California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am | Hacker News Reader

California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

qz.com

505 pointsdpflan383 comments

Unfortunately, the school systems still rely on one parent at home. It is not just drop off and pick up times: school activities, parent-teacher conferences, etc. For example, in the SF Unified District, school tours for parents of kids entering kindergarten, middle school and high school are during the school hours, mostly in the morning. It is all built around the expectation of a parent at home or a job structure that allows parents to have time off and not be penalized for it. Neither of those are necessarily representative of a family's current reality.

I can tell you that, through most of the bay area at least, those policies are mostly about intentional socioeconomic segregation.

My family has deep ties to local education infrastructure and its well known that most of the advocates for these policies are trying to keep poor kids out of their schools. While they don't say it in public forums they're generally more than happy to tell you in private.

You are claiming that poor parents will changed their school choice based on the availability of parent-teacher conferences?

And that the problem of poverty is overemployment, not underemployment?

Poor parents often don't have a choice: they can't afford to take time off from their job(s).

Yeah, it's the easiest way to discriminate against poor people without getting into trouble. Hell, you can even point to papers that say parental participation in schools helps the children. All the while you know poor folks won't apply.

Am I understanding correctly that this is in fact literally the same issue as the voter registration problem in the US? (or was it the voting booths. anyway, the problem of being too far away and during "working hours" strongly selecting against the underclass)

Same thing right? There's a large underclass in the US that simply cannot take part in public society activities because they are indentured?

This isn't about poverty, this is about those trying to move themselves or their kids out of poverty. The people who work hard at jobs and push their kids to go to good schools.

Poverty is a complex issue that cannot be summarized in a single word.

I can't speak for the Bay Area, but my region exhibits similar patterns.

Consider an example. A "good" school might have 100 slots for out-of-area kindergartners, distributed via a lottery system. However, the lottery system uses a biased distribution which preferentially selects from students who have been on the waitlist longer. This system is easily defensible by school administrators in the name of "fairness" to students who have waited longer.

The unspoken desire, however, is to preferentially select students with a higher socioeconomic index, because such students tend to score higher on standardized tests (and therefore maintain the school's current "good" ranking). Asking for this information explicitly is, naturally, forbidden.

Instead, the school waits for parents to come for site visits during working hours. These visits are attended overwhelmingly by stay-at-home parents, which correlate with socioeconomically-advantaged families, for the simple reason that they can afford to have a parent stay at home (the -economic side of socioeconomic). Underemployed parents cannot attend, because they are still working, but usually at jobs which do not offer flexible work hours. Unemployed parents can attend, but rarely do so, because the chronically unemployed statistically come from lower social backgrounds (the socio- side) that either do not value education as highly, or may not know that the concept of "school visits" even exist.

Then, when these parents visit, the schools inform them of the existence of the waiting list. However, information about the wait list (and especially details about its biased selectivity) will not be available by phone or website until enrollment opens. Thus, parents who attend the tours will be preferentially selected, since they are on the waiting list first, and the school can put their finger on the socioeconomic scale without ever asking parents for sensitive information.

For purely public schools which do not allow out-of-area students, this approach isn't relevant, because they are required to accept students from the local area and only the local area. These schools don't care, because the locations themselves correlate with socioeconomic factors, due to property values tracking school achievement.

For charter schools, which pass all students through similar systems, it allows them to accept statistically-advantageous students across all levels, leading to better outcomes overall (and shifting the remaining disadvantaged students, and the correspondingly lower level of achievement they statistically will achieve, to low-income public schools).

Perhaps I'm being naive, but most educators I've known are on the liberal side of the spectrum. Wouldn't barriers described here be more on the side of "never attribute to malice...?"

People know when they aren’t welcome, and anticipate the passive aggressive treatment they will likely expect.

So the following is a true story:

In a district in the bay area, one of the elementary schools was given a certain special designation that allowed them to accept kids from the district by lottery. The condition of entering the lottery was as follows:

1. A parent must take a 2 hour tour of the school, tour times were between 9 am and 3 pm.

2. A parent must sign an agreement to volunteer at the school at least 3 days a year.

Number 2 was unenforceable, and many flouted it, but poorer (mostly non-white) families who actually managed to schedule the tour generally backed out upon hearing that requirement.

Diversity plummeted, the school went from 60% white to 90% white in 5 years (though the district as a whole became less white).

This lasted over a decade, and only recently was the system overturned by popular vote. Every incoming class since then has been significantly more diverse.

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The point is that those who can afford to live in the bay area and not work every weekday are the well to do. As a software engineer I can usually just tell my boss "I've got an important personal matter" and get the day off. People I know who work as janitors or barista's often get told "well, if you don't show up you're fired" for the same request.

