Editorials

=Editorials=

  If it took several alarms, parental threats and a crowbar to pry your teenager out of bed for the start of the new school year, don’t blame yourself and don’t blame your kid. Blame biology, at least in part.

If it took several alarms, parental threats and a crowbar to pry your teenager out of bed for the start of the new school year, don’t blame yourself and don’t blame your kid. Blame biology, at least in part.

Extensive research into the neurochemistry of sleep cycles has found that patterns vary at different ages: Toddlers wake at the crack of dawn; oldsters start nodding off by 10 p.m. And adolescents, by nature, don’t get sleepy until later at night and don’t get alert until later in the morning.

Tradition-bound public schools have yet to respond to this research, so teachers struggle to squeeze higher math into the still-sleeping brains of teenagers at 7:30 a.m. But the nation’s top educator gets it. The tweet Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent out this week quickly went viral: “Common sense to improve student achievement that too few have implemented: let teens sleep more, start school later.”

Some school districts have tried changing school hours, with impressive results. Researchers conducted a nine-week study at St. George's School in Middletown, R.I., where starting times were shifted from 8 to 8:30 and class times were trimmed 5 to 10 minutes to keep dismissal time on track.

What transpired was impressive. Almost 55 percent of students reported getting at least eight hours sleep, compared to 16 percent prior; first-period tardiness dropped in half; more kids ate breakfast; and students reported better outlooks. Their heightened alertness improved their classroom performances.

The objections to a later start time include difficulty with the school bus schedule and the prospect of disrupting after-school jobs, sports and extra-curricular activities by ending the academic day later than 2:30. But ending academic instruction so early brings problems too: Freed from school at the most energetic time of the day, many students either waste that energy on TV, computer screens and social life, or they get in trouble.

Creative scheduling, and a longer school day, can mitigate the problems. Schools could start the day with less intellectually intensive courses, putting off math and science until students’ brains have cleared, for instance. But ultimately, administrators and school committees should get their priorities straight. As Duncan said this week, “it's incumbent upon education leaders to not run school systems that work good for buses but that don't work for students."

There are other things parents can do to help teens get a better night’s sleep, beginning with having them cut back on late-night snacks and controlling their “screen time.” Research indicates sleeping with a smart phone next to your head disrupts quality sleep, even if you don’t wake up several times during the night to check your email and respond to your friends’ texts.

But what’s really needed is a broad realignment of American education to accommodate what we know about how children learn. We need to think again about long summer vacations, when so much of what students have learned the previous year is lost. We need a longer day that allows sufficient time for both academics and activities like physical education and the arts that have been short-changed in the push for more math and science.

And we need to recognize the neurobiology of the adolescent brain. Let the teens sleep a little later, so that when the school bell rings, they’ll be ready to learn.