How many of us have a teenager who must be dragged out of bed to get to school by 7:30 a.m.? That’s the typical start time for most public high schools; private high schools typically start a bit later, around 8 a.m. Research shows teen body clocks don’t mesh with the school day. However, realigning school start times is a tough sell.
Dr. Mary Carskadon knows teen sleep needs. A professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, she directs chronobiology and sleep research at E. P. Bradley Hospital in Providence, RI, Focusing on the interrelationship between the circadian timing system and the sleep patterns of children and adolescents, Dr. Carskadon’s work reveals the impact early school starting times have on sleep-deprived teen.
Teens need about nine and a half hours sleep, and they have a difficult time falling asleep before 11 p.m. The ideal wake-up time, researchers find, is 8 a.m.
Frontline, from PBS, interviewed Dr. Carskadon about her findings. She said the average teen is getting about seven and a half hours of sleep, but a quarter are getting six and a half hours or less on school night.
“When you put that in the context of what they need to be optimally alert, which is nine and a quarter hours of sleep, it’s clear that they’re building huge, huge sleep debts, night after night after night,” she said.
Dr. John Cline, in his Psychology Today article Do Later School Times Really Help High School Students? says that starting classes later, “closer to when their biological clocks are most ready for learning, could make a real difference in how much knowledge a teen acquires at school.”
Cline said that a Minnesota study in the 1990s showed that switching start times from the 7 a.m. hour to 8:30 or 8:40 resulted in improved functioning. Urban school teens had better attendance, less tardiness, and fewer visits to the school nurse. Teens in suburban schools were able to get more homework done during the day thanks to improved efficiency and alertness. He notes a recent study at a private high school in Rhode Island. The school switched its start time from 8 a.m. to 8:30, and the percentage of students getting eight hours of sleep a night rose from 16% to 55%.
Dr. Carskadon says that teens who don’t get enough sleep are not “filling up their tank at night, and so they’re starting the day with an empty tank. What’s interesting is there’s another part of their brain that's the biological timing system, or the circadian clock, that actually helps to prop them up at the end of the day. But when they start the day with the empty tank and there's no biological clock helping them in the morning, they really should be home in bed sleeping, not sleeping in the classroom.”
Read Dr. Carskadon’s full interview with Frontline here.
The National Sleep Foundation lists the following benefits associated with later start times (as listed in the Island Packet (SC)):
- Less likelihood of depressed moods
- Reduced likelihood of tardiness
- Reduced absenteeism
- Better grades
- Reduced risk of car crashes caused by falling asleep
- Reduced risk of metabolic and nutritional problems associated with insufficient sleep, including obesity
To get a look at what another district is doing, read about Beaufort County (SC)schools and start times:
Some schools and school districts, such as the Loundoun County (VA,) district, have adjusted their high school start time to around 9 a.m. Still, it’s a uphill battle to change decades of accepted logistics to make this happen across the board.
Has your school changed your start time for high school? What has resulted? Let us know! communitymanager@isminc.com
Additional ISM resources of interest
National Sleep Foundation School Start Time and Sleep
The Washington Post Are Exhausted Students Learning in School?
ISM Private School News Vol. 9 No. 6 8-Hour School Days?
ISM Monthly Up Date for Division Heads Vol. 8 No. 2 Scheduling and Chronobiology
Additional resources for ISM Consortium Gold Members
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 35 No. 4 Scheduling and the Harried Teen
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 36 No. 6 Scheduling the Upper School Calendar
