Iglesia. Once children reach puberty, their biological clock changes. "They fall asleep later than older adults and young kids," he says.

Teens' biological bedtime is more like midnight, he says, and if parents expect them to go to sleep at 10 p.m., it often doesn't work. "They'll just lay in bed and not fall asleep," he says. Of course, this means teens need to sleep later in the morning. "To ask a teen to be up and alert at 7:30 a.m. is like asking an adult to be active and alert at 5:30 a.m.," says de la Iglesia.

In the study, researchers compared two separate groups of sophomores enrolled in biology classes at two Seattle high schools, Franklin High School and Roosevelt High School. The first group of 92 students, drawn from both schools, wore wrist monitors to track their sleep for two-week periods in the spring of 2016, when school still started at 7:50 a.m. The wrist monitors collected information about light and activity levels every 15 seconds so researchers could determine when students were awake and when they were asleep.

In 2017, after schools changed start times to nearly one hour later, researchers looked at a group of 88 students taking the same biology classes. They also wore wrist activity monitors and kept a sleep diary.

You might think that when school starts later, teens will just stay up later. But that's not what researchers found. Bedtimes stayed relatively constant and kids caught some extra sleep in the mornings. "We've put them in between a rock and a hard place where their biology to go to bed later fights with societal expectations," says lead researcher Gideon Dunster, a graduate student studying sleep at the University of Washington.

"Thirty-four minutes of extra sleep each night is a huge impact to see from a single intervention," says de la Iglesia.

The study also shows a link between getting more sleep and better academic performance. Students who took the biology class after the later start time got final grades that were 4.5 percent higher than students who took the class when it started earlier. That could be the difference between an A and a B, says de la Iglesia. He says sleep deprivation makes it more difficult to learn and to retain new information.

Even though researchers can't be sure that more sleep gave students an academic edge, the school's biology teachers say the difference was striking.

"When we started at 7:50 a.m. there would always be stragglers who were having a hard time getting here," says Cindy Jatul, who teaches biology at Roosevelt High School. Students were groggy and noticeably different from students who took her class later in the day. "For example, if I gave them a project in the lab, they would be the most likely class to mess up," she says.

Franklin High School science teacher A.J. Katzaroff says "there was lots of yawning" when school started at 7:50 a.m. Students had a hard time engaging in the work or in brief discussions, which is extremely unfortunate. "Some of the best practices in science education have students talk, discuss and investigate together and those are all very hard when the brain is not fully powered," Katzaroff says.

After the time switch, many more kids were able to engage in deeper thought and scientific discourse. Katzaroff says. The number of students who were tardy or absent also decreased significantly, putting Franklin High School - which is in a low-income neighborhood - on par with students from a higher-income neighborhood. The later school start time gave them a better opportunity to make it to school on time.

"We need to give every bit of equity we can for kids in lower socio-economic families," says Dr. Cora Collette Breuner, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Breuner was not involved in the study.

Breuner calls the findings "exciting" and says that while an extra 34 minutes of sleep might not sound like a lot to the average person, when it comes to sleep "every minute counts."

Breuner says that while only a handful of school districts nationwide have switched to later start times, that is changing "as counties and cities like Seattle make changes and see positive benefit."

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Sleepless No More In Seattle - Later School Start Time Pays Off For Teens

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American teens are chronically sleep deprived, in part because of early school start times. But how much difference can a later start make? As Seattle's school district found out, it can help a lot.

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Starting High School Later Shows ‘Big Impact’

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Starting High School Later Shows ‘Big Impact’

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Brian Harris has a lot of physicians living in his affluent suburban Chicago district. And for years, they have told him that the district's high school start time at around 7:20 a.m. was way too early for bleary-eyed teenagers.

So, as part of a districtwide push to make better, evidence-based use of time, the superintendent of the Barrington 220 district in Barrington, Ill., got to work pushing back high school start times to 8:30 a.m. That's the earliest recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Middle schoolers, who some experts suggest may need the extra shut-eye even more than their high school counterparts, now start at 9 a.m. And rise-and-shine elementary students, who learn best first thing in the morning, begin class at 8 a.m.

The district's decision was supported by an avalanche of research, dozens of experts, and even parents, especially those in the health-care profession.

Starting high school later has been shown to reduce teenage depression and car accidents, and contribute to higher test scores. That's partly because teenagers get their most productive, rapid-eye-movement sleep in the early-morning hours.

Hard to Change

Early start times mean "truncating dream sleep" for higher schoolers, said Dr. Daniel Lewin, the associate director of sleep medicine at Children's National Hospital in Washington. "The general take-home message is that when kids sleep longer and have more sleep time in the morning, they have better emotion and regulation, better attention on the highways and in class."

But all that evidence doesn't mean the change was easy. In fact, it took Harris and his team two years-and a lot of outreach-to implement.

