Why Teens Should Start Later

First of all, kids will be more energized and be more academically advanced if school starts are pushed back. According to, “Should School Start Later” “Studies show that well rested teens get better grades, have higher standardized test scores, and miss fewer days of school. They also have a lower risk of being in car accidents and have fewer health problems such as depression, mood changes, and being overweight.” Many schools start before 7:45 a.m. and have tired students not putting forth their best efforts while 40 percent of American High Schools start classes past 8 a.m. The schools with later starts

According to a study done in North Carolina schools that start as little as an hour later can cause standardized test scores to go up by as much as 2 percent (Educationnext.org).Two percent may not seem like a lot but it can be the difference between a C or a B on a standardized test. Earlier start times also can cause students to get less sleep which can cause students to perform worse. If students were able to get more sleep they may perform better and actually enjoy going to school and getting good grades while still getting a decent amount of sleep.

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

Do you ever wake up and feel like you haven’t gotten enough sleep? The reason is because in reality you probably haven’t. Studies show that schools should not start any earlier that 8:30 in the morning due to teens suffering from sleep deprivation. There are many negative effects this condition can have on a teens body including a direct effect on one’s physical and mental health, public safety and excelling in the future. In the Ted Talk video, " Why school should start later for teens" by, Wendy Troxel.  Ms. Troxel explained why school should start later for teens.. Students are very drowsy in the morning and are usually rushing to get to school on time which limits breakfasts times and healthy food options. Schools should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.  for several reasons  but sleep deprivation is  the most important. Sleep deprivation can cause a direct effect to a child’s general health and behavior, public safety and potentially future success.

Research has shown that teenagers experience a change in the internal sleep clock so that waking up early and going to sleep early are difficult. Some people believe that high school classes should begin later in the day to better accommodate students’ natural sleep clocks. Waking up early can be a real struggle for teenagers. Most teens naturally sleep in until ten thirty or eleven on weekends. I do believe high school classes should start later because teens could sleep more naturally, it would give teenagers more time to do things in the mornings, and more sleep equals better

If we were to start school later, academic GPA’s (grade point averages) would definately increase. Isn’t this what we want in our school? It is proven that the more sleep you get, the more awake and alert you actually are. I interviewed Michael Claffey, a sophomore at Newington High School, he stated “ Goooooud.” Also Jorge Premto a sophomore at Newington High School stated “Yes Michael, yes I do believe school should start at nine o’clock am. This will thus help further my education because I will be well rested.” In all, we need school to start later because it will help us with our education.

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

High school students should have a later starting time in school due to students not getting the amount of sleep they need to function. Students that stay up late at night are way too tired to learn when they get to school early in the morning. Most students who do stay up late are unable to sleep due to melatonin not yet being produced. This shows that starting school at a later time would have many positive benefits. These benefits include higher test scores, increased attendance, more participation from students, and higher performance from athletes.

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

The Atlantic website stated that starting school at a later time will boost our attendance, test scores, and overall grades. Believe it or not a lot of students are late to class all the time, so if we get better sleep we will be wide awake and we won’t be late to class anymore, and we will get better grades. Since we will get to school later we have to get out around 3:00, so we have time to get through every class. Sadly there is also a weakness, after school we either have sports or extracurricular activities and on top of that we have to do all our homework on time before you go

I read on www.cram.com that Studies have been shown that students are more alert after 9 A.M. But with school starting at 7:30, the first two periods seem like a waste of time. Students can't learn to their full potential, and as a result aren't getting the grades they are capable if. And with the high standards for getting into college nowadays, it is necessary to get good grades. article on the website educationnext.org was written by a journalist whom actually found that delaying school start times by one hour, from roughly, 7:30 to 8:30, can increase standardized test scores by at least 2 percentile points in math and 1 percentile point in reading. The effect is largest for students with below-average test scores. For this reason, I can conclude later start-times may be able to improve grades and student performance in

The obvious goal for schools across the nation is that their students do well academically and learn how to excel in life. However, students are being restricted from learning and reaching their full potential in school because of the lack of sleep that they are getting. Students are arriving at school with not nearly enough sleep to carry them throughout the day.The main factor as to why students aren’t getting enough sleep is because school is starting to early. If school started later students would receive the amount of sleep that they need in order to be safe and healthy, to excel academically and to keep their bodies as physically healthy as possible.

The national sleep epidemic that has taken the world by storm is also taking a toll in not only teen’s health but also their performance in school as well as personal safety. The sleep deprivation that teens are experiencing everyday has caused many health problems as well as academic problems. I believe starting school later will hinder this ever growing teen sleep deprivation problem we face today. Letting teens sleep later is beneficial to their learning capacity as their heightened alertness improved their classroom performance as well as better memory and many other crucial achievements. So probably starting school later, but no later than eight thirty am, will lead students to perform better in school and their health will improve drastically.

Many individuals, especially adolescents, do not function well early in the morning. “…many teenagers are going to school with their brains essentially in sleep mode” (Kaufman, 2001). This makes it difficult to retain information and in return use the information they have learned later on according to Robert Gerson, a physician and parent (Heinen, 1996). There is a reasonable explanation for why adolescents need the sleep they need at the times in which they need it, or do it for that matter. “Their circadian rhythms, determined by release of the hormone melatonin and other factors, were telling them to stay up later (even if their homework was finished and the day’s chores complete) and to get up later. On basic biological level, many had no more control over that circadian switch than they did over growing facial hair or breasts” (Kaufman, 2001).