For years, communities have relied on a strong and consistent body of research showing that later school start times support adolescent health, safety, and learning. Yet because this issue is such a controversial policy issue, it is tempting for people to seize on, spin, or oversimplify studies in ways that muddy the waters and confuse the public. And the impact isn't just theoretical. It has serious implications for children's health and well-being.
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A recent example that supplies nuance to the benefits of starting later, but has been, instead, spun as a way to question the benefits altogether, shows how easily research in this area can be misread and misused. Instead of clarifying what we know about teen sleep and school schedules, it provides ready fodder for a public conversation using claims the study didn’t actually support. That kind of distortion risks undermining years of progress toward healthier, more equitable school hours.

Science should inform policy, of course, and new research should be considered even if it casts doubt on reigning beliefs. However, science-informed policy starts with a full and thorough understanding of what a given study does and does not say. It also includes avoiding the temptation to seize on a headline and applying it to some preconceived contrarian notion rather than understanding how a single study fits into a much larger body of literature. It also involves considering the impact of a self-serving article or quip on decisions being made to protect student well‑being.

To see a deeper dive into how this happens—and why it matters—you can read my full Substack post here: https://terraziporyn.substack.com/p/when-science-meets-spin

​Terra Ziporyn is Start School Later's Executive Director and Co-Founder

Anyone who has spent years pushing for healthier school start times knows how immovable a district can seem—right up until the moment it isn’t. Clark County, Nevada, long one of the most resistant districts in the nation, is now offering a master class in how quickly the “impossible” can become inevitable.

Not long ago, Clark County was fighting tooth and nail against later high school start times. Leaders dismissed the science, warned of catastrophic costs, and framed any shift as a logistical nightmare. They even pushed back against a statewide proposal to require high schools to start no earlier than 8:00 a.m. Then, almost overnight, the tone changed. With new leadership and a community‑driven review process, the district began acknowledging the benefits of later start times and speaking publicly about student well‑being in ways that would have been unthinkable just a year earlier.

This kind of reversal isn’t unique. I’ve seen it in Columbia, Missouri, where a misguided proposal to start high school earlier ended up catalyzing a move to 9:00 a.m.—thanks in part to a well‑informed 15‑year‑old who refused to accept “impossible” as an answer. And I’ve lived it in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, where decades of stalemate gave way to an 8:30 a.m. high school start time after years of insisting even a 13‑minute shift was unworkable.

Clark County’s new plan isn’t perfect—middle schoolers are still being left behind—but the mindset shift is a big deal. In fact, it’s the foundation every long‑term change is built on. It's also real inspiration for anyone still out there in the trenches.
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I explore the full story, and what it means for advocates everywhere, in my latest Substack post.

​Terra Ziporyn is Start School Later's Executive Director and Co-Founder

Sleep: The Foundation of Elite Performance
Professional athletes have long recognized that sleep is a non-negotiable component of their success. LeBron James, widely considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, famously prioritizes 10 to 12 hours of sleep a day to maintain his high level of play. James has noted that sleep is the best way for his body and mind to recuperate:

"Sleep is the best recovery that you can have. It’s basically equivalent to you putting your phone in a charger when you go to bed... if you try to get the most sleep that you can get, that is the only way you’re gonna get back to 100 percent."

He isn't alone. NBA star Andre Iguodala saw his performance skyrocket after overhauling his sleep habits with the help of physician-scientist Cheri Mah. By increasing his sleep duration and improving his routine, Iguodala’s three-point performance more than doubled, and his points per minute increased by 29 percent.

The science bears this out across all levels of play. A landmark study of Stanford basketball players showed that when athletes aimed for at least ten hours of sleep a night, they saw a 9 percent increase in successful free throws and three-pointers, alongside significantly faster sprint times. Conversely, sleep deprivation acts as a drag on performance. Research tracking NBA players’ late-night social media use found that players who were up late tweeting performed significantly worse the next day, including making fewer shots.

