Other studies have also failed to show a delay in bedtime in response to delayed start times. Rochester City School District: No concrete plans have been announced for the 2020-2021 school year, but they will be no later than Aug. 21. School districts that experimented with later start times found that students coped with academic workloads much better. The Sleep Foundation editorial team is dedicated to providing content that meets the highest standards for accuracy and objectivity. Insufficient sleep represents one of the most common, important, and potentially remediable health risks in children,1,2 particularly in the adolescent population, for whom chronic sleep loss has increasingly become the norm.3 The reasons behind the current epidemic of insufficient sleep are complex and interrelated. Roy Cooper warned June 9 that as COVID-19 cases rise in the state, public school openings could be delayed from the state’s initial August school start times. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Over the last 15 years, however, a small but growing number of school districts have responded to research reports regarding insufficient sleep among middle and high school students with what may be viewed as a “systematic countermeasure” to reduce the prevalence of sleepiness and its consequences: delaying school start times. Pediatricians should routinely provide education and support to adolescents and families regarding the significance of sleep and healthy sleep habits as an important component of anticipatory guidance and well-child care. Lincoln: All schools will be remote Jan. 4–8. In a more recent middle school study by the same research group, the results suggested that moving school start later by 1 hour can have an impact on standardized test scores comparable to decreasing the class size by one-third. North Carolina. It is clear that additional research is needed to further document the effects of changes in school start times over time, to examine specific factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of positive outcomes, and to assess the effect on families, the community, other stakeholders, and the educational system in general. • Chatham: Annual School District meeting and voting will take place on March 9 at their town hall. Other benefits of later start times include: While there are numerous benefits of later school start times, there are a few possible negative outcomes: However, these problems can likely be solved with flexibility and thoughtful planning. Daily stress interacts with trait dissociation to predict sleep-related experiences in young adults. The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes insufficient sleep in adolescents as a public health issue, endorses the scientific rationale for later school start times, and acknowledges the potential benefits to students with regard to physical and mental health, safety, and academic achievement. US Department of Health and Human Services. Robin Lake, the director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, joined CBSN's Lana Zak to discuss how different school districts are addressing plans to reopen, and what they're doing to make students, teachers, … Beutner showed up at Taft High in November to salute the start of conditioning and testing for the school’s football team. The Sleep Foundation fact-checking guidelines are as follows: Get the latest information in sleep from our newsletter. Finally, educational efforts should also emphasize the importance of behavior change on the individual level and the personal responsibility that families and students themselves have in modifying their sleep habits. Homeostatic sleep regulation in adolescents. Georgia lawmakers have the once-in-a-decade task of redrawing the state’s voting districts this year, pending the release of the 2020 U.S. Census data. Or Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address, Engineering a Mobile Platform to Promote Sleep in the Pediatric Primary Care Setting, Do insomnia and/or sleep disturbances predict the onset, relapse or worsening of depression in community and clinical samples of children and youth? Principles and Practices of Sleep Medicine in the Child. These internal links are intended to improve ease of navigation across the site, and are never used as original sources for scientific data or information. SAD 17 hits pause on later start time for middle and high schools. All scientific data and information must be backed up by at least one reputable source. However, to date, to our knowledge, there have been no published studies that have systematically examined the impact of school start time delay on these parameters, although anecdotal evidence suggests that many of these concerns are unfounded (www.sleepfoundation.org). Your email address will only be used to receive SleepFoundation.org newsletter. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. Estimating dim light melatonin onset (DLMO) phase in adolescents using summer or school-year sleep/wake schedules. One of the biggest challenges school districts face is the need to inform community stakeholders (eg, parents, teachers and administrators, coaches, students, bus drivers, businesses that employ students, law enforcement officials) about the scientific rationale underpinning the merits of delaying school start times; the threats to health, safety, and academic success posed by insufficient sleep; and the potential benefits for adolescents of school start time delay. In some districts, the start times are largely dictated by local transportation companies, with school boards and superintendents contending they lack the funds or authority to change things. Students with less sleep have difficulty paying attention in class and are likely to have lower grades. We only cite reputable sources when researching our guides and articles. Around the beginning of puberty, most adolescents experience later sleep onset and wake times, also called “phase delay”. Teens