School Start Time

School should start later in the morning. People who have studied the subject say that students do better when school starts later. Every day, students get up early. They don’t get enough sleep. They come to school tired. That means they don’t learn as well. By the afternoon, they are falling asleep. This is not a good situation.

If school started later in the day, students would be more interested in their classes. They would also do more homework because they wouldn’t be as tired at night. Even if they didn’t do more homework, they would do a better job with it. That’s because they would be paying attention to it. They wouldn’t be falling asleep while working on it.

Our school should try an experiment. Let half the students come at the normal time. Let the other half come an hour later. After a few months of school, who do you think would be doing better in school?

Starting school later may seem like a good idea. Some students would probably like the idea. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. One reason is that it costs schools a lot of money to change their start times. One school district in Maryland studied how much it would cost. They found that they would have to use more buses and hire more people to drive them. There might be little money left to teach their students.

If school starts later, when does it end? If it ends at the same time, then the school day would be shorter. That can’t be good for learning. If school ends later in the day, that brings more problems. There would be less time for after-school activities like sports. Students would get home from activities later, so they would have less time for homework. They also might stay up later to get their homework done.

There is an old saying that is very wise: “The early bird catches the worm.” It means that getting up early, and not starting later, is the way to success.