A Shield Against Injury
For a student-athlete, an injury is more than just a physical setback; it’s a loss of identity, playing time, and often academic focus. Sleep is perhaps the most effective tool we have for injury prevention.

When teens are sleep-deprived, their coordination, response time, and cognitive processing are impaired. A study of secondary school athletes found 65 percent of those who slept fewer than eight hours sustained injuries, compared to just 31 percent of those who slept more.

Sleep is also the primary avenue for physical repair. It is during deep sleep that the body secretes growth hormones essential for muscle recovery and cell regeneration. Without enough sleep, the "micro-tears" created during intense workouts remain torn, increasing the risk of more severe muscle damage. 
Furthermore, sleep plays a bidirectional role with concussions: poor sleep increases the risk of sustaining a concussion, and a concussion can, in turn, trigger chronic sleep problems.
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Mental Health and the Rested Athlete
Beyond the physical gains, sleep is the bedrock of mental health. Student-athletes face immense pressure to perform both on the field and in the classroom. Lack of sleep exacerbates anxiety, depression, and irritability.
Neurologist Chris Winter notes that athletes who make sleep a priority "just enjoy longer and more sustainable success" and are less likely to burn out. Sleep helps athletes maintain the focus and emotional resilience needed to handle the "strain on anxiety levels" that comes with competitive sports and the recovery from inevitable setbacks.

Does Starting School Later Actually Help?
The evidence is clear: sleep improves performance and prevents injury. But can changing school start times actually deliver these benefits?

The answer from athletic directors and researchers we’ve worked with is a resounding yes. Because of a biological shift in circadian rhythms during puberty, most teenagers cannot naturally fall asleep before 11:00 p.m. When school starts early, they are forced to cut their sleep short during the most critical hours for cognitive and physical recovery.

By shifting start times later, schools allow students to get sleep that is synchronized with their biology. This isn't just theory—athletic directors who have made the switch report that their athletes are more alert, have more energy for afternoon practices, and show improved academic eligibility needed to play sports. Later start times also mean that student-athletes are less likely to rely on caffeine or "energy drinks" to get through the day, which can further disrupt natural sleep cycles.

Addressing the Coaches' Concerns
Common myths often suggest that later start times will ruin athletic programs by pushing practices too late. However, coaches who support later starts argue the opposite. They consider:

• Quality Over Quantity: A rested athlete has a more productive 90-minute practice than a sleep-deprived athlete has in three hours.
• Reduced Absenteeism: Rested athletes miss fewer practices due to illness and injury
• Academic Eligibility: Later starts can improve GPAs and reduce failure rates, keeping more players eligible to play.

For years, many of us assumed that if we simply presented the science on adolescent sleep, school leaders would naturally shift to healthier start times. After all, the evidence is overwhelming: later start times improve sleep health, mental health and emotional well-being, safety, and school performance. But evidence alone has never been enough—and that’s the part we too often missed.

School schedules aren’t set by people who wake up thinking about circadian rhythms. They’re set by people juggling budgets, transportation contracts, staffing, sports, community politics, and the fear—often justified—of public backlash. Their resistance isn’t about not understanding the science. It’s about competing priorities, risk, and self‑interest.

The turning point comes when we stop trying to change those interests and instead learn to align with them. When later start times become a solution to the problems decisionmakers already care about—attendance, graduation rates, equity, safety, even economic outcomes—doors open. And when communities understand what’s at stake for their own kids, political will follows.

Healthy school hours aren’t just a sleep issue. They’re a systems issue involving a multitude of stakeholders with differing priorities. And when we frame them that way, without losing slight of the science, we create the conditions for real, lasting change.

