A Seattle school district's decision to implement a later start time for students allowed them to get more sleep and may have even improved their academic performance, a new study shows.
Researchers at the University of Washington tracked sophomores both before and after a school district pushed its start time from 7:50 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. They found that with the 8:40 start, students got on average an extra 34 minutes of sleep each night, reports NPR. They didn't simply move their bedtime later and get the same amount of sleep, as some suspected could happen.
That wasn't the only positive outcome: the study also found that there was a 4.5 percent increase in the students' median grades.
"These results demonstrate that delaying high school start times brings students closer to reaching the recommended sleep amount and reverses the century-long trend in gradual sleep loss," the researchers say. While it's easy to draw a link between the late start time and the additional sleep, it's "much harder to attribute causality for 4.5% higher grades on increased sleep." However, it's "certainly reasonable" to conclude that students who are more well-rested would see an improvement in their grades, and one teacher told NPR that her students seemed to find it easier to engage in class after the later start time began.
The study additionally showed that the number of absences and late arrivals also went down with the later start time, but this was only apparent in the economically disadvantaged school they looked at, which they conclude suggests "delaying high school start times could decrease the learning gap between low and high socioeconomic groups." Brendan Morrow
The Oklahoma City bombing woke up U.S. counterterrorism officials to violent white supremacy and other forms of right-wing extremism. But 9/11 and political pressure turned their attention elsewhere — and "now, they have no idea how to stop" far-right extremists, The New York Times details in Thursday's episode of The Daily podcast.
After Timothy McVeigh's deadly 1995 attack, an FBI crackdown "somewhat succeeded in sending the far right underground," Times contributor Janet Reitman reports on The Daily. Then 9/11 arrived, and "the entire national security apparatus," including the FBI under then-director Robert Mueller, shifted to "countering Islamic extremism," Reitman says. Just one man — Daryl Johnson — was left to probe domestic right-wing extremism under the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
Things seemed quiet until former President Barack Obama gained national prominence, and Johnson — a registered Republican — correctly assumed the first black president would reinvigorate white supremacists. Under Obama, Johnson authored a report warning of this new threat, which was largely taking shape online, Johnson tells The Daily. But conservative media didn't like tying "right-wing" to "extremism," Johnson said. And their intense backlash led then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to rescind the report altogether.
National security monitoring of violent white supremacy only faded from there. Johnson was reassigned to a new job and eventually left DHS, and today, not a single person at DHS is dedicated solely to right-wing extremism, Johnson tells The Daily.
This shift may have successfully prevented another 9/11. But "white supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed more people in the United States ... than any other category of domestic extremist" in the meantime, per the Times. Listen to more on The New York Times' The Daily. Kathryn Krawczyk
The 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees were announced Thursday, with Radiohead, Janet Jackson, and Def Leppard among the latest to be enshrined in Cleveland, reports Pitchfork.
Joining them in the March induction ceremony will be Stevie Nicks (already in as a member of Fleetwood Mac), The Cure, Roxy Music, and The Zombies. Among the acts who will be left out despite a nomination: Devo, Kraftwerk, LL Cool J, and Rage Against the Machine.
Radiohead got the nod despite its well-publicized indifference to the honor. "If you ask me what I'd rather be doing that night," guitarist Ed O'Brien told Rolling Stone upon the band's first nomination in 2017, "I'd rather be sitting at home in front of the fire or going to a gig." It seems that for O'Brien and his bandmates, that cozy night will have to be postponed. See the full list of inductees at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Jacob Lambert
Working for Tesla CEO Elon Musk sounds like a stressful and bizarre experience, as you might gauge from his erratic Twitter feed.
Wired on Thursday published a detailed account of what it was like to work at Tesla as the company ramped up production of the Model 3, speaking with dozens of current and former employees. What they describe is a ridiculously demanding work environment in which everyone lives in fear that they will be suddenly humiliated or fired by Musk at any given time.
For instance, one employee said that literally the first time he ever encountered Musk, Musk called him
"The threat of firing became a drumbeat," Wired writes. One executive said that "every day you expected to be fired" and "there was this constant feeling of dread." According to the article, if anyone questions Musk, they can expect to be immediately let go, reassigned, or asked not to attend meetings anymore.
Musk's obsession with firing people got to the point that he would reportedly come in and say, "I've got to fire someone today," and other executives would have to try to talk him out of it. One former executive summed things up by saying, "Everyone in Tesla is in an abusive relationship with Elon." Tesla in multiple statements disputed the article's characterization of Musk, calling some anecdotes "overly dramatized." Read the full piece at Wired. Brendan Morrow
