Did you see the Wall Street Journal this morning? On page D2 of the July 5, 2010 paper there is an article citing research done by Judith Owns which shows that delaying the start time of school from 8 to 8:30 cut tardiness in half, and reduced depression and irritability.  This further supports the comments I make on my website about delayed start times improving classroom behavior management.

More specifically, Dr. Owens maintains that biological changes in teenager’s circadian rhythms along with school activities and homework mean that teens have difficulty falling asleep before 11 PM.  By moving the start time back 30 minutes students in a private boarding school actually increased their sleep by 45 minutes a night so that 54.7% of the students received at least 8 hours of sleep compared to 16.4% before the change.  This resulted in “daytime sleepiness” dropping from 49.1% to 20%, depression or unhappiness dropping from 66% to 45%, and feeling irritated or annoyed dropping from 84% to 63%!  The nice thing about using a boarding school is that they had more control over the bedtime.  I wonder why they did not report how this change affected the student’s grades.  This would be easy data to collect, even now after the fact.

I find the 45% “unhappy or depressed”, and the 63% “irritated or annoyed” figures to be concerning, but not surprising.  This does not reflect a happy state of affairs with our teenagers even with the delayed start time. 

The original article can be found in the July, 2010 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.