Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep. Too far off the topic of political economy to compete for a place on my list of best books of the year, but very strongly recommended.
Walker is highly opinionated. One of his opinions is that teenagers naturally stay up later and sleep later than children or adults. So high schools that start before 9:00 AM are causing harm. It would be interesting to see if changing the start time would be an intervention that overcomes the Null Hypothesis, including finding an effect that does not fade out after several years. Meanwhile, it’s another case for home schooling–you don’t have to make your teenager wake up prematurely to go to school.
Here the local school system now offers a late start option for high-schoolers. But only 3% have signed up — presumably because they don’t want to get out late and have it interfere with after-school activities.
Not because their parents don’t want them to, as the original high school schedule was set up to work around parents work schedules?
No, here, the schedule was set up around buses — first the HS students are picked up and dropped off and then the younger kids. And it’s actually worse than classes starting early — the bus riders are dropped off at the high school something like 45 minutes before school starts and aren’t even allowed in the building until shortly before classes start (to avoid behavior problems in the empty halls). My own kids lived a little over a mile from the high school and would have been picked up about an hour before school started if they took the school bus (which they almost never did). So, most HS students here drive (or catch a ride with somebody who does).
Seeking to maximize after-school activities suggests self-selection bias in Arnold’s “experiment”. The bias — overachievers stay with the early schedule —
may make it harder to disprove the null hypothesis…but if the experiment does, so much power to the claim.
“One of his opinions is that teenagers naturally stay up later and sleep later than children or adults.”
I believe a few years ago MR had a link to a study in which a high school pushed back its start time and found that teenagers got ~ double the extra time in sleep as they started going to sleep earlier.
Tangentially I have a hypothesis that the summer growth spurt lots of high school kids go through is due in part to the summer being the only time when they get even close to enough sleep. Without their unhealthy schedule I doubt if as many of them would be growing 3-6 inches in a summer.
Take a look at “Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired” by Till Roenneberg (2012). Fascinating book. Among a number of many other observations related to sleep distress Roenneberg makes essentially the same point, saying (if I recall correctly) that schools will never go to a model that better supports students because few teachers want to work late; they have their own families (and other obligations) to get “home” to. He makes the same point (though for slightly different reasons) about the medical profession. I enjoyed his ironic observation that the two professions that supposedly care the most about people’s health are the biggest perpetrators…. A fun, 5-star read. Thanks for the H/T on the Walker book. Will check it out; a research area of interest for me.
The sun goes down at night, the short answer.
There’s a ton of research showing that teen academic performance improves with a later start time. Most of it, alas, involves changing start time to after 9, which is ludicrous.
Anecdotes: My son went through high school with a 7:30 start time, and the last year they began late-start Wednesday, starting at 9:00. He mentioned how amazing it was to get another hour of sleep. The earliest start date I ever dealt with was 7:20, my second year teaching. I distinctly recall, in the first week of school, writing a bathroom pass for a kid, looking up and seeing the time was 8:25. It was second period, and I remember thinking how absurd it was that this kid had already been up for 90 minutes, in school for over an hour. First period was utterly a waste. Kids were mostly asleep. I taught all algebra that year, and had a really annoying kid in my sixth block class. A more experienced colleague suggested moving her to my morning class so she’d sleep all period. It worked like a charm. That same school changed the start time the next year to 8:00 am. Difference was dramatic.
As mentioned above, the biggest opposition to changing the time is bus schedules. I”ve never understood this, though, because high schoolers past freshman year just don’t use school buses. But it is a major factor. The two other interest areas who object are sports leagues, school and private (and the parents who don’t like late dinners), and–in areas where teen employment is a thing–employers.
Surprised you didn’t mention the Boston fiasco, where the idiots changed the start times in the middle of the year and pretended they wouldn’t back down right up to the minute they did. http://www.wbur.org/edify/2017/12/22/boston-school-start-times-shelved
I don’t think this has any impact on your Null Hypothesis theory because I believe the improvement shown is consistent across races. Rich kids and Asians start school in “zero period” quite often; it’s not like poor or black kids are getting to school at 7:15 while rich kid schools start at 9.
From my perspective, it’s obscene to students to start school much before 8, and ridiculous to do so much after 9.
I think this is right, on average. It was certainly true for most of my friends, though I had a slight advantage being born an early worm (and a slight disadvantage having trouble staying up late.)
It’s fascinating how varied are the times of day for people’s peak intellectual productivity. I definitely do my clearest thinking and quickest work soon after waking up; time which usually gets wasted during the morning routine and daily commute. On the other hand, I know folks who can’t even get warmed up until mid afternoon, and are intellectually nocturnal, only really getting mentally revved up after 9pm, with their real boost sessions going past midnight.
I’ve never understood why bus schedules are a problem. Here the same buses carry 6-12 kids for a 7:30 start and then K-5 kids for a start after 8:30. They could just switch that.
The big problem is after-school activities (especially sports) and after-school jobs. An 8:30 start time means a 3:30 end time. Among other things, that means that for an away game, the team bus returns to school around 7:00.
“Meanwhile, it’s another case for home schooling–you don’t have to make your teenager wake up prematurely to go to school.”
We’ve been homeschooling for two years now – the “middle school sucks, so skip it” approach – and it’s been amazing for many reasons but this one is near the top of the list. Our son gets 9+ hours of sleep per night* and we’re able to get so much more value out of each hour of school than he ever did in traditional school.
*: he doesn’t have a smartphone, and no screens are in our bedrooms, so that probably helps too.
I can see myself doing this with my kids (oldest is 4 weeks from turning two, so I have a while). I was homeschooled 1st-12th, and I hated middle school. Hopefully we’ll have some land by then and they’ll have lots of outdoor work and play to engage their minds. I feel like I would have been much happier and probably better off honing my coding or tinkering skills, or just getting into a routine of exercising because I had nothing much better to do. Maybe I’ll make a rule that they can have unlimited play-time on any video game they write from scratch.