would need to limit their exposure to artificial light resources to encourage melatonin development. Other start time factors include the location of the school district and the school type. Available at: Edwards F. Early to rise: the effect of daily start times on academic performance. Pediatricians and other pediatric health care providers (eg, school physicians, school nurses) should provide scientific information, evidence-based rationales, guidance, and support to educate school administrators, parent-teacher associations, and school boards about the benefits of instituting a delay in start times as a potentially highly cost-effective countermeasure to adolescent sleep deprivation and sleepiness. Finally, because the appropriation of federal dollars for schools is partially dependent on student attendance data, reducing tardiness and absenteeism levels could result in increased funding and further offset costs related to moving start times later. As a result, many middle and high school students are at risk for adverse consequences of insufficient sleep, including impairments in mood, affect regulation, attention, memory, behavior control, executive function, and quality of life (Table 1).21–26, Impact of Chronic Sleep Loss in Adolescents, Insufficient sleep also takes a toll on academic performance. Some guides and articles feature links to other relevant Sleep Foundation pages. While Beranek said it is “incredibly important” that school districts work to get their teachers and staff vaccinated or at least start the process … These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Impact of delaying school start time on adolescent sleep, mood, and behavior. A's from Zzzz's? Adolescent Sleep Patterns: Biological, Social, and Psychological Influences. Recent research shows that delaying school start times for middle school students is accompanied by positive outcomes similar to those found in high schools, including later rise times, more school night total sleep, less daytime sleepiness, decreased tardiness rates, improved academic performance, and better performance on computerized attention tasks.30,47,48, According to the US Department of Education statistics for 2011–2012,49 approximately 43% of the over 18 000 public high schools in the United States currently have a start time before 8:00 AM. When the bell tolls: the effects of school starting times on academic achievement. Numerous studies have demonstrated that early start times impede middle and high school students’ ability to get sufficient sleep. On Jan. 11, all students and staff, pre-K and grades K-8 will return to in-person school at Melrose and Lawn School. Information should also be included about the potential utility of systemic countermeasures, including delaying school start times, in mitigating these effects. Studies comparing high schools with start times as little as 30 minutes earlier versus those with later start times demonstrate such adverse consequences as shorter sleep duration, increased sleepiness, difficulty concentrating, behavior problems, and absenteeism.29,30,42–46 For example, in one key school transition study, Carskadon et al19 evaluated the effects of a 65-minute advance (ie, move earlier) in school start time from grade 9 to grade 10 in 40 students. At a baby’s first birthday, parents are often amazed by just how much their child has grown and developed. Some districts, like Grandview ISD, have sufficient instructional minutes built into their school calendar that they will not have to be made up later … It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. Elementary schools started earlier, while most middle and all of the district’s 18 high schools shifted their opening bell almost an hour later — from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. Parents … Self-Regulation and Sleep Duration, Sleepiness, and Chronotype in Adolescents, Adolescent Chronotype and Self-Regulation: The Power of When, International Olympic Committee consensus statement on youth athletic development, Sounding alarm on need for later school start times, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-1697. Sleep loss, learning capacity and academic performance. However you may visit Cookie Settings to provide a controlled consent. middle schools in the United States was at 8:04 a.m. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010, https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2020006.asp, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25156998/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27040474/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28416043/, https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/school-start-times.pdf, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19110880/. He promoted the release later … Plagiarism is never tolerated. The impact of school daily schedule on adolescent sleep. If you are concerned about a too-early start time for your child’s school, consider contacting your school board or other educational leaders to discuss delaying school start time. Car crash rates for the county that delayed school start times decreased by 16.5% over the 2 years before and after the school-start change, whereas those for the state as a whole increased by 7.8% across the same time period. