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Imagine learning to use implicit differentiation to find the derivative of an inverse function.
Then imagine doing it at 4 a.m.
That's how it is for high school students like Dimitris Demetriou, a Mona Shores High School Junior, who tackles AP calculus in his first hour class.
Of course, the class doesn't meet at 4 a.m. It meets at 7:40 a.m. But according to a new study, a teen getting up at 7 a.m. is the same as an adult getting up at 4 a.m.
That's a key reason why the study by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project suggests that adjusting school start times can boost student achievement.
That would please Demetriou, who typically does homework until 11:30 at night, and wakes for school at 6 a.m.
“Just an hour later would make a big difference,” he said. “I'm really struggling to stay awake sometimes.”
The Hamilton Project encourages schools to make school start times a “prominent part of the conversation on how to raise student achievement.”
But how seriously school officials will consider it is debatable. Local superintendents say it's unlikely secondary schools will start their days later because of the need to fit in after-school practices for sports or performing arts or time for students to work part-time jobs.
Muskegon Area Intermediate School District Superintendent Dave Sipka said while the topic has been discussed locally, there is no real “will” to make changes on a statewide level. He said because of potential backlash from parents, it's unlikely school officials will delay state times to improve achievement.
“That would be a stretch,” Sipka said.
Off rhythm
Later start times are “'low-hanging fruit' that have the potential to increase student achievement at relatively low cost.” wrote the Hamilton Project study authors, Brian A. Jacob of the University of Michigan and Jonah E. Rockoff of the Columbia School of Business. Their analysis found that “disadvantaged” students benefited the most of later school days.
“As any parent knows, it is very difficult to wake a sleeping teenager,” Jacob and Rockoff wrote. “Not only is it difficult to rouse them early in the morning, there is mounting evidence that it is also difficult to educate them early in the day.”
That all has to do with the body's circadian rhythms, also known as sleep-wake cycles, that are influenced by the hormone melatonin. Because of teenagers' biology, their circadian rhythms have them feeling sleepy later in the evening than adults, meaning just having them go to bed earlier doesn't mean they will get more sleep, the study's authors note.
THE STUDY
Download a copy of the study, "Organizing Schools to Improve Student Achievement":
start-time study.pdf
“Given the circadian timing in adolescents, it is very difficult for teenagers to adjust fully to an early school day,” according to Jacob and Rockoff. “They should be asleep when their bodies want to be awake, and they are forced to be awake when their bodies want to be asleep.”
The study authors noted middle school students in North Carolina who, because of overcrowding and the need to change bus schedules, began to attend school an hour later. As a result, math and reading scores increased.
Another study of first-year Air Force Academy Students found that those who were assigned to begin their first classes an hour earlier than their peers performed worse in those first classes, and in all of their courses.
Because shifting start times may or may not involve having to run more buses to get secondary students to school at the same time as elementary students — the alternative being having elementary students start earlier — the cost varies widely from no cost to $1,950 per student. But, the benefits would result in lifetime earnings gains of $17,500 per student.
That puts the benefit/cost ratio at nine to one, the authors said.
Challenge everything
Locally, high schools tend to start before 8 a.m. Some, including Mona Shores and Reeths-Puffer, have “zero hours” that start before 7 a.m.
Middle schools typically start around 7:45 a.m.
That leaves plenty of after-school time for athletics, drama rehearsals and other extracurricular activities. Pushing back the school time for secondary students would eat into that time, school administrators said.
