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Chenoa Franklin
Mr. Crossetti
Honors English 11
March 12, 2018
Discrepancies Between Early School Start Times and Insufficient Sleep
Early school start times can have potentially negative health impacts on some students,
leading to an increase in poor academic performance and a decline in personal wellbeing.
Insufficient sleep is greatly associated with early school wake up times. Countless numbers of
teenage students struggle throughout their high school careers for various reasons and
personal issues but none as common or as pressing as insufficient sleep and the effects that
follow. Adolescent minds are still developing and require a set amount of hours of sleep to
develop properly. If the recommended amount of sleep is not met, it may lead to various health
issues including mental illness, increased risk of drug abuse, and potential decline of academic
performance. As influential and prominent as schools are in teenagers’ lives, it would be
expected that they would be better suited and tailored to fit the needs of teenagers to help them
and prepare them for success, not harder for them to reach goals. In order to begin to
understand the gravity of the issue at hand, it is important to first know the logistics behind the
situation.
According to countless studies, health research and pediatrician recommendations,
teenagers require anywhere from 8.5-9.5 hours of sleep to be considered sufficient. The next
important factor is just how many teens actually receive an adequate amount of sleep.
Research conducted by the National Sleep Foundation included a poll of over 1,600 students
and their caregivers all over the United States of America between grades 6-12 in order to
further understand the correlation between school and insufficient sleep patterns and their
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effects. The foundation took everything into consideration; school start times, bedtimes, wakeup
times, average amount of time to fall asleep and more were included. The results concluded
that “Overall, 45% of adolescents get an insufficient amount of sleep on school nights (less than
8 hours) ...9th to 12th grade adolescents (62%) get an insufficient amount of sleep on school
nights” (National Sleep Foundation Poll). As for the general population of adolescents, almost
half of all students from grades 6-12 experience insufficient sleep; all of those children are put at
risk of negative health and mental effects that accompany poor sleep habits. Being subject to
such poor sleeping habits at the young age of 11 can have the potential to make it even harder
on them as they grow older to break those habits. As for grades 9-12, over half are not receiving
sufficient sleep; these are the students who are being prepared for and under the stresses of
looming adulthood, yet the majority have to face challenges from the effects of not obtaining
enough sleep making it that much harder on them. Although some would think the simple
answer to this dilemma to be going to sl...
