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ERIC Number: EJ1217957
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1539-9664
EISSN: N/A
How to Make School Start Later: Early-Morning High School Clashes with Teenage Biology, But Change Is Hard
Dreilinger, Danielle
Education Next, v19 n3 p46-52 Sum 2019
The name of the study said it all: "Sleepmore in Seattle: Later School Start times Are Associated with More Sleep and Better Performance in High School Students." In 2016-17, Seattle Public Schools pushed back high-school start times by 55 minutes, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. And just like that, students slept an average of 34 more minutes per night and their grades went up 4.5 percent, researchers found. It was yet another entry in a long bibliography of studies showing the benefits of a later start time for teenagers (including "Rise and Shine" by Jennifer Heissel and Samuel Norris, in this issue). For a change that seems like a no-brainer, however, delaying high school times can be notably tough to pull off. The crux of the matter is that schools are a collection of moving parts, from predawn janitorial and food-service prep to busing and afterschool activities. Family work routines are often organized around school rhythms. Shifting secondary-school start times sends shock waves through those systems. In this article, the author takes a close look at practices in three school districts to find out. They are: (1) Saint Paul Public Schools in Minnesota, a diverse urban district of 38,000 students who speak 125 languages at home; (2) Kanawha County Schools in West Virginia, which serves 26,000 students in the capital city of Charleston and surrounding rural communities covering 913 square miles; and (3) Fort Wayne Community Schools in Indiana, which enrolls 29,000 students. Two of these districts--Kanawha County and Fort Wayne Community Schools--have already pushed back high-school start times. Saint Paul is in the homestretch of a years-long effort to do so.
Hoover Institution. Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Tel: 800-935-2882; Fax: 650-723-8626; e-mail: educationnext@hoover.stanford.edu; Web site: http://educationnext.org/journal/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Minnesota (Saint Paul); West Virginia; Indiana (Fort Wayne); Massachusetts (Boston)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A