“The Lost Hour”: Impact of Pushing School Start Time Back By One Hour

• Higher SAT Scores: Math SAT Scores Increased 56 Points, Verbal SAT Scores Increased 156 Points
• Teenage Car Accidents Decreased 25% At One School

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“Brown’s Mary Carskadon has demonstrated that during puberty, the circadian system — the biological clock — does a “phase shift” that keeps adolescents up later.  In prepubescents and grownups, when it gets dark outside, the brain produces melatonin, which makes us sleepy.  But adolescent brains don’t release melatonin for another 90 minutes.  So even if teenagers are in bed at 10pm (which they aren’t), they lie awake, starting at the ceiling.

Awakened at dawn by alarm clocks, teen brains are still releasing melatonin.  This pressures them to fall back asleep — either in first period at school or, more dangerously, during the drive to school.  Which is one of the reasons young adults are responsible for more than half of the 100,000 “fall asleep” crashes annually.

Persuaded by this research, a few school districts around the nation decided to push back the time school starts in the morning.”

– Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; page 36

Higher SAT Scores: Math SAT Scores Increased 56 Points, Verbal SAT Scores Increased 156 Points

“The best known of these is Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, which changed its high school start times from 7:25 to 8:30.  The results were startling, and it affected the brightest kids the most.  In the year preceding the time change, math / verbal SAT scores for the top 10% of Edina’s 1,600 students averaged 683/605.  A year later, the top 10% of Edina’s 1,600 students averaged 739/761…  …getting another hour of sleep boosted math SAT scores of Edina’s Best and Brightest up 56 points, and their verbal SAT score a whopping 156 points.  (“Truly flabbergasting,” gasped a stunned and disbelieving Brian O’Reilly, the College Board’s Executive Director for SAT Program Relations, when he heard the results.)  And the students reported higher levels of motivation and lower levels of depression.  In short, an hour of sleep improved students’ quality of life.”

– Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; page 36

Teenage Car Accidents Decreased 25% At One School

“Another trailblazing school district is Lexington, Kentucky, which also moved its start time an hour later.  Danner has been studying the before / after equation.  The finding that most jumps out from his data is that after the time change, teenage car accidents in Lexington were down 25%, compared to the rest of the state.”

– Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; page 37

“While the evidence is compelling, few districts have followed this lead.  Conversely, 85% of America’s public high schools start before 8:15am, and 35% start at or before 7:30am.”

– Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; page 37

The CDC now recommends that high schools consider later starts: its representatives are now opining that a change in school start times can change lives.

– Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; page 42

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