Read the full article here:
👉 A Matter of Interest
https://terraziporyn.substack.com/p/a-matter-of-interest

We’re excited to share a newly-published summary of last year’s Summit on Adolescent Sleep and School Start Times: Setting the Research Agenda for California and Beyond. The Summit was spearheaded by Start School Later/Healthy Hours, and hosted by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine with support from the National Sleep Foundation and American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The peer-reviewed summary is now available online, and will be included in the February 2022 print edition of the Sleep Health Journal, published by the National Sleep Foundation. 

Using an extensive body of multidisciplinary research, the Summit established once and for all that most US schools should—and can—start later in the morning. It also identified ways future research questions might help turn this research into school policy — including ways to build community support for and awareness of healthy sleep while reducing disparities.

PLEASE WIDELY SHARE THIS TERRIFIC SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING HEALTHY SCHOOL START TIMES! 

We’ve created the shareable graphics you see in this blog with quotes from the paper for your use. (If we missed a useful quote, or if you need a different size, please reach out to Elinore Boeke, SSL communication director, at contact@startschoollater.net.

​​As a therapist and a mother of two recent teens, I know that there are a lot of areas of conflict that can arise between parents and their children, including homework, screen time, chores, clothing, and money. When it comes to bedtimes and sleep, we parents are often too tired to fight–literally and figuratively.

Yet research from the last few decades is telling us that enforcing healthy sleep patterns is a battle well-fought. Chronic deficient sleep is tied to increased risk of teen car crashes, diabetes, depression, suicide, cardiovascular disease, immune dysfunction, and more. Every animal on this planet needs sleep, and you will have a healthier and happier teen if you help ensure they get around 9 hours of sleep each night.
 
But don’t look at it as a battle between you and your teen. Instead, view it as a team effort in which you and your child are fighting against societal norms and lack of awareness.
 
Your teen has heard adults say things like “The early bird gets the worm,” and they’ve seen influential people brag on social media about how little sleep they get while they are making buckets of money or important decisions. Your teen may also have a school schedule that is unsupportive of sleep – with bus pick-ups at 6 a.m. and sporting events that run late on school nights.
 
Yet data shows that persons in the highest income brackets get more sleep than persons in poverty, and humans make our best decisions when we get adequate sleep. And local educational institutions were, ironically, not well-educated on sleep when they set up their schedules–​schedules that are based on convenience, not on student biology.
 
But the aforementioned influences most likely have led your child to underestimate the vital importance of sleep on human physical and psychological well-being–and we need to change that.
 
Here are my tips for having a healthier and happier teen:
 
Educate on the benefits of good sleep, rather than the risks of poor sleep.
Education can go a long way in improving health behavior. But keep in mind that adolescents tend to pay more attention to benefits rather than risk. Part of this is related to how their brains process information, and part of this is related to their sense of invincibility. Telling a teen that lack of sleep has been associated with increased risk of sports injuries won’t be as effective as telling them that improved sleep has been shown to increase athletic performance and recovery. (Just look at some of the classic studies at Stanford on sleep and athletic performance, including improved free-throw percentages among basketball players.)
 
You know what will best influence your child, so look through some of the data on this website and find out which of the many benefits of sleep will resonate with your teen, whether it is improved mood, memory, weight management, academic performance, or skin health.

Advocate for healthy school start times–​districts are often influenced by parents more than data.
Nearly every major medical group in the country has very clearly stated that middle and high schools should start after 8:30 a.m., and even the RAND Corporation crunched the numbers and showed that there is a positive economic impact when schools start later. Yet research and data and medical position statements don’t influence local school districts as much as parents do. Parents pay the taxes and vote in the school board members (in most districts) and fill the seats at band concerts and soccer games. Talk to your school board and your superintendent, get your PTA involved, and make it clear that the parents are asking for, and support, a move in the right direction.

​Fight for your teen when needed.
Your child has no greater champion than you, and sometimes you have to fight for your child.
 
If the cause of your child’s poor sleep is related to sports schedules, talk to the coach about those late-night practices. Maybe you’re the fourth parent to say something, and the coach is now motivated to make adjustments.