Wednesday, February 27, 2002
From ZZZZZ’s to A’s: Kids Learn Better if they “Sleep In”
I am surprised at how early some schools start. But how do these 7-7:30 a.m. start times affect learning? Get out there some morning and see how early teachers and students have to get rolling. No wonder the kids fall asleep in class. Millions are sleep deprived.
When school starts later, say, after 9am, there is growing evidence that the students perform better. The Washington Post said last year, “High school students are less likely to miss classes or stop coming to school regularly if they can sleep later on school mornings, according to the largest study done into the impact of high school start times. The study of thousands of Minneapolis high school students also found that they got more sleep, got slightly better grades and experienced less depression after the district switched from a 7:15 a.m. start to an 8:40 a.m. start in 1997. Many districts have made high school classes start earlier in recent years for financial reasons and to accommodate after-school activities. But those near-dawn starts have become controversial around the country as research suggested that teenagers behave better and appear more ready to learn when classes start later. The new research is the most comprehensive yet to look at the issue.”
PBS Frontline produced a project on this topic (called from ZZZZZ’s to A’s) that really hit a nerve with parents. The program said,”A great concern of sleep researchers is that teens are so sleep-deprived. Bill Dement speaks about the huge sleep debt that many teens and adults carry around with them every day. With most high schools in the U.S. starting around 7:20 a.m. and with many teens going to bed between 11 and 12 p.m., sleep researchers worry that teenagers are suffering an epidemic that is largely hidden. Since students are often driving to school, to sporting events, and home from late-night parties, this sleep debt holds huge risks. Many high school students know of someone, often a high-achieving kid, who on the drive back from a sporting event or dance simply fell asleep at the wheel. On a less dramatic note, there are literally millions of adolescents who feel despondent, get poor marks, or are too tired to join high-school teams all because they are getting too little sleep. Because of their deep concern about these issues, sleep researchers are pushing for later school start times and are trying to introduce sleep issues into the high school curriculum.
An hour later helps, but…
According to a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, “Moving the school start time one hour later for adolescents resulted in meaningful increases in sleep time, an increase in the percentage of students who got an adequate amount of sleep and a decrease in catch-up sleep on weekends. Nevertheless, a majority of these adolescents are still probably not getting enough sleep to function optimally in school.”
— A bill was filed in Congress in 2001 to delay school start times nationwide. It died in subcommittee
Expert testimony
— Why do teens stay up so late? A biological explanation
— April 1-7-2002 is National Sleep Awareness week
Tracking Media Mergers
This is the best site I have seen for tracking the media merger/consolidation story.
The History Behind the Hoods and Earmuffs
I was in DC this weekend on business. In my spare time, I spent some time looking into a big crime in which the suspects were arrested, and held for months in jail. While in jail, they often had to wear hoods over their heads and padding over their ears so they could not communicate with each other. They were considered to be extremely dangerous.
— They were not the Taliban being held in Cuba.
— They were co-conspirators in the shooting of President Lincoln. Turns out they have the padded hoods on display in the basement of Ford’s Theatre.
So this practice of masking and hooding that made such big news a few weeks ago when the US Military brought the Taliban prisoners to Cuba has been around quite some time.
So, the Alcohol Study is Wrong, there is Still News in There
It appears that yesterday’s study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse saying teen drinkers account for 25 percent of all the alcohol consumed in the U.S.is in dispute. The real number is something like 11.4 percent, according to the government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. I worry that the questionable study will erase an important story/issue.
Choose the number you like. There is still a great story to be done about where teens get their booze. Think about it..if even 11% of the alcohol is consumed by teens, it must be pretty easy to buy. Who profits from this? Check your city enforcement records. What bars, stores show up most often? What happens when they get charged with selling to minors? What training programs do restaurants have for servers? Live the life of a convenience store clerk, how many times in an evening does somebody try to trick them, intentionally not show up with an ID and so on?
