The Cohen's d for the change is 1. Thus, the field experiment demonstrates in multiple ways that the experimental treatment is associated with a decline in absences that is large and statistically significant not only relative to the control group but also relative to the national benchmark.
The pattern is evident in Figure 1. Next comes the natural experiment when the start time in the target school returned to in Year 3 due to a change in policy which shifted control of the target school to local education authorities who imposed a uniform early start time on all comparable schools. The mean number of absences rebounded to Adjusting for yearly changes in the national rate of absences, the gap between the target school and the nation inflated to 2.
All in all, for absences the field experiment demonstrates that the change to a 10 a. The natural experiment demonstrates that reverting to the start induced, already in its first year, a medium sized, statistically significant increase in absences.
These data are consistent with a dose-dependent response to a start. In value added terms, the actual percentage of successful students was 5 percentage points lower than the FFT estimate for the school based on the cohort's past performance column 9 , showing a negative value-added value.
All in all, in Year 0 in the target school, the performance picture was grim. Table 2. The situation changed sharply for Year 1, the first year with the experimental 10 a.
The actual percent of academically successful students shot up by 19 percentage points to 53 column 6, compare Year 0 and Year 1. The gap between the target school and in national benchmark in Year 1 is so small that it is not statistically significant Year 1, column 7. The value added by the school has also risen: The actual value added by the school is 4 percentage points more than the FFT prediction, up 9 percentage points from Year 0. The heart of the field experiment is the comparison of Year 2 vs.
Here again there is extensive evidence for the positive impact of the 10 a. Between Year 0 and Year 2, the gap between the target school success rate and the national benchmark shrank from 22 to 7 Year 2, column 7. The actual student success in Year 2 exceeds the FFT prediction by 7 percentage points column Thus, the field experiment demonstrates in multiple ways that the experimental treatment is associated with a statistically significant and substantial gain in performance not only relative to the control group but also relative to the national benchmark.
Then, in the natural experiment in Year 3, the school starting time reverted from 10 a. Thus, even though these students had the first year of their 2-year course with the 10 a.
The whole pattern for the combined results of the field experiment and the natural experiment is clear in Figure 2. In Year 0, student success in the target school was actually 5 percentage points below what would have been expected in light of the students' prior performance FFT. Then the field experiment began. The introduction of the 10 a.
There was a further small rise to a value added of 12 percentage points in Year 2 for the cohort which had experienced the 10 a. The field experiment then ended. The natural experiment then reverted the start time to , so students in the Year 3 cohort had the first year of their course with the 10 a.
Value added was still positive for this cohort, but had fallen by 4 percentage points compared to the previous cohort which had 2 years of 10 a. Based on this study, moving school start times later so that they are better aligned with adolescent sleep and chronotype patterns is practical and beneficial.
Following a change to a a. When the school start time was returned to a. These findings suggest that the general policy recommendation to start high schools no earlier than a. As the a. The absence due to illness rate data are consistent with a direct benefit of later school starting times on student health. The differentiation in recording absence and absence due to illness in England offers a more precise measure of illness and a large national data set.
Following initiation of the a. With the return of an a. Academic performance of students aged 14—16 also improved with a a. There is no reason to believe that these outcomes reflected motivation changes.
The pupils were studying for their final national exams, which determine their eligibility for continued study and ultimately college or university, or their competitiveness in the jobs market. These were not study-related tests but the real, once-in-lifetime exams that have a major influence on the children's futures and thus would be equally motivated.
While there are several possible explanations for the poor performance of students in similar low socioeconomic status areas, the possible impact of sleep restriction linked to early school starts has rarely been considered.
One of the objections raised to changing school start times is that the change is impractical and cannot overcome other barriers, such as bus timetables or sports program scheduling. While the English legal framework makes changing to much later start times a formal process any school can undertake and therefore more practical than in some other countries , moving all of this school's schedules later produced no practical difficulties. By choosing a 10 a.
Even later start times might address this issue, but 10 a. The national US recommendation that middle and high schools should start after a. A recent study of university students aged 18—19 found that later starting times after 11 a. The study also found that using a fixed time for all students would disadvantage one or more chronotypes, and evening chronotypes in particular if starts were early Kelley et al. Thus, even with the benefits accrued using a 10 a. The limitations in this study include small sample sizes in some measures, a focus mainly on illness, and an inability to measure students' sleep duration.
Although other studies have shown sleep improvements following less substantial interventions, some have tracked sleep improvements over 4 years and found that improvements persist Borlase et al. The English location and measures of academic performance are difficult to contextualize with previous research using U.
