Do later school start times help California students? Here’s what new study says
Top Takeaways
- California’s 2022 law mandating later school start times has led to improvements in sleep, mental health and academic achievement for students, according to new research.
- Some families struggle with changes to work commutes, later after-school activities and enforcing healthy sleep times for their children.
- Advocates say California should better guide school districts through the financial and logistical challenges of moving back the first bell.
California’s mandate requiring later start times for middle and high schools is already yielding results, with students sleeping more, reporting better mental health and scoring higher math and English scores, according to a new study.
The new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines the effects of Senate Bill 328, California’s statewide mandate for later school start times. The law, which went into effect in 2022, requires most middle schools to start no earlier than 8 a.m. and high schools no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
The study found that the new law increased the share of students sleeping at least eight hours per night by 13%, meeting the minimum recommended for adolescents by health experts. The largest jump was among boys.
The study shows that “rest and sleep are incredibly important in the function of schools,” said Osea Giuntella, an author of the report. Although the short-term increase in sleep is moderate, it has led to significant improvements in mental health and academic outcomes, he said.
Giuntella, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who studies sleep and economics, said the study’s first-year results are consistent with previous research linking better sleep to improved student well-being and academic performance. The study used changes in teachers’ commute arrival times from the American Community Survey as a proxy for later school start times, comparing sleep and mental health data before and after SB 328 took effect in the 2022-2023 school year and tracking academic gains from 2022 through 2025.
Gains in sleep, mental health, English and math
Students reported experiencing better mental health since schools shifted to later start times, with boys reporting the largest reductions in sadness, hopelessness and suicidal ideation, and Hispanic students reporting the biggest drop in difficulties concentrating.
Terra Ziporyn, executive director at nonprofit Start Schools Later and longtime advocate of later school start times, said SB 328 was a key part of California’s response to what schools have described as a student mental health crisis.
“The first step in addressing student mental health problems is to not create them in the first place,” Ziporyn said. “You can get a lot of counselors, but systematically depriving an entire adolescent population of adequate sleep is a surefire way to hurt their mental health.”
The study also found significant improvements in academic achievement, with eighth grade students making measurable gains in math and English, particularly among Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students.
Giuntella, the study’s author, said the improvement in scores was likely “largely driven by the change in sleep” based on comparable studies where increased sleep led to higher GPAs. That’s also why Hispanic students, who are already less likely to get adequate sleep than white students due to lower family income and family and work responsibilities, improved their math and English scores the most, Giuntella said.
Parents struggle with new schedules
The state mandate is the only one in the nation.
“California set a huge precedent for the whole nation by saying, ‘We cannot leave what is essentially a public health decision in the hands of local districts,’ ” Ziproyn said. “It’s not just a negotiable school budget item that you trade off against anything else.”
But some parents have said later start times complicate work commutes, push back sports and extracurricular activities and lead to some students simply pushing back the time they go to bed.
The study found that sports and extracurricular activities did start later after the change to later start times, but the changes were “marginal and not statistically significant,” Giuntella said.
“And it’s true that, yes, students may even go to bed a little later than they were, but they are definitely sleeping in more in the morning,” she said.
Guintella described later start times as just “one institutional factor” that may help address a complex sleep-deprivation problem, pointing to issues like the rise in nighttime screen use.
‘Too hard and too expensive’ for some districts
Some school districts found the transition to later school start times “too hard and too expensive,” Ziporyn said. Ziporyn said district administrators could have received more guidance from the state Department of Education to explain the benefits of later start times, and involve families in finding solutions to logistical problems.
“(Schools) have to fully understand why this is being done and communicate it with confidence to the community that they’re doing the right thing for kids,” Ziporyn said.
San Francisco Unified, for example, worked with operations experts at the Yale School of Management, Georgia Tech University and Northwestern University to redesign their bus routes in response to the change. With more than 120 schools and 18 different start times, the district generated about 1,000 new feasible bus schedules, which ended up saving the district about $5 million and with a majority of families and staff members satisfied with the transition to later start times, according to a report by Yale Insights.
But most schools in California did not have access to dedicated consultants to ease the transition, Ziporyn said.
“California could have improved making these resources more readily available to the districts,” Ziporyn said. “Built into the law was that there was supposed to be help from the state Department of Education about getting this done, and building that community buy-in is part of it.”
Giuntella said the state can improve its implementation of SB 328 by collecting statewide data on later school start times to “assess the impact of the reform.” In the meantime, schools can take from the study that later start times are “effective and powerful tools” for student outcomes.
“This happens often with some shock to individual and families’ habits, and so it also requires the ability to navigate this transition in a way that doesn’t backfire,” Giuntella said.
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This story was originally published by EdSource.