Jesse Venable

Ms. Gilliland
English 102
April 18, 2016
The Effect of School Start Times on Adolescents and the Solutions Thereof
In the ever changing field of American public education, a particular
trend has garnered much scrutiny in recent times as it is on the forefront of
education debate. This trend is the shifting of school start times and how
it has begun to affect students. Changing school logistics are making it
difficult for students to maintain health standards for their age and
schools should be doing something about this. In this essay I will look
into the ways start times have changed, discuss the ill-effects thereof,
and ultimately discuss what is and can be done to fix this problem.
Over time, it has been analyzed that high schools in America have
undeniably moved towards starting earlier. In a small pilot study of school
schedules, start times dating back to 1975 were analyzed for 59 high schools
by comparing start-time trends for early starting schools (before 8:00 a.m.)
in 1996 versus late (8:00 a.m. or later) starting schools (Carskadon & Acebo,
1997). Results showed that early-starting schools had become increasingly
early across time. (Wolfson 49) Another comparison of surveys in the same

publication showed that school start times have moved back even further
since the early 2000s, clustering around 8:00 a.m. and more schools
starting earlier than that average as opposed to later. Research and
historical analysis shows that this is a trend that occurred as a
consequence of the logistics of the time. The move to earlier start times
was likely in reaction to a number of increasing pressures (e.g., fiscal,
political, sociological) faced by school districts to cut costs, to close
neighborhood schools in favor of larger feeder schools, and basically to do
more with less (Owens 4) As can be observed, the past few decades have
seen the gradual advent of the early school start time, however this rate has
slowed down. Current school start times have stagnated around 8:03 a.m. on
average according to a 2011-12 report issued by the CDC.
Despite the CDC reporting 8:03 as the national average school start
time, which factors in elementary and middle schools, and SASS reporting
7:59 as the national average in 2014 for high schools alone, the AAP
(American Association of Pediatrics) recommends that no high school or
middle school begin before 8:30 a.m. This is because studies have
continually revealed a plethora of negative effects early start times invoke
on students. Teenagers attending high school are experiencing the biological
effects of adolescence in that their circadian rhythms make it difficult to keep
in line with the demands of an early school start time. Carskadons 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. Fewer than half of the 10th-graders
averaged even seven hours of sleep each night, which is already below the
recommended amount. Indeed, Carskadons team concluded the students
bordered on pathologically sleepy. (Richmond) This lack of sleep paves the
way for a host of issues that cause students to more likely, [be] overweight;
not engage in daily physical activity; suffer from depressive symptoms;
engage in unhealthy risk behaviors such as drinking, smoking tobacco, and
using illicit drugs; and perform poorly in school. (Wheaton)
In conclusion, this study strongly indicates that middle school-age
adolescents attending a later starting school report more total sleep, later
wake times, less daytime sleepiness, fewer sleepwake behavior problems,
and less tardiness in comparison to their peers attending schools with earlier
start times. (Wolfson 207) Despite rapid population growth, the rate of
crashes in the county dropped after the change in school start time. The
average crash rates in the 2 years after the change in school start times
(Danner) Later start times are thought to improve adolescent sleep by
reducing the mismatch between the developmental biological drive toward
later bedtimes and wake times and externally imposed school schedules.
(Paksarian)