The nationally available data on illness on a school-by-school basis, focus on students in mid-adolescence and the starting time of a. A larger, more detailed study is needed of school starts after a. There is preliminary evidence that such changes can have benefits, particularly for older students Carrell et al. The school-level improvements in performance in this study, if more widely replicated, should be examined from economic and educational perspectives.
For example, expenditure to reduce the English attainment gap between rich and poor students reached more than one billion pounds between and , and yet had relatively little impact compared to the gains made following the 10 a. The change to smaller schools in key U. Other educational policy changes including creating new kinds of school such as Charter, Academy, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math STEM schools, increasing the duration of school times, curriculum and test changes, or No Child Left Behind also have very high expenditure but minimal impact and little scientific rigor in evaluating their effects.
In contrast, changing to later start times is a very cost-effective intervention to raise educational standards with substantial scientific backing Jacob and Rockoff, ; Snow, ; Hafner et al. The broader impact of later starts on specific aspects of adolescent health, such as sleep duration and quality, mental health, and social development were not assessed, although other studies have shown potential impacts de Souza and Hidalgo, ; Meltzer et al.
Additional research into much later starts should measure both actual sleep patterns and optimal performance times for individual students. The most important area for further research may be the impact of later starts on areas of social behavior development and mental health. Sleep deprivation is also associated with adolescents being less perceptive readers of human emotions van der Helm et al.
These interrelated factors of significant sleep deprivation, genetic predisposition, the high prevalence of the onset of mental illness during adolescence for a range of disorders Schmitt et al. Using a research-based approach to determine a school starting time for 13 to year-old students led to the implementation of a 10 a. This later starting time had a substantial benefit for rates of illness and academic performance. A research-based approach to school starting times is clearly replicable in different contexts, cultures, and countries.
More importantly, a post a. Available On Air Stations. All Streams. OH Really? Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email. Keith Freund. Kabir Bhatia. Tags Education "OH Really? See stories by Kabir Bhatia. Related Content. And then, once better-rested, studies show that teens do better in school , get in fewer car crashes , and are less prone to depression.
Half past eight—the target for many start-school-later advocates—is actually still earlier than would be totally ideal. In the plus years since Wahlstrom conducted that first study, hundreds of schools have moved back their start times, according to the advocacy group Start School Later, which does its best to count in absence of an official government tally.
More than a thousand American schools have extended their school days by an hour and a half , and many charter schools, which have more latitude than normal public ones, have school days that end closer to when work does.
I asked Brown what her ideal school-day schedule would look like, if she could start from scratch. The day would end at 5 or , but the extended day's extra hours wouldn't be spent solely in the classroom. And the obstacles to changing it usually fall under three general categories: sports, buses, and funding. A lot of the pushback against moving back school start times, he notes, comes from coaches, players, and parents who worry that the change would eat into precious practice and game time.
For instance, when an education board on Long Island sought public comments last year on the possibility of moving school start times back, some parents fought the change passionately. Frequently, though, athletics programs adjust just fine, as some school administrators have noted after starting school days later.
Nonetheless, sports-related concerns often dominate when the prospect of later start times is raised. Anyone who has taught middle and high school, or has a child in this age range, can attest to this. Forehead on the dining room table during breakfast, anyone? School start times forcing teens to wake up before 6 a.
According to the American Academy of Pediatricians, adolescents who do not get the required amount of sleep are at risk for a host of serious physical problems, including obesity and diabetes; safety concerns, including drowsy driving; issues related to mental health, including increased anxiety, depression, and decreased motivation; and a decrease in school performance, such as cognitive impairment, problems with attention and memory, lower academic achievement, poor attendance, and higher dropout rate.
The author of the failed California bill, Democratic state senator Anthony J. Imagine how you would feel if, days a year, you had to get up at a. With such compelling evidence, it makes one wonder how children in middle and high schools have been able to function well at all in school—at least during the early morning hours. As author Daniel H. Pink states in his latest book, When , this is a remediable problem. But this is one area where we can and therefore we must.
Veteran educators know that, each year, communities throughout the country spend millions on costly new initiatives—technology, curriculum, new buildings, to name a few—many of which have marginal positive impact on student learning.
If school superintendents and boards of education were to examine the research behind secondary school start times, it is impossible to disagree: Outdated schedules are failing many students. We can no longer be complacent. As schools look for an answer to boost student attendance, performance, and engagement, making a change in start times for secondary students is an obvious solution.
Now, which districts will read the research and have the common sense—and the courage—to make the change? All Topics. About Us. Group Subscriptions.
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