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly supports the efforts of school districts to optimize sleep in students and urges high schools and middle schools to aim for start times that allow students the opportunity to achieve optimal levels of sleep (8.5–9.5 hours) and to improve physical (eg, reduced obesity risk) and mental (eg, lower rates of depression) health, safety (eg, drowsy driving crashes), academic performance, and quality of life. Adolescent sleep patterns, circadian timing, and sleepiness at a transition to early school days. Better student … Healthy People 2020 sleep health objectives. Short sleep duration as a risk factor for hypercholesterolemia: analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Curriculum Director Heather Manchester presented findings from a survey of teachers, parents and students. I have been researching the impact of later high school start times for 20 years. Moreover, communities across the country have adopted a variety of creative solutions to address these problems, including shifting to public transportation for older students, enlisting community volunteers to provide supervision at bus stops, adjusting class schedules to minimize late dismissal times, scheduling free periods/study halls at the end of the school day to allow participation in after-school extracurricular activities, exempting student athletes from physical education requirements, and installing lights for athletic fields. Decreased tardiness. Htwe et al55 reported that high school students slept an additional 35 minutes, on average, and experienced less daytime sleepiness after their school start time was delayed from 7:35 to 8:15 am. They may also experience irritability and fatigue. Although considerable empiric support exists for the concepts that early school start times are detrimental to adolescents’ health and well-being and that delaying school start times results in substantive and sustained benefits to students, the ongoing debate among school districts in the United States regarding the widespread institution of later start times for middle and high schools continues to spark controversy. Each guide and article includes a comprehensive bibliography with full citations and links to the original sources. For high schoolers, that number is over 70%. Health care professionals, especially those working in school-based clinics or acting in an advisory capacity to schools, should be aware of adolescent sleep needs. More details here . The American Academy of Pediatrics has neither solicited nor accepted any commercial involvement in the development of the content of this publication. When Seattle Public Schools announced that it would reorganize school start times across the district for the fall of 2016, the massive undertaking took more than a year to deploy. Biological, developmental, and neurobehavioral factors relevant to adolescent driving risks. However, studies have demonstrated that most American adolescents are not getting enough sleep. However, individual school districts also need to take average commuting times and other exigencies into account in setting a start time that allows for adequate sleep opportunity for students. Extended nights, sleep loss, and recovery sleep in adolescents. Starting times of school: effects on daytime functioning of fifth-grade children in Israel. Furthermore, a substantial body of research has now demonstrated that delaying school start times is an effective countermeasure to chronic sleep loss and has a wide range of potential benefits to students with regard to physical and mental health, safety, and academic achievement. The association between short sleep duration and obesity in young adults: a 13-year prospective study. Dallas Independent School District: The school district announced on Twitter and on the website that the Board of Trustees will meet later in July to discuss an alternative start … Young female handball players and sport specialisation: how do they cope with the transition from primary school into a secondary sport school? Your email address will only be used to receive SleepFoundation.org newsletters. 2006 Teens and sleep. FILE - In this Feb. 18, 2018, file photo, Magaly Newcomb, right, comforts her daughter Haley Newcomb, 14, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, at a memorial outside the school in Parkland, Fla. It’s been more than 1,000 days since a gunman with an AR-15 rifle burst into the school, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others. A look at eight schools with later start times. Reward-related brain function and sleep in pre/early pubertal and mid/late pubertal adolescents. Ranking factors include state test scores, college readiness, graduation rates, SAT/ACT scores, teacher quality, public school district ratings, and more. Overall care for sleep hygiene, such as having a good night’s sleep and following back-to-school sleep tips, can also help adolescents regulate their sleep. This “epidemic” of delayed, insufficient, and erratic sleep patterns among adolescents and the accompanying negative effects on adolescent health and well-being highlight the importance of identifying potentially modifiable factors. Any conflicts have been resolved through a process approved by the Board of Directors. High school students also have more homework, late-night technology use, and fewer parent-set bedtimes, all of which may cause students to stay up later than is appropriate for getting adequate sleep. Sleep and risk-taking behavior in adolescents. While frustrating, this is not an uncommon experience for adolescents in the United States. Teen driver crash risk and associations with smoking and drowsy driving. Wolfson and Carskadon62 surveyed 345 public high school personnel regarding their perspective on high school start times, factors influencing school start times, and decision-making around school schedules. The 2021 Best School Districts ranking is based on rigorous analysis of key statistics and millions of reviews from students and parents using data from the U.S. Department of Education. Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. Educational interventions for parents and adolescents as well as the general public should be developed and disseminated by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other child and sleep health advocacy groups. Working Paper, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; 2010. Are they still sleepy in their classes, unable to concentrate, or even falling asleep during class? Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement. Adolescent sleep, school start times, and teen motor vehicle crashes.