In schools all across America, many high school teachers battle the same problems: student inattention to instruction, insufficient focus in classwork, and general lethargy. One might propose that the reason for student disinterest during early school hours is that teenagers have stayed up too late the night before. However, current research from the Center for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that biological and physiological factors play a major role in determining how teenagers’ brains perform in the morning. The research concludes that teenagers’ brains are not designed to sleep more than a few hours each night. Most schools begin as early as 8:00 a.m., which causes poor performance for students. However, if schools took the advice of sleep experts and set the school start time for later in the day, there would be problems for students who participate in extracurricular activities or have jobs after school. The solution is complicated, but for the sake of safety and success, schools should change start times so that teenagers can be productive, attentive students. Schools have debated whether or not they should start later in the day. Some may say that starting school later in the day is not beneficial enough to the students because some of the students may have jobs or after school activities. Even though some of the students would be obtaining more sleep hours at night, others will not because they will be out later during the day due to
According to Jane Bianchi,the author of “The Teen Who Woke Up Her School”, “After a good night's rest, you're more alert, and it's easier to solve problems, process and remember information, and be creative. Research has also linked sleep to higher test scores.” They did a study and found that the students that were well rested were more likely to perform better. According to Jan Hoffman, “They found that the later a school's start time, the better off students were on measures like mental health, car crash rates, attendance, and, in some schools, grades and standardized test scores.” They did a study and found positive results when the students got enough sleep. Also according to, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “A later start to the school day could help boost students’ academic performance and reduce tardiness and absenteeism.” This means that having a later start time to schools would be good for the students because the schools would have better attendance. So, if the schools start later, they would have those positive
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.
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
Lack of sleep can lead teenagers to gain weight, become depressed or engage in risky activities (i.e. drugs, alcohol) and can lead to poor school performance overall (CDC). These consequences are not the only problem with teenagers losing sleep because of school work. During teenage years, an individual’s biological clock causes them to want to go to sleep later in the morning due to various hormones in their bodies. Students aren’t naturally supposed to wake up early, yet in 42 states the majority of school’s start before 8:30 A.M (CDC), but
“When schools have delayed the start of the school day, communities have seen reduced tardiness, sleeping in class, and car crash rates, as well as improved attendance, graduation rates, and standardized test scores” (School Start Later). There has been much debate whether start times for school should be kept where they are at or if they should be pushed back later. Research says that the teenage brain does not fully wake up till eight a.m. or later. So why don’t school systems make the decision to push back school start times for high school students? Although there are a few benefits to school starting earlier such as family time or an after school job, but the benefits of starting school later are much greater. Public schools should initiate later start times to increase the level of academic achievement, create a more positive attitude toward learning, and reduce the amount of stress on students.
Education is an important aspect of any adolescents’ life. High school prepares adolescents for adulthood and provides them with prime information. The most obvious drawback to the typical high school system is how early in the morning it begins. Adolescents are “programmed” in a sense that their bodies begin to produce the melatonin needed for sleep at a much later time than younger children or adults. Without a sufficient amount of sleep, the human brain suffers cognition and memory issues. This is not an ideal prerequisite for learning. Teenagers have growing responsibilities and insufficient amounts of sleep can greatly hinder performance. High schools should consider
The first main point of why we should start school later is because every body learns better when they’re awake. The first reason is that parents have to make sure that their children get enough sleep. This is because schools clearly play an important role in students daily schedules. An evidence that shows this is that “while teenagers are going to bed later, their school start times are often becoming earlier as they advance through middle and high school” (Richmond). This evidence shows how you have to go earlier to school as you grow up and which makes you even more tired because you're not getting enough sleep. The second reason is that students improve in lots of things since they got enough sleep. 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. An evidence that shows this is that “ schools also saw a decrease in tardiness, substance abuse,
In conclusion, the school system should allow schools to start later. If this were to go into effect, so many students would succeed in school more. They would not be as tired and could focus so much better. In all, schools starting later would benefit everyone tremendously.
Schools should start later in the day. Teens also go through stages of sleep that should not be intervened with, and why school starting early can cause health problems. Schools should start later to improve the health and the performance of students, that are teens.
Almost every day high school students are waking up around six o’clock in the morning to get ready for school, some even earlier than that. Nearly every morning students are waking up without adequate sleep. If sleep is one of the most essential needs of the body in order to grow and develop, shouldn’t we be more aware of how much it affects students everyday performance? The ways in which students are affected by sleep-deprivation is precisely why school needs to start later.
Since it is hard for students to fall asleep early, high schools around the United States that have changed to later start times have seen improvements in students, and not just academically, but in other aspects of a teen’s life too. There are some disadvantages to changing the school start time to a later time, but the advantages outnumber the disadvantages. Due to the fact that teens are not able to fall asleep early because of melatonin and the harm that early start times have on children, makes it clear that high schools should start later in the morning.
On average high schoolers get about seven to nine hours of sleep,and then have to be up and get to school by seven. But students are never awake or ready to learn, which is why most students are failing their first period. “ Ideally, teenagers faced with early school start times would just go to bed early. However, a voluminous body of research demonstrates that earlier school start times lead teenagers to sleep less. In a recent study in Minnesota, students in schools where classes started at
A problem that burdens classrooms across the nation is a lack of energy and fatigue. Early start times for school cause students to wake-up early, and the large amounts of homework cause them to stay up late. The lack of sleep affects teenage student worst of all because their developing brains need the most sleep possible. Consequently, students’ grades could begin to suffer because they are not retaining information. “I feel exhausted and unable to learn,” says a student when asked how she feels in her first-hour class. Research states that the average school start time is 8:00. To avoid this dilemma, schools should start classes later, have a study period first-hour in lieu of an actual class, or assign less homework so students can get to bed at a reasonable time.
If school started later in the day children could get the sleep they need. “Sleep gives your body a rest and allows it to prepare for the next day”. As said by kidshealth.org .We all need more sleep which is hard to get when we go to bed at eleven at night and have to wake up at seven in the morning to go to school. Better rested students perform
Everyday teens wake up to the agonizing scream of their 6 A.M. alarm clock telling them to wake up for school. That very moment each day, students struggle to function enough to keep their eyes open. After this excruciating experience, many make the statement, ‘School start later’. Research shows that these early starting school days cause adolescents to become sleep deprived, leaving them with impaired decision making. It is said that the brain is unable to reach its full function this early in the morning. With school starting later problems such as sleep deprivation will decrease as well as teen accident rates and an increase in school attendance records. With all this being said, many have done research experiments to support all of these