Why Schools Should Start Later Research Paper

Words: 430
Pages: 2

Should School Start Later in the Day?
More and more students don’t get the 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep they need each night before they go to school. The simple solution to solving this problem is to push back school times so kids can get a reasonable amount of sleep. In more than 40 states, 75 percent of schools start before 8:30 A.M. Sleep scientists say schools should start at 10:00 A.M. so teenagers have a healthier sleeping pattern. This is causing kids to become sleep deprived and increases tardiness, depression, and substance abuse. Later start times also resulted in a drop of scores in classes.
Starting schools at 8:30 A.M. or later would allow students to get 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep, which is the recommended amount. According to the CDC, most adolescents wake up to alarms, which causes them to not wake up naturally. Starting later could allow the adolescents to wake up more naturally, and have a more productive day at school.
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A study tracked 9,000 high school students in 3 states, showed improvement in English, math, science, and social studies scores. The study showed more benefits such as, lowered substance abuse, increased attendance, and even dropped teen car crashes. The study showed that adolescents have internal clocks, or the circadian rhythms that control a person’s sleep patterns. These internal clocks operate differently in teens than in other age groups, which causes them to have a more difficult time to fall asleep earlier in the evening. With earlier school times combined with later sleep times, adolescents have a harder time functioning at