How Do Early School Start Times Impact Student Health and Academic Performance?

The American school bus system has been employed since the early 1900s as part of the mandatory education laws passed shortly before the Great Depression. According to the American School Bus Council, more than 25 million children utilize this service every weekday, making it the largest transit service in the United States.

Back then, children attended school only 151 days a year because many helped with farm chores or frequently combatted illness due to fewer medical advances. This meant that children were not staying up late and waking up early before school, unlike many of today’s children. 

Today, schools in the United States vary their start time between 7:00 am - 8:30 am and end between 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm. For the school bus system to pick up children from nearby neighborhoods before this time, it must start its routes around 5:45 am.

In preparation to meet the bus, children must wake up anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour before pick up, meaning that they are losing precious hours of sleep needed for development to awaken around 4:45 am - 5:30 am. This is particularly true for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, as their families are less likely to own a vehicle for school transportation.

Most people do not enjoy waking up this early, as it negatively impacts our mood, ability to concentrate, and motivation to accomplish tasks. It also weakens our immune system and does not allow our body the proper amount of time to rest and recover mental and physical faculties that facilitate cognition, memory, learning, physical growth, and cellular repair to bodily tissue.

Being a child is difficult enough. Adding these factors, along with the expectation to sit still, pay attention, and be a good student for seven hours a day, makes success seem almost impossible. When taking all of this into account, children of higher socioeconomic status (SES) are at a huge advantage of obtaining more sleep, making better grades, and achieving better prospects for their future education and earning potential as adults. 

You may be wondering how this lack of sleep makes such an impact on a child’s life. Let’s start with how the sleep cycle works. Every night, the brain experiences 4 stages of sleep that repeat in an average of 90-minute cycles.

The first two stages are a form of light to medium sleep known as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) 1 and 2, with NREM 3 beginning a phase of deep sleep. During NREM, the body is able to slow down brain waves, heart rate, repair tissues, bolster the immune system, as well as grow muscle and bone.

The fourth stage, that occurs prominently at the end of the night/early morning, is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Brain waves are very active in REM sleep and allow us to dream while also providing support for cognitive functions such as memory consolidation, emotional processing, and learning. Therefore, when children are forced to wake up early, they are losing this vital part of restorative growth and development that will have major effects on their physical and mental wellbeing. Chronic lack of REM sleep is linked to increased diagnoses of mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia, as well as substance use disorders and infections. 

Then, there is the issue of the “danger window”- a window of time between 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm after children finish school when most parents are still at work. Children that are not participating in sports or after school programs during this time are more likely to experiment with drugs, alcohol, sex, and various risk-taking behaviors. This is especially true if the parents work multiple jobs and children are not able to spend much time with an adult or caregiver after school.

The most troubling aspect is that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has recognized the importance of sleep for education for years, yet no changes have been made, perpetuating the cycle of disadvantage for low SES children. A simple legislative change to begin school between 8:30 am or 9:00 am would drastically reduce sleep deprivation for American children and improve conditions for this public health epidemic.

This is a reminder that things we take for granted, such as sleep, can have a powerful impact on the future of our children, and our country. Embrace your right to vote and/or attend local school board meetings to advocate for later school start times and bus schedules to improve these conditions for the wellbeing of these young minds. For more resources on the importance of sleep, its effects on our bodies, the sleep deprivation epidemic and how it affects education, please refer to the references below.

References 

“The 4 Stages of Sleep: NREM, REM, and Your Sleep Cycle.” Calm Blog, Calm Blog, 6 Mar. 2024, www.calm.com/blog/stages-of-sleep.

Chattu, V. K., et al. “The Global Problem of Insufficient Sleep and Its Serious Public Health Implications.” Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), U.S. National Library of Medicine, 20 Dec. 2018, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6473877/.

Hart, K. “The Average School Start Times in Every State: Getting off of the Playground Equipment and into the Classroom.” AAA State of Play, 7 Oct. 2024, www.aaastateofplay.com/the-average-school-start-times-in-every-state/.

“Home.” Sleep Foundation, 3 Mar. 2023, www.sleepfoundation.org/.

Lenz, L. “A Brief History of the School Bus.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Sept. 2022, www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/history-school-bus-180980554/.

“Most US Middle and High Schools Start the School Day Too Early.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 Aug. 2015, archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/media/releases/2015/p0806-school-sleep.html.

“REM Sleep: What It Is and Why It’s Important.” Sleep Foundation, 22 Mar. 2024, www.sleepfoundation.org/stages-of-sleep/rem-sleep#:~:text=All%20sleep%20is%20important%2C%20but,processing%2C%20and%20healthy%20brain%20development.

Suni, E., and A. Singh. “Stages of Sleep: What Happens in a Sleep Cycle.” Sleep Foundation, 8 Dec. 2023, www.sleepfoundation.org/stages-of-sleep.

Walker, Matthew P. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2018.