A later school start time worked wonders for Seattle students, study shows

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.

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"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."