Negative Essay: Why Should School Start Later?

School Should Start Later Virtually everyday high school students are waking up around six o’clock in the morning to get ready for school, some even earlier than that. Just about 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.

Schools that start before 8 a.m. are a major reason students aren’t getting adequate sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers need on average 8 ½ - 9 ½ hours of sleep a night(Schute, Nancy). Realistically students

Later start times would put buses on the roads closer to rush hour, affect families’ child care arrangements, and whether or not students can work part-time(Monaco, Michael). Acknowledging the negative consequences, the percent of people that are actually affected by them, doesn’t even come close to the positive outcomes that would result from a later start time. As a result, elementary schools would need to start earlier and teachers would have to change their schedules(Schute, Nancy). All of which are necessary sacrifices that can be given up in order to help increase student performance within the school district. With start times as they are right now, in the wintertime students already leave for school when it’s still dark outside(Erbacher, Megan). This is just a natural part of life, at some point everybody leaves for school or leaves for home when it’s dark outside and even more so when they join the

Right now only 15 percent of high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later, with 40 percent of high schools starting before 8 a.m.(Schute, Nancy). How are the schools that start at 8:30 a.m. or later faring compared to the schools that aren’t? A study done by Dr. Kayla Wahlstrom on changing the school start time from 7:15 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. on 18,000 students in the Minneapolis Public School District showed improved grades, increased attendance, decreased reports of depression and fewer dropout rates(Rosenberg, Russell). Pushing the start time back by one hour and 25 minutes alone, increased students overall school performance. Delaying start times by just one hour alone increases standardized test scores on both math and reading by roughly 3 percentile points(Edwards, Finley). This may seem like a tiny comparison, but it’s actually a pretty big improvement for standardized