How late is too late?
Schools are considering later start times. Is it the answer?
Originally published in the Moultrie News.
I’ve read about schools moving back start times. My child’s high school is considering 10 AM! Is this necessary?
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that 13-18-year-olds should get 8-10 hours of sleep daily. But the CDC says only 16 to 30% are getting enough.
The APA names biology as a key reason: during puberty, youth circadian rhythms shift, making it harder to fall asleep until later at night.
Perhaps that’s why a Pediatrics study found that students in schools with 8:30-8:59 start times slept more, were in better moods, and had better health outcomes than kids in schools with 8:00-8:29 start times. Academically, a study in the Journal of School Health found that later start times correlated with improved attendance, lower tardiness, fewer kids sleeping in class, and better grades.
That all sounds great until you dig into the studies and discover that the improvements were generally marginal. In fact, a follow-up study in the Journal found that delaying start times 50–65 minutes only resulted in about 3 fewer tardies and 1 fewer absence. And the improved grades? They increased by about 0.07–0.17 GPA points over two years. Paltry.
Still, it’s something. And something is better than nothing, right?
Sure, but what’s even better is something meaningful. Something like improving overall school quality or classroom behavior, which generally have higher impacts on student outcomes than start times.
Practically, the difference between starting at 8:00 and 8:45 is modest, so strong pushback is unnecessary. As a night owl and grumpy morning person, I enthusiastically endorse it.
But 10:00 is a different story. Science offers little guidance because few schools have tried it. The research I just cited may suggest a “if two pills are slightly better than one, then fifteen must be terrific” solution, but the law of diminishing returns says that’s not how things work.
For one, such a drastic move would substantially stress other student support systems. How would kids manage studying, sports, family, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs when school doesn’t dismiss until 5:00?
Plus, teens told they don’t have to wake up until 9:30 won’t automatically think, “Cool! An extra hour of sleep!” Many will think, “Cool! I can stay up an extra hour!”
And that’s the trouble with the start times debate. It often fails to consider the most important factor: human will.
If you isolate sleep norms in a lab, you might conclude that teens naturally wake later than current school systems allow. But schools are not sleep laboratories. They’re social institutions preparing students for adult systems that do not operate on adolescent chronotypes.
In reality, if students want 8 hours of sleep, they can get it, no matter when school starts. It just means adjusting their bedtime. Yes, that may be difficult, but people constantly have to make similar adjustments, and it’s better to learn it younger than to expect that the world’s going to adapt to your personal circadian biology.
Some good news is that if your child isn’t getting enough sleep, they can atone. A new study from the University of Oregon found that youths who caught up on missed weekday sleep on the weekends earned meaningful mental health benefits and showed a “significantly” lower risk of depression, making “sleep-in Saturdays” a sound parental policy.
So what’s reasonable? It seems we can scientifically say that very early adolescent start times (especially between 7:00-7:59) should be avoided, with 8:30-9:00 being favored. Anything later is speculative and could have serious drawbacks.
In the end, start times may simply be a scapegoat. The APA notes that, “Many factors are at play in youth getting too little sleep, including heavy homework loads, overscheduled extracurriculars, and the irresistible lure of social media.”
That means the problem is better solved by parents than by schools. Mom and Dad: Enforce a reasonable bedtime. Talk with teachers about kids who spend excessive amounts of time on homework because it’s not normal. Restrict screen use, particularly after dark. And stop overscheduling your children, including on weekends.
Do that, and we’ll all sleep easier.
Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance. To submit a question, order his books, or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com.