Dive Brief:

• New research supports the longstanding theory that later start times for high school students lead to better outcomes for students, showing later start times improved both graduation and attendance rates among those studied.
• Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia recently shifted its start time by nearly an hour. Anecdotally, one administrator reports students feel better-rested and ready to learn.
• The district held community meetings and sought parent input to help make its determination and adjust its scheduling to the new start time.

Dive Insight:

Research has consistently backed the idea that later start times can lead to better performance in students, but recently the idea has seemed to catch on with more districts. In addition to behavior, later start times have been associated with better behavior and mood shifts among teenagers.

Later start times do, however, pose unique challenges for administrators. Parent and work schedules have often been arranged around current start times, meaning families may need to make adjustments to their schedules to accommodate. Since school bus schedules are often tied to both elementary and high school schedules, changing start times for one group of students might require extra buses or a reorganization of transportation plans. Also, later start times often mean later end times, impacting both extracurricular activities for students and inter-district sports schedules, which may not take the later end of day into account.