School Start Times And High Quality Sleep
The American education system is diverse and unique, and one aspect that varies
wildly across the country is school start times. Deciding the start times for schools
is dependent on many factors including bus schedules (Edwards, 2012), biological
development (Borlase, Gander, Gibson, 2013; Perkinson Gloor, Lemola, Grob,
2013), and parental preference (Edwards, 2012; Perkinson Gloor et al., 2013).
School start times are considered one aspect that can affect sleep duration, since
they affect wake time. Adequate, high quality sleep is extremely important for
adolescents and inadequate sleep can lead to a number of negative outcomes
including poorer physical and mental health, as well as poorer academic
performance (Borlase et al., 2013; Edwards, 2012; Keller, Smith, Gilbert, Bi, Haak,
Buckhalt, 2015; Paksarian, Rudolph, Jian Ping, Merikangas, 2015; Perkinson Gloor,
et al., 2013). Therefore, school start times are important to the field of education,
because start times affect sleep and sleep, or lack thereof, can affect cognitive ability
and performance. We are always looking to improve our schools and better educate
our children, and the adjustment of the start time is a small change that may have a
big impact.
Overall, the results of these studies suggest that early school start times are
detrimental to all students, as elementary, middle, and high school students were
examined in at least one of the five studies. Students at schools with early school start
times