"It was a big shift in our community, big impact," Harris said. The change affected parents, teachers, and students and also local businesses, day-care providers, and more. Shifting start times even transformed traffic patterns on busy roads.

Organizations like dance studios had to change their business hours, so that they could be open when children were available. "We had to get them on board with what we were doing," Harris said.

Another group that had to adjust: day-care providers. Elementary school students are now dismissed at 2:45 p.m., when many parents are still working. And their older siblings are no longer able to watch them after school because they are still in class. "We had to really ramp up the after-school options at the elementary level," Harris said.

At the other end of the spectrum, local fast-food joints and grocery stores who hire teenagers had to wrap their minds around the shift. "All of a sudden, they weren't available to be at work at 3 o'clock," the superintendent said. "Now, they couldn't get there 'til 4."

And, of course, there were other changes to district operations. Bus routes needed to be rethought. So did after-school activities. Teachers' own schedules changed.

To help smooth the process, Harris convened an "advisory group" of about 40 to 50 parents, educators, representatives from the chamber of commerce, and local government officials. They studied school start times for about six months and then made a recommendation to the board of education. "They helped explain to the rest of the community the importance of it," Harris said.

Was it worth it? The data seem to suggest it was. Before the change was implemented 2½ years ago, academic grades in every student's first-period class-no matter what it was-were one standard deviation below the rest of the periods of the day. But now, there's no difference between student grades for their earlier and later classes, Harris said.

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Starting High School Later Shows 'Big Impact'

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Brian Harris has a lot of physicians living in his affluent suburban Chicago district. And for years, they have told him that the district's high school start time at around 7:20 a.m. was way too early for bleary-eyed teenagers.

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Start Middle and High Schools at 8:30 a.m. or Later to Promote Student Health and Learning

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Start Middle and High Schools at 8:30 a.m. or Later to Promote Student Health and Learning

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Should Your School Day Start Later? (Published 2019)

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If it did, would students get more sleep? Or would they just stay up later?

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PROOF POINTS: Later school start time gave small boost to grades but big boost to sleep, new study finds

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PROOF POINTS: Later school start time gave small boost to grades but big boost to sleep, new study finds

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A Minnesota study of 18,000 students whose schools switched to a later start time found kids slept more but posted only slightly higher grades. Credit: Thom Lang/Getty Images

The physical and mental health benefits of getting a good night's sleep are indisputable. What's less clear is whether starting school later in the morning will prompt kids to sleep more and consequently learn more during the school day. Fewer studies have looked at academic achievement after a later morning bell. Some have found improved student performance. Some haven't.

A new study in Minnesota documents what happened to 18,000 students in grades 5 through 11 after four school districts postponed the start of the school day by 20 to 65 minutes. Student grades increased a little, raising students' grade point averages by an extra 0.1 points, on average. That's the equivalent of moving from, say, a B average of a 3.1 to a B average of a 3.2.

Despite concerns that kids would just stay up later at night if school started later in the morning, many students reported sleeping more. After the switch in start times, students were 16 percent more likely to meet the recommended hours of sleep, which is nine or more hours for students in grades 5 and 8 and at least eight hours for students in grades 9 and 11.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Bloomington, Minnesota, public schools characterized the academic benefits as "small" but the sleep increases as "large."

The study was instigated by the school district of Bloomington, home to the Mall of America and headquarters of International Dairy Queen, because it had been considering whether to shift its schools to a later start time and wanted more data to inform the decision. Local officials pressed the snooze button on this sleep debate during the Covid pandemic. But the researchers presented their study, " Changes in school start time have a significant effect in the amount of sleep and reported grade point average of students," in April 2021 at a session of the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

I thought the research was interesting in a national context as it slightly bolsters the evidence for starting school later but isn't quite the knockout punch that advocates hoped to make.

Nationally, Minnesota has been at the forefront of starting school later in the morning. Edina, an affluent Minneapolis suburb, is believed to be the first town in the U.S. to shift to a later start, moving in 1996 from 7:20 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. in response to medical research about teen sleep. In 2014, the American Pediatric Association recommended an 8:30 a.m. start time for high schools and middle schools so that teens can get sufficient sleep.

Schools have been slow to heed the doctors' advice. Only 17 percent of U.S. high schools start the day at 8:30 a.m. or later, according to the most recent federal data. The average start time for high school across the nation remains a half hour earlier, at 8:00 a.m.. South Carolina has the latest high school start time in the nation of 8:34 a.m., followed by Alaska, Minnesota and Iowa. The earliest is Louisiana, where high schools start at 7:30 a.m., on average.

Advocates often assert that later start times have been proven to improve academic performance but I was surprised to learn how murky the research evidence is. Researchers don't always find academic gains and where they exist, they tend to be small. For example, a 2015 study of elementary school students in Wayzata, Minnesota, found only small increases in reading and math scores and the increase wasn't seen for all students. A 2018 study reported increases in grades and attendance in one Seattle high school but not in another.

