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New California law requires high schools to start later

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Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#71

Post by MikePlacid »

My public-schooled daughter (now doing PhD in game theory in UCSD) has a best friend (now doing PhD in meteorology in CalTech). The best friend was home schooled - as they do it now in California, i.e. she participated in a rather intense network of online and offline study groups and community college courses. They compared notes. The conclusion: the quality of the education was the same. But in our - rather good - public school my daughter had to participate in a lot of useless and boring tasks and activities - a tremendous waste of time in her opinion.

So I guess the time that kids spend in public schools can be cut tremendously, instead of its start being shifted from early morning to a bit later morning. But I doubt that useless time elimination can be achieved via legislation.

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#72

Post by gonehome »

synergy20 wrote: post #21

I never understand the schedule for schools: 1. elementary school starts at 7:30AM, middle school at 8:20, high school at 9:10 here. So, the youngest kid gets up at 6:50AM, older ones at 7:50AM, oldest at 8:40(assuming you're not too far from school that is). why the youngest ended up getting up the earliest puzzles me. 2. School is off in hot summer and cold winter, I would prefer they study on campus then, so they…

1. It's way better for younger kids to start earlier than older kids, gives time for parents to get them out the door before work (older kids can manage themselves). There's also some evidence that older kids have more trouble getting up super early.

2. Highly regionally variable (California summer is the best season by far, east coast summer is much worse than fall) - summer also has the longest daytime light which is nice.

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#73

Post by giantg2 »

krasin wrote: post #27
giantg2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bigger issue is unsupervised minors. Not all high schoolers are mature enough to be left alone and go to school. I suppose this could be solved by pre-care, but that make this bill completely moot.

>Not all high schoolers are mature enough to be left alone and go to school As an anecdote, 100% of my class was coming to the school and back without being supervised since age 8. This was in 90s and not in the US, but the gap of "mature enough to go to school" between my experience and the statement feels a bit high, somehow.

Yes, maturity in the US seems delayed compared to many places. I feel it's because the laws and nosy neighbors have basically made it impossible to give kids responsibility. Nobody wants to hire kids because of the labor laws. Kids don't want to work because they get everything handed to them or the cost of stuff like transportation is too high. Let your young kid play alone? You might have the cops called on you.

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#74

Post by heretogetout »

koolba wrote: post #25
feet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the law is based around what's been observed behaviorally/biologically. Not what's good for working parents Schools shouldn't be forcing developing humans into a schedule that impairs their ability to learn and function, no matter what they want to decide

If they do enough physical and mental labor during the day and turn off their smart phones at night, they’ll have no issue going to sleep early enough. On the other hand if you do nothing mentally stimulating or physically tiring all day long, then of course you won’t be able to sleep till late.

Have you read the relevant research on the subject?

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#75

Post by tomtheelder »

cbhrocks wrote: post #20

Nothing will change. Kids will just take advantage of the late start by staying up even later.

That's not what the research says. They aren't just implementing this policy for no reason. It's a complicated topic, but there's really good reason to believe that this will be beneficial.

A few sources, there are tons more:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15402002.2014.96...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1111/sbr.12003

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/07420528.2012.65...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1540200070126380...

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#76

Post by least »

giantg2 wrote: post #26
feet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the law is based around what's been observed behaviorally/biologically. Not what's good for working parents Schools shouldn't be forcing developing humans into a schedule that impairs their ability to learn and function, no matter what they want to decide

What is behaviorally/biologically beneficial varies by individual. Societal life should be a factor as that does factor into the holistic well-being of the student. Not just some myopic rule about start times that negatively impacts everything else (after school activities, jobs, parent schedules, etc). "Schools shouldn't be forcing developing humans into a schedule that impairs their ability to learn and function, n…

> What is behaviorally/biologically beneficial varies by individual.

As someone that has sleep issues that deviate vastly from the norm, I empathize with this point, but it doesn't really mean much when it comes to designing policy, which is supposed to serve its demographic broadly.

> Societal life should be a factor as that does factor into the holistic well-being of the student. Not just some myopic rule about start times that negatively impacts everything else (after school activities, jobs, parent schedules, etc).

The rule being set by the state or by the local school district is hardly of consequence. You're okay with painting broad strokes about parents' lives but then make an argument about individual students.

> If you actually believe that, then you have to be against this law. Any schedule will negatively affect someone. A later schedule would have been terrible for me.

Unless you're suggesting that the start times be adjusted to cater to every single individual's needs, this is just pointing out that the start time the school you attended coincided with what worked for you personally.

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#78

Post by giantg2 »

alistairSH wrote: post #56
smm11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am VERY close to this situation, I'm married to a California teacher. Most of the kids hate this idea. 1. They know they and everyone else will just stay up later. 2. School will go on too late in the day, sports participation is dropping appreciably. 3. Those who work after school or school/sports are quitting sports to work, and planning ways to leave when they did previously to go to work. This is incredibly sho…

Education is more important than playing football. Working is more important than playing football (for those who need the money). Anecdotally, when I was in high school, with a 7:30 AM start, around 25% of the class was asleep through 1st period. And this was in honors/AP courses with the kids who wanted to learn, get good grades, and generally be successful.

That doesn't match my experience at all. I started at 7:15 (special elective) and school started at 8. The only kids who would fall asleep were the kids that stayed up late playing videogames, abusing caffeine (and/or other drugs), and didn’t care about grades.

So my anecdotes don't match your's.

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#79

Post by kibwen »

kpennell wrote: post #61

One of the hardest times in my life was being 14 and absolutely exhausted in school. I also added to it by signing up for an early morning workout class. That combined with a dose of adderall each day had me absolutely tired and wired. I got hurt 3x in football and it just sent me into a spiral. All that to say, glad to know that future generations of high schools will be getting more rest.

Same here, school started at 7:34 and the first period was always a complete wash. Might as well have called it napping class, or as close as you can get to napping while keeping your eyes just open enough that the teacher doesn't call you out. I've just looked it up, and it looks like my old school district got the memo because these days the bell rings at 8:09.

Re: New California law requires high schools to start later

#80

Post by ar_lan »

This seems crazy late. IIRC I had a 0-period class starting at 6:00am. Starting 2.5 hours later is surprising.

If I were back in high school, all this would have told me is that I'm staying up until at least midnight, if not later. I was usually good about sleeping around 9:30pm which gave me roughly 9 hours sleep.

Since I assume this means school will end later in the day, this just means homework gets pushed much later too. My parents were very strict about homework being done the same day, so there's no chance I would have been able to keep my old schedule and do homework in the mornings.

I'm curious what the effect is on the average and median kids. This would have been incredibly annoying for me.

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