Who needs sleep?

School start time affecting students grade, health

Jaclyn Adamson, Editor-in-Chief

It is not a new concept that teenagers do not get enough sleep. It has been verified in many studies that students would do better if they started their school days after 8:00 A.M. The nine hours of sleep that students need to function are not being reached with the current system.  

According to the National Center for Education Statistics 85.6% of American high schools start at 8:00 A.M. or earlier. The rest of the schools start at 8:30 or later. More and more schools are making the change to start their school day later. Some are doing it in order to make their school day longer and shorten their school year. Others really feel swayed by the research and want to give their students more sleep.

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement reported that schools pioneering this later start time are recording higher test scores and less traffic accidents involving high school students. When students are more rested they are able to concentrate in and out of school.

“Getting enough sleep is important for students’ health, safety, and academic performance,” Anne Wheaton, Ph. D, epidemiologist in CDC’s Division of Population Health said in a press release in August of 2015.

When teens hit puberty their bodies change in many ways . One of those ways is their sleep pattern. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens get their best sleep between 11:00 P.M. and 8:00 A.M., meaning that waking up at six or seven in the morning is not doing students any favors. The human body will get sleep whether or not it is wanted. That means that students could fall asleep in school which is, like, the biggest crime here.

If the schedule was changed would kids just stay up even later and still complain? Of course there would be those who try to take advantage of the situation. But a majority of students would benefit from a later start time. They would go to sleep at the same time as now but would get more time before school.

Would backing up the start time mess up the schedule? Not really. Everything would just be pushed a half hour back. And with kids having more time to eat breakfast, we could afford later lunch periods.

For those espousing the stellar advice ‘they just need to go to sleep earlier,’ just know that teen body clocks do not work that way. Unless parents are recommending drugging children for a ten o’clock bedtime, then a later start time is something that needs to be put under serious consideration.