Seattle made a change that helped teenagers to get a healthy amount of sleep. Starting with the 2016-2017 school year, the Seattle school district moved the start times for middle and high schools to nearly an hour later. A study found that this change was beneficial to teens.
The study was published in the Science Advances Journal. The Abstract reads:
Most teenagers are chronologically sleep deprived. One strategy proposed to lengthen adolescent sleep is to delay secondary school start times. This would allow students to wake up later without shifting their bedtime, which is biologically determined by the circadian clock, resulting in a net increase in sleep.
So far, there is no objective quantitative data showing that a single intervention such as delaying the school start time significantly increases daily sleep. The Seattle School District delayed the secondary school start time for nearly an hour. We carried out a pre-/post-research study and show that there was an increase in the daily median sleep duration of 34 min, associated with a 4.5% increase in the median grades of the students and an improvement in attendance.
Researchers compared two separate groups of sophomores enrolled in biology classes at two Seattle high schools. The first group of 92 students, drawn from both schools, wore wrist monitors to track their sleep for the two-week periods in the spring of 2016. The school day started at 7:50 in the morning.
The wrist monitors collected data about light and activity levels every 15 seconds so researchers could determine when the students were awake or sleeping.
In 2017, the schools changed their start time to 8:50. Researchers collected data from 88 students who were taking the same biology classes. The students wore wrist activity monitors and kept a sleep diary. The data showed that students got an extra 34 minutes of sleep each night after the school moved its start time to 8:50.
Related Articles at Families.com:
- AAP Recommends Some Schools Start Later
- Fifteen Minute Breaks Could Help Kids Stay Focused
- Readjusting Teen’s Sleep for the Start of School