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Effect of school start times on academic performance
Research on school starting later
Research on school starting later
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Should School Start Later?
By Drew Macklin Black O’Keefe
It’s 6:00 am and I’ve already been up for 1/2 an hour. Why? Not because my dog is barking, or the sun is blinding; it’s because my school starts in an hour and I have to get driven through the rush-hour traffic that clogs around the school. Even after taking a shower and packing my bag, I’m struggling to fight off the yawns. I only get 7 hours of sleep on a good night because I’m staying up past 10:30 doing homework, and getting up a 5:30 to get to school on time. What can give me more sleep, let me walk to school, or eat breakfast? A later start to school.
If school were to start later I could sleep-in in the morning. Staying up late to do homework and having to get up early the next
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Ed Ehlinger of the University of Michigan's Boynton Health Service said in a statement. "There is a direct link between the two." I’m not alone when I say I’m tired. According to the Sleep Foundation, ¨About two-thirds of Americans say their sleep needs are not being met during the week.¨ If school were to start later, kids might do better in school and not be tired during the school day. No Sleepless Nights (an advocacy group) recommends that everybody try to get into a schedule, waking up and going to bed at relatively constant times every day of the week. On school days, I go to bed late and wake up early, and on weekends its quite the opposite, as I try to make up for lost sleep. This habit is unhealthy. If school started later, I could get into a healthy sleep schedule and not have to recover from under-slept nights. According to The National Sleep Foundation it is natural for teens to be most alert around 11 pm and then need to sleep in in the morning. ¨This shift in teens' circadian rhythm causes them to naturally feel alert later at night, making it difficult for them to fall asleep before 11:00 pm. Since most teens have early school start times along with other commitments, this sleep phase delay …show more content…
This would help kids stay fit. According to the President’s Council on Fitness, only 1/12 of kids get enough exercise on a daily basis. ¨The President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition says that only a third of American children participate in physical activities on a daily basis. Unfortunately, participation in team sports doesn't guarantee your child enough daily physical activity, either. According to a study published in the April 2011 issue of ‘Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine,’ only around 25 percent of children who play team sports get enough daily exercise. Of the young athletes studied, many spent an average of 30 minutes standing or sitting during sports practice.¨ If ⅓ of all kids play sports, and only ¼ of them actually get adequate exercise from that sport, only 1/12 of all US kids get enough exercise. And getting exercise is only one piece of the benefit of walking to school. If kids walk to school, millions of cars nationwide would not be polluting the air. According to guide.saferoutesinfo.org, only 1/10 of kids walk to school in the US. According to the US 2012 census, there are 74.3 million kids in the US. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the average car gets 24 miles per gallon. According to Yahoo Answers, the average US house is 6 miles from the school. Since kids need to be picked up and dropped off at school every day, the distance
Allowing students to sleep more by starting school later would benefit them in a multitude of ways and keep them from feeling enervated. According to the online article, A Wake-Up Call on High-School Starting Times, “...troubled kids often get caught up in a distress cycle in which too little sleep causes them to experience anxiety and inner turmoil, which, in turn, cause them to lose more sleep. In the worst
How many times has this happened to you; it’s six thirty on a Tuesday morning, your alarm has already gone off twice, your still laying in bed and your bus comes in twenty minutes. This is an everyday occurrence at my house. It is a proven statistic that the average high school student does not get enough sleep. While some experts like Dr. Lee Yanku say “It is not the schools starting time that is the problem as to why students don’t get enough sleep, it is because of facebook, myspace and cell phones” The truth behind it is that we can’t budget sports, homework and extracurricular activities into one day and still get nine hours of sleep. This is hurting student’s academic averages and needs to change. Changing the school time will help boost academic averages among students, and isn’t th...
This leaves students with less than the recommended 9 hours of sleep. Students that have to stay up that late for homework will be tired in the morning, even if their school starts later. Many people argue that starting schools later will let students get more sleep and align with the students sleep cycles. But they do not factor in that students will just stay up later at night because they know that they do not have to get up as early in the morning. This will just leave students with less sleep than before.
Sleep deprivation is very common in adolescents and can contribute to many different problems that can be avoided with simple changes in daily sleep routines. According to the article, “young and sleep deprived” by Karen Weintraub many psychologists want to persuade middle schools and high schools to push back start times to increase safety and performance in their students’ everyday lives. They claim that the reason why teenagers are drowsy and experience impaired attention span in class is because of sleep deprivation. Psychologists claim this because students around the United States are waking up before their circadian rhythms or internal clocks tell them to awake. Therefore, if students awake before their circadian
Are you hitting the snooze button every morning? You are not alone. All over the United States schools are pushing back school start times. Students have shown significant improvements in graduation and attendance rates. Students are far more productive when starting school later. Later start times improve sleep habits. Though there are people who totally disagree with the idea, most experts do support the idea of a later start. Schools should definitely start later.
