Should Start School For High School Start Later?

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 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

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.

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.

Insufficient sleep is an epidemic amongst the average America teen. Teens are wired to stay up late and sleep in even later. So why is it that across the country most of the nation's high school's start before 8:30 am? Early start times make it nearly impossible for teens to get the minimum eight hours of sleep that is recommended. Thus, the lack of sleep contributes to other problems like poor performance inside of classrooms and risk of serious health problems for the teens. I am asking The Denver Board of Education to consider my proposal of a trial run of later start times in their desired lowest testing schools. If it is proved a more successful year for the students, then we would move forward in implementing later start times in all

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

Did you know that approximately 87% of high school students get less than the recommended 9 hours of sleep every night? The majority of high schools students are not getting enough sleep each night because they have to wake up very early each morning for school. Many are sleep deprived, have trouble functioning during the day, and often do poorly on tests and quizzes. This problem could easily be solved if high schools pushed back start times to after 830am.

If schools started later, students could go to bed at a healthier time for their bodies and still get necessary amounts of sleep. Therefore, they would score higher on tests and make better grades. Many schools have experimented with later start times and have had improved student success. Alexandra Sifferlin says that “In Wake County, North Carolina, a study showed that delaying the start of school by one hour could lead to a two to three percentile point increase in math and reading test scores. The effect was greatest among students who were struggling,” (“When Sleep and School Don’t Mix”). Another example is Sharon High School in Massachusetts, which delayed start times 40 minutes from 7:25 A.M. to 8:05 A.M. in 2010 (Sifferlin). Since the delay, the school has seen a drastic decrease in students tardy to first period. The school has also sent out many surveys to both students and teachers; the students were all grateful for the extra sleep, whereas the teachers appreciated the students being more attentive and involved in the mornings (Sifferlin). Also, the delay has given teachers extra time to work in the mornings. Sharon High School Latin teacher, Jen Orthman told Alexandra Siferlin ‘“I think that despite some initial resistance to the change, most teachers appreciate having additional time in the morning to meet with students, collaborate with peers, partake in meetings, and set up classrooms for the day,”’ (“When

Starting school at a later time is something that I believe a lot of students can agree on. One reason why everyone would really appreciate school starting after 8:30 a.m. is because of the simple fact that we wouldn’t be so tired and unaware of our surroundings. Any high school student can agree that when they arrive to first period they aren’t completely awake, and present in class. Everyone always has something to do after school, whether it's community work, homework, sports or anything else, the point is we all have things to do after school and we don’t always have enough time to get our full 8 hours of sleep which we all desperately need. Studies show that adolescents’ melatonin levels peak from 11pm. to 7a.m., thus only giving them 7 hours of sleep, at the very most.

Many students participate in time-consuming after school associations, such as marching band, team sports, and academic clubs. These activities often require a considerable amount of time and effort on the participants’ part. If school hours were moved to a later time, these obligations would have to be moved back as well, potentially causing the students to be up later in the evenings. Additionally, high school academic assignments require hours to complete, and if school ended afterward, students would need to delay rest in order to finish it. Students would not be able to acquire as much sleep, which is what starting school later tries to avoid, possibly preventing them from achieving as well academically. Some may argue that there is the same amount of time between the start and end of school, but most teens would go to bed at their normal hour and wake up later, debunking that argument. Conclusively, school should not be started later because it would hinder students’ times for after school engagements and potentially bring the opposite effect of delaying

What do most kids in school struggle with? Grades of course, but so many students can hardly stay awake during school and this causes school to be so much more stressful and difficult. If students could get more sleep in the morning they could be so much more successful in school. Why is it that students don’t get enough sleep? It is because of how early the school bells are. If students could get at least an extra hour of sleep, they wouldn’t be as tired.

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

Most people have experienced the days when the last thing wanted to be done, is to wake up and go to school. Young teen minds need plentiful sleep in order to function and develop properly, however when school begins too early, there can be damaging effects, that affects how well students learn. Forcing teens to wake up earlier for school affects students the quality of student’s performance in the classroom.

Most high school students are sitting in their first period class by 8:00 am each weekday morning. While some students may be eager to go, many are struggling to stay awake and alert. In fact, “survey evidence shows that over a quarter of high school students report falling asleep in class at least once per week” (National Sleep Foundation 2017). As parents and administrators look for ways to improve student academic achievement, some question whether early start times are getting in the way of the learning process for teenagers. Sleep research supports this notion, finding that many adolescents are sleep-deprived because of both early school start times and changing sleep patterns during the teen years. Schools should do what is best for students and change the start times to benefit everyone.