School Start Times for Middle School and High School Students — United States, 2011–12 School Year

Details

• Journal Article:
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• Personal Author:
  Wheaton, Anne G. ; Ferro, Gabrielle A. ; Croft, Janet B.
• Description:
  Adolescents who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight; not engage in daily physical activity; suffer from depressive symptoms; engage in unhealthy risk behaviors such as drinking, smoking tobacco, and using illicit drugs; and perform poorly in school. However, insufficient sleep is common among high school students, with less than one third of U.S. high school students sleeping at least 8 hours on school nights. In a policy statement published in 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urged middle and high schools to modify start times as a means to enable students to get adequate sleep and improve their health, safety, academic performance, and quality of life. AAP recommended that "middle and high schools should aim for a starting time of no earlier than 8:30 a.m.". To assess state-specific distributions of public middle and high school start times and establish a pre-recommendation baseline, CDC and the U.S. Department of Education analyzed data from the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). Among an estimated 39,700 public middle, high, and combined schools* in the United States, the average start time was 8:03 a.m. Overall, only 17.7% of these public schools started school at 8:30 a.m. or later. The percentage of schools with 8:30 a.m. or later start times varied greatly by state, ranging from 0% in Hawaii, Mississippi, and Wyoming to more than three quarters of schools in Alaska (76.8%) and North Dakota (78.5%). A school system start time policy of 8:30 a.m. or later provides teenage students the opportunity to achieve the 8.5-9.5 hours of sleep recommended by AAP and the 8-10 hours recommended by the National Sleep Foundation.
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Humans Schools Sleep Students Time Factors
• Source:
  MMWR Morbidity Mortal Weekly Rep. 2015; 64(30):809-813.
• Series:
  Weekly Report: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• ISSN:
  0149-2195 (print) ; 1545-861X (digital)
• Pubmed ID:
  26247433
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC5779581
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Pages in Document:
  5 pdf pages
• Volume:
  64
• Issue:
  30
• Collection(s):
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:7846b740b7d8e6f5e78c00b57a6bc043e46e717fa489c1bc75ca3e432e4402684f417b73af75739d96d297d160db65861af21373ab1c2693a68b8c994636e1ac
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/53341/cdc_53341_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 557.74 KB ]