Early high school start times may not have negative effects on test scores, but according to a new study it can lead to students missing more school.
The study, published in the Economics of Education Review, saw researchers at North Carolina State University look at “five comprehensive high schools in one of the nation’s largest school systems,” according to the abstract in a press release. Start times were moved 40 minutes earlier “to better coordinate with earlier-start high schools.”
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“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that high schools begin class after 8:30 a.m., but we know that most schools start much earlier,” said Melinda Morrill, an associate professor of economics at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the study. “We were able to look at five high schools that moved start times from 8:05 a.m. to 7:25 a.m. in order to examine the effect that the change had on students.”
In the study, researchers reviewed data on the freshman, sophomore and junior years of the seven student cohorts with graduating years from 2013 to 2019. The early start times were implemented in the 2012-2013 school year.
An additional control group came from researchers reviewing data from 14 other high schools in the same school district. Those schools previously began starting at 7:25 a.m.
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“There’s a growing body of research that suggests earlier start times can hurt test scores,” Morrill said. “We looked at that, but the numbers weren’t statistically significant one way or the other.”
But, co-author and NC State Ph.D. candidate John Westall said starting earlier showed a small rise in the number of high schoolers who failed to proceed to their senior year on time.
“Specifically, the move from 8:05 to 7:25 was associated with students being 8% more likely not to advance to 12th grade on schedule,” Westall said.
Morrill noted researchers sought to look past testing “to see if there were effects on other measures of academic engagement.”
The results showed a notable rise in absences and tardiness.
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“The change to an earlier start time led to an increase of about one additional absence per year and just over three additional tardy arrivals per year for students. So students were definitely missing more school.”
Morrill explained that across the 19 schools, the five that started classes at 8:05 a.m. had notably lower rates of absences and tardiness than the 14 schools that began classes at 7:25 a.m. When the five schools moved their start time up by 40 minutes, the lower rates of lateness and absences disappeared.
“The take-home message here is that we need to look at more than just test scores if we want to understand all of the ways that early start times can affect high school students,” Morrill said. “We know that school districts have to consider a wide range of issues, such as transportation logistics, student safety, extracurricular activities and school finances. But the more we look, the more the findings suggest that there are significant consequences of early start times for students.”
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