Persuasive Essay : Should High School Start Later?

It is a well known fact that teenagers in general need more sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation: “[teenage sleep] is as important as the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. It can even help you to eat better and manage stress of being a teen.” When schools start as early as 7 o’clock, it puts students health at risk. Adolescents already have a natural shift in their internal body clock, or circadian rhythm when it comes to sleep. Puberty allows this to happen, causing a “sleep phase delay” of about two hours. When teens can't fall asleep until late and school starts so early, they aren't getting nearly enough sleep. Lack of such, according to CDC, makes the individual

In the first place, students are not getting enough sleep. In the article “Should School Start later” by Lisa M. Herrington [20] “According to the National Sleep Foundation “59% of 6th-8th graders and 87% of high schoolers aren't getting the sleep they require”. This quote shows that students are not getting the sleep they need. And kids must wake up early how are they getting the sleep we need. “So why don’t kids just go to sleep earlier? It’s not that simple” Says Danny Lewin, a sleep specialist at Children's National Health system in Washington, D.C. “Adolescents have a deeply programmed biological clock to go to bed later and wake later” Says

School start times play a very big role in a student’s overall development, especially when they aren’t getting enough sleep because of it. An important factor to consider for a student’s development is the act of sleeping; that a lack of it can cause serious problems to the students’ growing body. According to research done with Brown University’s Julie Boergers, the author of the letter “Benefits of later school start times”, the amount of sleep that adolescents need ranges from 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep. Only 17 percent of these students

This article by the National Sleep Foundation describes how adolescents today are not getting the recommended amount of sleep and in return do not perform appropriately or at their maximum level at school. Through different scientific studies it was discovered that adolescent NATURALLY fall asleep at 11 P.M. or later. One study looked at the melatonin secretion in patients and how it occurred later at night in adolescents. Through research the National Sleep Foundation has urged schools to synchronize school clock with student body clocks (If teens naturally fall asleep at 11 P.M. and require 9.5 hours of sleep, school should start approximately at 9:00-10:00 A.M., 1 to 3 hours after current SC school start times). This sources supports my claim to start school later and provides support research about the negative aspects of sleep deprivation in adolescents and the importance of reforming school start times

The primary reason for attending school is for adolescents to get an education in hopes of getting a good job.  Attendance, test scores, and GPA’s all play an important role in a student’s success in school, and if they can all be improved by pushing the start time back, then this issue should be pushed further.  The root problem of students not performing to their full potential has to do with the inability to focus from drowsiness in class due to the lack of sleep they are getting.  To support this point, Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior, and his team, “found that students showed up for morning classes seriously sleep-deprived and that the 7:20 a.m. start time required them to be awake during hours that ran contrary to their internal clocks” (Richmond).  In other words, Carskadon believes that current high school start times go against teens’ natural sleep patterns, making them be awake at a time where their bodies aren’t ready to get up yet.  This causes concentration issues making paying attention in class harder, and kids not getting the best grades they can.  Also, sleep won’t get any

Have you ever been really tired when you wake up for school in the morning? Sleep is very important to all teens, or it should be. Young adults should have 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep every night, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), in Sarah McKibben’s article “Wake Up Calls”. Unfortunately, two-thirds of teens are getting less than 7 hours of sleep each night, according to the NSF’s chart. This is causing a large number of schools and scientists to think that schools should start later in the morning. I fiercely disagree with this. Schools should not start later because starting later for high schools would cause too many negative consequences.

Going to bed at 2:00 in the morning and waking up at 6:30 AM to go to school is a nightmare for anyone. Unfortunately, this situation is far too common in today’s schools. But have you ever wondered how insufficient sleep affects your everyday life? Schools must start later. With early start times thwarting students’ health and safety, adolescents needing more sleep in general, and teens having trouble sleeping early, later start times are essential.

While reading “Why School Should Start Later in the Morning” written by Emily Richmond, it is stated that, “We have to convince school systems this has to happen for the health of kids… it’s an absolute requirement.” With that being said, school board officials are not just changing the starting time to later at random, but more so to help improve students’ health all around. With not enough sleep students can become sleep deprived which can lead to many health issues. Students who do receive enough sleep will have improvement with the tendency of impulsive, on the scene decision making. Gonchar also states that “teens going through puberty have a late release of “sleep” hormone melatonin…” With the late release of the hormone melatonin, students going through the

DING! DING! That awful sound of the alarm goes off. Sound familiar? For many middle school and high school students across America this is just a typical early weekday morning. This isn’t because teens are lazy, it is because of the school start times. I think teen students’ need a later school start time for many supported reasons. Although, schools starting later means school would end later and possibly interfere with extra-curricular activities, school times should be should be pushed back to later times because students will have a better sleep pattern, students health will improve, and students will have better academic performance.

School is not the most desirable place that a teenager would want to be at seven hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a year, and even more problematic is that for them to get to school on time, they have to fight their biological clocks (Hansen). Many schools have started pushing their start times back by even just an hour, and helped with the students grades and mental health by giving them the time they need to sleep (“4 Good Snooze”). Pushing start times back a good idea because it will give students the rest they need to be successful.

Across America school starts on average, at eight o’clock in the morning. When walking through school hallways full of kids on a typical school morning, one may see sleep deprived and tired students not looking forward to their early morning classes, waiting for the bell to ring to signal them to go to class. Students brains are not at their full potential at eight o’clock in the morning because the brain is not yet fully awake. Starting school at eight o’clock is too early for students’ minds. David A. Sousa confirms, “Teenagers are not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation affects their ability to store information, increases irritability, and leads to fatigue, which can cause accidents” (Sousa 117). Starting school

Do any of you have classes that start earlier than 10 AM? Do you catch yourself yawning or falling asleep throughout the day? Most of you do. Waking up at the crack of dawn for another day of school isn’t fun for anyone: not for the millions of kids who have to be at school before 8:30 AM and certainly not for the parents who have to drag those kids out of bed. Teen students’ need a later school start time for many reasons: it gives teens the opportunity to get much needed sleep; it improves their academic performance; as well as helping them become healthier.

You're in bed, feeling serene, having the perfect nights' sleep of your life. You wish it could go on eternally. Suddenly ''BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!", your alarm clock goes off and you comprehend that it's time for school, sound familiar? The subject of start times of school has been a very popular topic.  As many people already know, sleep is an exceedingly significant habit. As stated in the previous newscast, "Sleep physical, emotional, and mental health." Furthermore, students struggle with this habit.

Some parents may argue that having a later school start time won’t get teens any more of this precious sleep. In fact, according to NPR, only 40% of parents asked thought that their kids would get more sleep at night. But what many people seem to forget is the fact that when a child reaches puberty, their circadian rhythms (bio-clocks) shift. This unconsciously inclines them to stay up later, and wake up later. A later start time wouldn’t mean kids/teens would go to bed earlier, but it would at least give them a chance to get those hours in if they do. Dr. Judith Owens, director of Sleep MED. Clinic at the Children’s National MED. Cent. in Wash. D.C. says teens are daily asked to be fully awake, alert, and ready to learn at the time in their 24-hour bio-clock where alertness is at it’s

On average in today’s society most teens don’t like going to school that early in the morning. To have to wake up so early when they only get about seven hours of sleep, to have students be coming into school at 7:30AM or maybe even earlier in some other schools, is not right. Students need to have time at night to get work done, not only schoolwork but also non-schoolwork. Needless to say, the school schedule for high school students needs to be changed and be made where they go in later. That way they get their work done and get enough sleep because without much sleep students will not be getting high grades. A health survey that the University Health Center administered showed them that one in four students say that lack of sleep has