School Start Time

Despite the overwhelming evidence given by current research, many people refuse to change school start times because of the lack of noticeable impact some schools had or the impact it had on some people’s schedules. Pannoni cites a statement by the Iowa City Community School District which found that “the later start time . . . [did] not reduce the number of tardy students by any appreciable amount.” The principal of Ballard High School agreed by saying that he “would be surprised to see large improvements in either attendance or grade data compared with past years” (Pannoni). Many schools refused to change because of how the later start and dismissal times would affect extracurricular activities and students with jobs. This change would also interfere with bus schedules and childcare habits. However, these seem like small problems that can be overcome when the results are that “later school start times were associated with students sleeping longer at night, less tardiness, having higher test scores, being less depressed, using less caffeine and other drugs, . . . and experiencing fewer morning car crashes” (Fenwick).

The school day should start later in order improve students’ mental health. Survey results have consistently indicated that middle level and high school students who start school at 7:15 a.m. or earlier obtain less total sleep on school nights due to earlier rise times in comparison to students at later-starting schools. () This is just the beginning of the negative impacts that early start times have on students. By starting school at a later time, students’ brains will function better, their grades and learning increases, and will be more mentally stable.

One of the biggest struggles for students today, is the struggle to wake up for school in the mornings, and to make it to class on time. Because of the start times that many high and middle schools currently have, students are having to get up early to get ready, therefore providing them with little sleep at night. They are faced with their everyday schedules, things that are happening in other parts of their lives, as well as having to keep up with their schoolwork. All of this results in a loss of sleep, with the added factor of having to wake up early in the mornings. Having a later start time for schools is beneficial for student’s health, safety, and their overall performance in school.

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

The school changed their start time from 7:15 a.m., to 8:40 a.m. (Boergers, 3). After this change, the students acquired an extra hour of sleep and the number of students who were fatigue decreased (Boergers, 3). The school also noticed that there were fewer absent kids and the percent of enrolled students increased (Boergers, 4). Another example is a boarding school with different start times in the spring and winter (Boergers, 4). In the spring, school started at 8 a.m. and in the winter classes began at 8:25 a.m. (Boergers, 4). Although there is not a drastic time difference the school noticed the differences in the students. In the winter, there was a reduced amount of depression, a reduced number of students who depending on caffeine, such as energy drinks or soda, and reduced tardiness (Boergers, 5). Another impact this minor time change created was that there was less daytime napping and less students who fell asleep in class (Boergers, 5). On average, these students only obtained an extra 29 minutes of sleep per night, but the number of students receiving eight or greater hours of sleep nearly doubled (Boergers, 5). Consequently, when the school began their spring hours, the students fell back to the baseline, their test scores dropped and the number of hours they

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

First, it would cause for the bus drivers to change their daily route schedule. Elementary school students are usually starting school at around 8:30 a.m., which would be the same time as high school students if the schedules were to change. This means that the board of education would have to hire extra bus drivers to be able to get all of the students to school on time. Although, there is a solution that could easily fix the bus schedule problem. If the time schedules are changed between the elementary and high school students, meaning the elementary students show up to school earlier, then the buses would be running the same routine. This means that it will not result in extra charges for them because they would still be working the same

Beep Beep Beep Beep. It is 5:30 A.M, you were up late last night working on an atrocious math assignment; and all you want is to roll over and ignore that you have to go catch the bus at 7:15 A.M. Sometimes, you’re lucky enough to get a ride or drive to school and get an extra five or ten minutes of sleep, while still making it to first hour in time for the pledge of allegiance. Then, by the time second hour rolls around it is only 8:30 A.M. This example shows school start times are affecting the teenagers and preteenagers of our generation. These early school start times are beginning to create a decrease in students grades, concentration levels, tardiness, absences, and the amount of sleep the students are getting each night. For the first time, the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention is urging education policy makers to start middle and high schools later in the morning. The idea is to improve the students sleep and concentration levels during school. As you can see, high schools and middle schools should start later in the morning.

