Should High Schools Start Later?
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2013-01-09/should-high-schools-start-later
Many high school students rise well before dawn to catch the bus for 7:25 a.m. first period classes. According to some parents, this means perpetually sleep-deprived students who aren't performing as well as they could. Whether high schools should start later is an ongoing debate, currently flaring in three local districts. Kojo and guests weigh sleep research and petitions from parents against bus schedules, after-school sports and the challenge of changing the status quo.
Guests
Patricia O'Neill
Member, Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education
Phyllis Payne
Co-founder, SLEEP in Fairfax (Start Later for Excellence in Education Proposal)
Judith Owens
Director of Sleep Medicine, Children's National Medical Center
John McLaren
Physics and Biology Teacher, Centreville High School, Fairfax County
Comments
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Residents balked last time because if high schools started later, school teams would use the fields later and adult teams would have to start later. However, how is that fair to kids? The School Board caved and basically said it's more important for adults to "play kids' games" than it is for our teenagers to get their daily minimum sleep requirements! Kids were doomed yet again to live on 2-3 hours of sleep LESS per night so that adults could have yet more options to get exercise when they can already use gyms, rec centers, go running or biking, use at home exercise equipment, etc. That's just wrong!
The early morning wake-up time is one aspect that the students can't control -- the schedule that is like "shift work" for our teens because it is so far from their physiologically-set body clock. It is forcing families to fight their own body clocks and setting kids up to NOT be ABLE to achieve healthy sleep habits. In terms of diet, it's as if our schools were telling families to feed children a healthy breakfast, but when breakfast is left up to the school system, all of the children receive a doughnut. Actually, it's probably worse than that in terms of health impact because it is every single school day that the bus time literally interrupts the teen's natural sleep cycle and cuts off a very valuable couple of hours -- this LAST segment of sleep (the early morning sleep) has the MOST concentrated REM sleep--REM sleep is critical to many, many body systems and to learning. It really is concentrated in the last part of the night. We cycle through all of the stages of sleep 5 times a night (if allowed to sleep to sleep's natural conclusion -- natural waking). In teens we are typically cutting off the last whole cycle.
There are hundreds of different ways to arrange the buses in Fairfax (because we have so many). We absolutely must find a way to achieve reasonable and healthy school start times for ALL of our students, including our high school students who are now picked up as early as 5:45 AM., a time that is in conflict with teen body clocks and inconsistent with optimal learning, health, safety, and well-being.
I have also heard about the connection between the bus schedule, school schedule and afternoon athletic programs. Does anyone know about how this issue is handled in other countries? Do the Chinese or the French follow this same logic?
I do not see why we could not move the elementary school schedules earlier than 9:00-9:15am (in Montgomery County) to accommodate the high school start times later. Studies show that teens need their morning sleep and this is not as crucial for elementary school children, therefore, instead of pushing the whole system later, just switch around the start times between the elementary schools and high schools, where elementary school children would start at 8:00ish instead of 9:00ish.
Seems to me like it's a manufactured crisis (and when I hear a non-scientist say "we know . . ." I'm pretty sure that in a couple decades we'll "know" differently). I've been a morning person all my life and as a teenager had no problem getting up at 5:30--but, I finished my homework and went to bed by 10. In junior high, I looked forward to the senior high schedule, when I could opt to go 7am to 1pm (the other option was 1pm to 7pm), but unfortunately we moved, to a district where the high school hours were 8:45 to 3:15. I hated that; I hated wasting so much daylight. btw, in addition to being a straight-A student, I was a jock, and wanted in the worst way to be out of school pursuing my sport. My kids, and husband, were night owls. If my kids had had the option, they could have stayed up all night. Starting school later would not have gotten them more sleep, just different hours.
Students go to school primarily for the educational benefits, not the extracurricular social and athletic aspects.
That said, the start of extracurricular activities in Loudoun County -- high school start time is 9:00 AM -- and Fairfax County is negligible. One other factor in the athletics issue is that there is no need for three hour practices during the school week.
Finally, one of the panelists mentioned that athletes also benefit from later start times with reduced incidence of injuries and better grades.
Good for you, Debbie! HOWEVER, as your life story indicates, you can't possibly understand, or apparently empathize with, the overwhelming number of teens who struggle to awaken at 5:30 AM.
Since I have lived through this issue with 6 brothers and sisters and two children, I agree that school times should be later for HS students, because most teenagers do have a sleep shift as noted on the show.
However, I find this entire issue perplexing, since S. Korean HS students go to school from 7 AM until 5 PM, then got to "after school" from 6-11 PM and go to school on Saturday's 1/2 days. If they get 5 hours of sleep a night they are considered LAZY. However, they routinely test higher than our students in most, if not all, subjects.
Most S. Korean students do not have extra curricular activities, dating and do not focus on learning how to drive until they are in college.
While I don't advocate, what I consider their extremely ridgid educational system, I do wonder about our systems lack of intensity.
Another thing that I did not hear being addressed, is that one of the main reasons we have the school schedules we have is due to our standard work hours nationally. Our school schedules are directly linked to our industrialization, centralization (bigger schools), and limited budgets for transportation, not to mention inflexibility within the educational system.
Smaller more localized school (within walking distance of the homes served) would help allow for later school starts.