"Saved by the bell" may be a common refrain among students, but parents and teachers are starting to ask if children should be saved from the bell instead.
The Start School Later Initiative, a petition encouraging lawmakers to start school no earlier than 8 a.m., was presented to members of Congress this week with nearly 5,000 signatures from all 50 states.
More than 1,000 of the signatures were from Maryland parents and educators.
"The [petition] comments range from student pleas for a more humane schedule to educators wishing their students weren't still asleep to health professionals and researchers seriously concerned about the damage we're doing to kids' mental and physical health," said movement organizer Heather Macintosh.
What do you think—are Howard County school hours OK or is there room for change?
Even districts with a 9 AM high school start times manage to have competitive sports programs for students. Athletes, like all of us, perform better with more sleep. Students with later high school start times DO sleep more because the school schedule is better aligned with their circadian rhythms. Study after study shows the same thing, so we don't have to speculate about what children this age would do. We know they sleep more because they typically fall asleep at about the same time (when their brains and bodies are prepared for sleep). It varies for every individual, but for children in this age group, it is typical for this to occur close to 11 p.m. Several different studies in different school districts and different parts of the world show similar patterns. It's time to use what we've learned -- to turn the science into policy and practice.
<br> I remember having Calculus class at 8:00 AM when I was in high school. It was horrible scheduling. Had the class been later in the day, i would have done much better. All scientific research on this subject has shown that high school students do much better on a later opening schedule. <br> Scheduling problems for buses and after-school work or activities can all be worked out by all involved. Some young children are up for hours before elementary school starts at 9:20 AM. So why not send them to school early since they go to be early anyway. That way high school students can get more sleep, while those who do choose to get up early can finish some activities, even homework, before school starts. <br> The list of benefits is too long to mention here but I can think of many more positives to a change in hours.
What I find interesting in this discussion is all the good involvement from young parents with children in elementary school. For some reason the older our children get the less we involve ourselves in school which is bad because the hcpss preys on the unsuspecting with a lot of biased information and parents with years in the system are seperated from giving advice to younger parents on how the system works. I will give all of you some advice, 90% of our children go to college, it is on the hcpss website, What no one tells you is 50% of our children need extensive remedial education and the drop out rate in college is phenomenal. Only 35% of our children will ever graduate from college and the rest will enter adulthood with absolutely no job skills. After elementary our children tend to need us less or so they say and we tend to allow them more room. The mistake here is we allow the school system to fill our roll and make judgements for us. These young adults of ours need guidance and it still needs to come from our involvement not the school system. As they grow so must we as parents.
Things change and our personal experiences while insightful places our opinion in the minority. Parents should not accept based on their childhood experience any aspect of our children's education without question. There is a huge amount of research on the subject and everyone of us is privileged to be able to reseach it in an instant. There is a great perspective here coming from young parents. As an old parent I am simply saying these are your children and you have a right to participate in every aspect of their lives as well as a responsibility. Question everything and involve yourself in every minute.
That said I still happen to favor keeping the start time the same or perhaps even making it earlier, but again that is based solely on my personal experiences :). Thank you for expounding on your comments for me. It's nice to be able to discuss/argue/converse about things greater than just complaining about life on Ducketts Lane once in a while.