High School Start Time Essay

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Only 14 percent of public high schools follow the 8:30 a.m. start time, which was recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And with earlier start time come the rising rates of teen car accidents on the way to school. Schools need to start later otherwise the quality of life for teenagers will drop. Start the car, drive down the street, take a hand off the wheel to cover your mouth as you yawn, and get hit by a car. That is the process of a teen car accident when school starts too early and teens do not get enough sleep. “A community in Kentucky reduced the average teen car accident rate by 16.5 percent by delaying school by one hour,” reports a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. A separate study done over …show more content…

A 2012 study done by Finley Edwards, a professor at the University of Baylor, discovered that middle school students who started a class hour later increased their standardized test scores by over two percent. Multiple studies have shown that sleep loss can mimic or enhance the symptoms of ADHD. The study also showed that students who sleep more are the ones with the better grades. And when school starts too early, teachers have to deal with kids who are having a hard time concentrating. The study also showed that the students who had trouble sleeping or who did not get enough sleep were twice as likely to fail at least one class. This risk could be avoided if schools would start earlier and allowed students to get the recommended nine and a half hours of sleep they physically need. Scientists have found that earlier bed times, more sleep, and later rise times were associated with higher grades. Studies done by various groups have found when core subjects and sleep patterns were studied in relation to each other, that math was the most commonly affected.
In the end, school should start later than it already does in order to increase the quality of life for teenagers. If school starts later than it does the grades of students can increase, the car accident rate will go down as kids will not fall asleep while driving, and health problems such as depression and obesity will also go