“I found when I started college and took morning classes, I didn’t perform like I knew I could, and it reflected poorly on my GPA,” said college student Abereann Painter. “Every semester since, I have scheduled later classes, and I’ve gone from almost failing a class to passing them all with mostly A’s.”
Grades can suffer due to school start times. In 2002, high schools in Jessamine County in Kentucky went from 7:30 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. Test scores and grade averages went up almost immediately.
The American Academy of Pediatrics officially states, “The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes insufficient sleep in adolescents as an important public health issue that significantly affects the health and safety, as well as the academic success, of our nation’s middle and high school students… the evidence strongly implicates earlier school start times (i.e., before 8:30 am) as a key modifiable contributor.”
Only two states have a statewide average of starting after 8:30. Twenty-one states had an average that started earlier than 8 o’clock. And, there were a significant amount of schools that start before 7:30 a.m.
Midland Trail student Sara Bess said, ”I have never been informed of the health risk to waking up early. I never even knew there was any health risk.”
Even cigarettes have a warning label. School systems might not realize the risks they are putting children at or how it might be affecting their performance.
According to the CDC, early start times can lead to increased health risks for drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, and using drugs.
How can waking up early make some one more likely to drink or smoke?
The earlier you wake up, the earlier you get home. If a student gets out of school before their parents get home, they potentially have access to mom and dad’s alcohol. Partnership for drug-free kids said, “it’s just as common for teens to start trying a substance because it’s readily available and they see all their friends enjoying it. In their minds, they see drug use as a part of the normal teenage experience.”
If they were to push the time back to say 9 a.m. and students were then getting home around 5 p.m., closer to the time their parents would be getting home from work. You would then take away that option for minors to be drinking alcohol.
In 2018, Center on Addiction did a study on Teen Insight into Drugs, Alcohol, and Nicotine: A National Survey of Adolescents Attitudes Toward Addictive Substances.
They found that “high school students with less than eight hours of sleep per night were significantly more likely than those that got eight hours or more to be current users of tobacco (22% vs. 15%), alcohol (46% vs. 34%), and marijuana (23% vs. 17%) and lifetime users of illicit drugs (16% vs. 11%).”
And it’s not just an increased risk for recreational alcohol and drug abuse.
Midland Trail student Griffin Nickell said, “I see a psychologist on a weekly basis, and she stresses that I need good sleep. We talked about school and how I physically can’t fall asleep until about 11 or 11:30 p.m. Since I must wake up at 5 a.m., I’m only getting about five hours of sleep a night. Not only do I feel more stressed and exhausted, but my anxiety is worse. I’m more irritable, and I feel somewhat sick the longer I go without good sleep.”
Stanford Medicine said, “Sleep deprivation increases the likelihood teens will suffer myriad negative consequences, including an inability to concentrate, poor grades, drowsy-driving incidents, anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide and even suicide attempts. It’s a problem that knows no economic boundaries.”
One of the school boards biggest reasons for not pushing back start times is teens need more time in the afternoon for after-school activities. Starting school by 8:30am will still leave enough time to do after school activities or have an after-school job.
In Massachusetts, Sharon High School pushed back their time from 7:25 a.m. to 8:05 a.m. All they had to do was schedule some games a little later, tell teams not to show up until school was out, and tell the referees the players might need a little more time to warm up. Three simple things and sports were not an issue. Students will be getting up later and being put at less health risks.
The United States education system looks almost identical to what it did in the 1950’s. Times have changed; why haven’t our schools? A later school start time would be an effective first step.