As children’s doctor and sleep expert Daniel Lewin stated, “The call for later school start times is an essential movement for keeping tweens and teens healthy.” Several reasons why school hours are unjust due to early start times include first, students not being able to focus as easily in class. Next, students also cannot participate to their full capability when their mind and body are not rested properly. Also, recent studies have concluded that teenagers cause more automobile accidents on their way to school, due to being sleep deprived. A negative perspective considering a later school start revolves around the idea that through history school hours have consistently ended before a specific time. This seems to support the fact that “after school

The article “Later start time for teens improves grades, mood, and safety” addresses the topic for teens to have later start times. “The evidence shows that the later the start time, the greater the academic benefits” (Wahlstrom 2016, pg 2). The author has strong arguments concluding the medical research, schools actually participating in later start times, academic outcomes, and health/activity outcome. School starting times being later could be more effective for students in their health and scholastic purposes.

The Start School Later movement, it refers to a series of efforts by healthcare professionals, sleep scientists, educators, economists, legislators, parents, students, and other concerned citizens to restore a later start to the school day (KYLA L.WAHLSTROM). Based on a growing body of evidence that starting middle and high schools too early in the morning is unhealthy, counterproductive, and incompatible with adolescent sleep needs and patterns. In the second half of the 20th century, many public schools in the United States began shifting instructional time earlier than the more conventional bell time, thought to be about 9 a.m. Today it is common for American schools to begin the instructional day in the 7 a.m. hour and end about seven hours later, around 2 p.m. In the early 1990s, the University of Minnesota's landmark school start time study tracked high school students from two Minneapolis area districts (KYLA L.WAHLSTROM). Edina, a suburban district that changed its opening hour from 7:20 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and the Minneapolis Public Schools, which changed their opening from 7:20 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. Many positive benefits to students were found, including: Improved attendance and enrollment rates, Less sleeping in class, Less student-reported depression, Fewer student visits to school counselors for behavioral and peer issues, and More even temperament at home. “Everybody learns better when they’re awake.” (startschoollater.net). Researchers analyzed data from more than 9,000 students at eight high schools in Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming and found that shifting the school day later in the morning resulted in a boost in attendance, test scores, and grades in math, English, science, and social studies. Schools also saw a decrease in tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression. Some even had a dramatic drop in teen car

Controls used in the statistical model other than just the charter status are student background, grade cohort in school effects, and school exact effects which are likely to affect student achievement. In the model, i, j, k and t represent individual schools, students, grades, and years; s is the test score for each student for all of his/her school years, α a represents an disregarded school-specific characteristic that does not get any modification over time,δ is an disregarded grade-cohort influence within each school, γ is an disregarded restriction reflecting the potential effect of charter school attendance on s; C is an gauge variable that equals one if the school is a charter school and zero otherwise, x is a 1 x K vector of K observable factors affecting s, β is a K x 1 vector of disregarded parameters, and v is a random error term (Buddin, Richard, and Ron Zimmer.

This study will focus on one school in a suburban area in Pennsylvania. While the results of this study will provide insight to the usefulness of the CDT in this setting, future researchers should use caution when considering the generalization of these results with larger populations.

The educational change I will analyze is the Ten School Program this program was implemented in The Los Angeles Unified School District. According to LAUSD.net (2008) the one of main reason this program was to provide an instructional program and an organizational design and provide a language intensive that will redirect the pattern of poor academic achievement of African American and other students in predominately Hispanic, Black, Asian and other Non-Anglo (PHBAO) Schools also knowns as low income areas. According to the Los Angeles Unified School district "The focus for the ten school program is to demonstrate that all children can achieve their highest potential when the conditions for learning are at high standards starting with students attendance. Improve the academic achievement of TSP students in reading, math and language art, Lausd.net,(2008)". Below I will list the programs list of guidelines:

The HSLS data was collected through a stratified two stage sampling process. That is, 944 schools (including public, private, and charter schools) were sampled in the first stage and in the second stage 25, 206 students selected in 50 states in the District of Columbia (Ingels et al., 2011, 2014). There were approximately 27 students selected per school. To cater for the complex sampling, the data include weights (students weights, parent weights, teacher weights, counselor weights, and school weights) that should be used to account for the sampling and non-response at the two stages of the data collecting process. For these reasons STATA and HLM software will be used in the data analysis process because these software can be used with weights and correction of standard error. The HSLS has missing data that has been cleaned and the analysis process made easier because the data includes variables in which imputation methods (weighted sequential hot-deck [WSHD] were used to replace the missing data (see Ingels et al., 2011, 2014).