"The findings from all of the research regarding the relationship between start time, sleep duration, and academic performance are not totally conclusive," said Kyla Wahlstrom, a national expert of school start time research at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the current study, via email.

"That said, after 25 years of my looking at academic performance and start time, there is no question in my mind that greater sleep, meaning eight hours or more per night for teens, does in fact yield better academic performance," Wahlstrom said. "This is because there is incontrovertible evidence that sleep enhances cognition and memory."

In the current study, four Minnesota districts - Wayzata, Burnsville, Richfield, and Mounds View - moved to a later school start time between 2016 and 2019. One shifted from 7:25 a.m. to 8:35 a.m.; a second shifted from 7:30 a.m. to 8:20 a.m.; a third shifted from 7:33 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., and a fourth shifted from 8:10 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.. Researchers compared results for 18,000 students in these districts with 20,000 students in similar districts that continued to start the day early. Districts were matched by similar demographic characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, language and family income. Researchers also factored in how students responded to survey questions about how much they cared about doing well in school.

One surprising result were the positive outcomes for 5th graders, who not only slept more but also achieved higher grades when they started school later. Advocates for later start times often focus on teens and are less worried about younger kids' sleep. Perhaps the assumption that it's more natural for younger kids to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier needs to be re-evaluated. By contrast, the researchers didn't see extra academic benefits for 11th graders after switching to a later schedule, compared to similar students in districts that continued to start the day early.

There seems to be no harm to children in switching to later school schedules but there are many obstacles. Julio Caesar, a research scientist at Bloomington Public Schools and one of the study's authors, explained that teachers unions are often resistant to moving teachers' work schedules. Many communities have a limited number of buses and have to stagger school start times, forcing younger kids to start earlier when older kids start later. Those changes can upset family schedules and create resistance from parents. Starting school later leads to ending school later and that can cut into precious after-school sports time.

One silver lining to the Covid pandemic is that there are fewer logistical challenges to later start times when you're learning remotely from home and school activities are canceled. My daughter's middle school in Brooklyn switched to a 9 a.m. start during the current 2020-21 school year and I've noticed that she's less groggy in the morning. It will be interesting to see what her school and others decide to do about the schedule next year when normal life returns.

Advocates for later start times see an opening now with so many school norms upended. That's something to dream about.

This story about school start times was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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PROOF POINTS: Later school start time gave small boost to grades but big boost to sleep, new study finds

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New study on school start times found small GPA increases in four Minnesota districts; sleep gains seen even for elementary school children

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Later School Start Times Mean Better-Rested Kids: Study

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Later School Start Times Mean Better-Rested Kids: Study

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By Robert Preidt, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, April 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Starting the school day a little later helps middle and high school students get more and better sleep, according to a new study.

The research is based on annual surveys of about 28,000 elementary, middle and high school students and their parents. The surveys were completed before and two years after school start times were changed.

Changes to sleep cycles during puberty make it harder for teens to fall asleep. With early school start times, many don't get enough rest.

In the study, middle schools pushed their start times back by 40 to 60 minutes; and high schools began the day 70 minutes later. Meanwhile, elementary schools started an hour earlier.

Participants were asked about students' typical bedtime and wake time on weekdays and weekends, and also about quality of sleep and daytime sleepiness.

The surveys revealed that the high school students benefited most from starting school later. They were able to get an extra 3.8 hours of sleep a week. More than 10% said they were sleeping better and 20% reported less daytime sleepiness.

Because they were getting more sleep on weeknights, high school students didn't feel as great a need to play catch-up on weekends, the study found. Their additional weekend sleep fell from an average of just over 2 hours to 1.2.

Meanwhile, middle school students reported getting an extra 2.4 hours of sleep a week with a later school start time. They also had a 12% drop in reported daytime sleepiness.

Later start times had no effect on elementary school students, according to findings published April 15 in the journal Sleep. The study was led by Lisa Meltzer, a pediatric psychologist at National Jewish Health in Denver.

Sleep is a key factor in students' overall health, social development and school performance, but lack of sleep is common among children and teens.

Meltzer and her co-authors said the new study offers the strongest evidence to date that moving elementary school start times to 8 a.m. has no negative effect on students.

As students return to in-person learning, it is important for school officials to consider healthy start times for all youngsters, they said.

SOURCE: Sleep, news release, April 15, 2021

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Later School Start Times Mean Better-Rested Kids: Study

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Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and attendance with later school start time, researchers find

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Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and attendance with later school start time, researchers find

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Teens get more sleep, show improved grades and attendance with later school start time, researchers find

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In 2016, Seattle Public Schools pushed back the start times for the district’s 18 high schools by 55 minutes, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. And as hoped, teenagers used the extra time to sleep in.

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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.