ABSTRACT
Poor school performance by adolescent students has been attributed in part to insufficient
sleep. It is recognized that a number of factors lead to diminished total sleep time
and chief among these are early school start times and sleep phase delay in adolescence.
Political initiatives are gaining momentum across the United States to require later
school start times with the intent of increasing total sleep time and consequently
improving school performance. Later school start times come with significant costs
and impact other activities of families and communities. The decision to implement
later school start times cannot be made lightly and deserves support of well-performed
research on the impact of these changes. A study evaluating the association of academic
performance and total sleep time was performed in middle school and high school students
in a suburban Maryland school system. Preliminary results of this study show no correlation
of total sleep time with academic performance. Before mandating costly changes in
school schedules, it would be useful to perform further research to determine the
effects of increasing sleep time on the behaviors of adolescent students.
KEYWORD
School performance - sleep phase delay - adolescence - total sleep time