Waking up early is the daily routine for most students. Recently, however, school schedules have sparked a debate. Some people believe that school should start later due to health reasons. On the other hand, there are many who think school should start early.
Doesn't it suck waking up early every week day and you have to go to school. What if school started at a later time, that'd give you plenty of time to wake up and get ready for school. If you had more time in the morning to get up then you would not be tired at school and focus better. Also, it would help there be less depressed teens. Finally, you could do homework in the morning if you procrastinated.
Every day in the United States, students find themselves lying in bed struggling to get out of bed and prepare himself for the school day. Teenagers have spent too much time the night before on social media or watching netflix. However, current research from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that biological and physiological factors play a major role in determining how teenagers’ brains simply are not designed to sleep more than a few hours each night, and as a result, teens are sleepy and have trouble focusing on school work in their early morning classes, and they exhibit behavior issues and reckless driving. This issue is not an easy matter to resolve without facing some difficulties, but every problem requires some sacrifices to become feasible. The solution is complicated, but for the sake of safety and success, schools should change start times so that
Preventing sleep deprivation would possibly be a benefit to starting school days later. Sleep deprivation should be addressed more to the general youth. Sleep deprivation can become chronic and cause several horrible side effects; including heart attacks, cardiac arrest, stroke, obesity, and depression(1). Lack of sleep for a few days is also dangerous; it can increase a person’s risk of an automobile injury as your alertness becomes impaired (1). Many researchers agree that sleep deprivation can act like alcohol in your system making your neurological state impaired (1). If starting school later prevented sleep deprivation among teens then it would save many lives. Getting the proper amount of sleep of night; usually agreed to be 9 to 9 and half hours; can increase your learning abilities, reduce obesity, manage stress, and make better decisions such as avoiding drug substances(1). If teens could get the proper amount of sleep then they could have a better outlook on life, improve academic performance, an...
Oh the alarm clock is ringing time to go to school. For some high school students getting enough rest is a challenge. Seattle schools are pushing their start times back to 8:45 a.m instead of 8:00. To me this shouldn’t happen. I believe that school should start at the regular time and not make the tenns slack off and sleep in. It is the teens own fault they aren’t getting enough rest. Parents should limit their kids from being out so late on school nights. The late school start would also move after school practices like football, to a later time. If the goal is trying to get kids rest it still would be a late night for the teens.
Biological sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during adolescence, meaning it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00 pm. Therefore, schools should think about starting school at a later time. It will be healthier for students, beneficials for their academic knowledge, and better relationships. First, many schools need to consider starting school at a later time because students are getting more tried and they are doing less. For example, many students have quizzes or tests everyday, in this case those students have to study and some may be up all night.
School starting at a later time promises benefits for students such as increased sleep time. Sleep is important to everyone, especially high school students who can be affected negatively if they are deprived from it. Sleep is beneficial, as it provides rest to help the body function. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers require at least nine hours of sleep. However teenagers do not have proper sleep due to attending school early, taking part in extracurricular activities, or having a part time job. These factors force’s teenagers to sleep at a later time which limits the period they can sleep for. A later start time would allow students to sleep in the morning to meet the required nine hours. Deprivation of sleep can cause teenagers to develop sleeping disorders such as narcolepsy and insomnia which can be extremely harmful and affect their behaviour immensely. In 2006, the National Sleep Foundation surveyed students where “46 percent reported to be depressed” (SleepFoundation, 2013). Of those who claimed to be depressed, “73 percent reported that they also did not have enough sleep” (SleepFoundation, 2013). This proved that one of the main causes for student’s ...
Students Should Not Start School Late Have you ever woke up late and more tired than if you were when you wake up early? Studies show according to Dr. Michael J. Breus, that human body’s “sleep-wake cycle follows a regular pattern (circadian rhythm)” and if that person happens to sleep in longer than usual or “sleep “too much””, it can mess up that natural cycle (Breus, 1). Kids and teenagers in high school always have the struggle getting up in the morning for school including myself.
Imagine someone is going to school drowsy, and tired expecting to learn something. This feeling simply impaired the learning part of the educational process. If that student were to petition to start school earlier it would be their fault for their feelings. If student were to get a solid and utter nine, and a quarter hours of sleep they would wake up feeling fulfilled. The four biggest reasons why school should not start later are educational reasons, after school extracurricular activities, money handling, and statistical facts.
The alarm goes off at six am and the typical high school student is barely able to open their eyes. It is time to get up and prepare for a full day at school, about eight hours. Most teenagers, according to the National Sleep Foundation, will only get about six hours of sleep since they tend to stay up until midnight (“Should schools start later in the day?”). After getting ready, many students look forward to a nap in their first hour class despite the information they will miss. Teenagers seem to always have had trouble getting up in the morning, even earning the title of lazy from their parents. However, recent research on adolescent sleep patterns has produced a biological explanation for this tendency. This raises a serious question: why are high schools starting early in the morning when teenagers are biologically programmed to sleep in? For most cases, school start time has not been conformed to fit student physiological needs simply because of transportation issues.