Sounds like an elementary school in my Bay Area district. Lottery admissions. Parents are required to volunteer ~10 hours per year and pay for uniforms. The school is 90% Asian even though Asians make up 1/3 of the city.

Another one that's more art focused and requires 4 hours of volunteering PER WEEK is majority white even though whites are 1/3 of the population.

> and pay for uniforms

It's bad enough that the school enforces a school uniform in the first place, let alone has the nerve to make parents pay for it.

There are lots of benefits to uniforms. In NSW (Australia) public schools have uniforms, and parents pay for them. Low income families are generally able to obtain financial assistance through some grant, or fundraising programme; sometimes through donated uniforms.

Uniforms actually help with socio-economic gaps: everybody dresses the same, regardless of whether you can afford more expensive status symbol clothing or not.

I'm not super knowledgeable on the topic of uniforms, but don't other things just become the status symbol? Phones, laptops, cars, purses? A lot of these things already have premium brands that most people on this site could name trivially.

Other things do, but it still does protect to a certain an extent.

It is much harder to tell the poor child from the one who may not have eaten today and might not tomorrow.

It is harder to tell the well-off child from the super-rich child, because the status symbols are in reach of both.

It's not a perfect fix, but it reduces the gaps.

I mean yes, but you don't even need to make that leap. Just look at outwear, shoes, and clothing accessories.

fwiw, I'm also a big fan of uniforms and the uniform separates can typically be purchased at places like Old Navy or Target for <$10/item (compared to my kid's soccer uniforms, which run $300-400 for the kit and have to be refreshed every year).

School uniforms is somewhere where Facebook has facilitated some social good.

Various community facebook groups and "buy nothing" facebook groups facilitate giving away items you no longer require. That the items be given for free, no strings attached is often a firm requirement.

School uniforms are a common item to be given away because children frequently outgrow uniforms long before they wear out.

Its very helpful for families with young children as they outgrow clothes incredibly fast and also don't yet have any resistance to the idea of second hand clothing.

I'm more thinking from the kid's point of view. These are the formative years when a human being develops one's own identity and sense of self-worth. Mandatory school uniforms encourage, well, uniformity instead of diversity (on a psychological level), and I doubt that's healthy for a developing mind.

In particular, justifying school uniforms because "you can't tell the rich kids from the poor kids" deprives both poor kids from learning how to positively interact with rich kids and rich kids from learning how to positively interact with poor kids. Being able to interact with people of wide socioeconomic diversity is a valuable skill.

I've also heard a lot of anecdotal evidence about school uniforms being problematic in inner cities because they'll inadvertently align with gang colors, meaning that students walking to/from school would have to either bring a change of clothes (and change at school twice a day) or risk being targeted for gang violence.

I'll have a side of facts to go with your speculations, please.

I don't necessarily disagree, but you can really form any number of arguments and reach wildly different conclusions (try it, for a few you don't like). Without evidence (not anecdotes) to prefer one over the other, you're really biasing yourself to how you feel the world ought to work.

Uniforms aren't necessarily bad, especially if the classes are diverse income-wise.

Surely even the poor people have 3 days off per year. They're just unwilling to give it up. If the school can decide on the 3 dates I can understand but otherwise it's just laziness.

>Number 2 was unenforceable, and many flouted it, but poorer (mostly non-white) families who actually managed to schedule the tour generally backed out upon hearing that requirement.

I'd like to see how that requirement would work on the rural poor. I have a suspicion they are far more acquainted with the difference between making a rule and enforcing a rule.

Every year I see what a insurmountable advantage my kid has by having educated, comfortably well off parents. He's in 3rd grade and last week he had a homework assignment that had to be completed on a computer. What, your kid doesn't have their own computer at home? Tough luck!

We're also already into 'projects' - more hours of work, more resources to buy. "oh you can do it with stuff around the house" (no you can't)

No one wants to talk about it and it infuriates me. There are kids who are just out of the running from the moment they enter kindergarten, and everyone is going to blame their parents or their 'culture' and refuse to see what's right in front of them.

There is no more 'public' education, only middle-income private education. It's a disgrace.

edit: raspberry pi

A lot of middle class parents I know would spend 10 minutes trying to understand the raspberry pi site and give up. HN tends to vastly overestimate people's technical skills. For poor parents with no tech background - forget it.

Are grade schoolers doing assignments that can't reasonably be completed on a raspberry pi grade computer or lower? It's difficult for me to imagine it, or the family that has two working parents yet legitimately can't fit $40 into the budget over the entirety of their child's career in school.

That's a little disingenuous, you can't just use a raspberry pi by itself. You need an SD card, keyboard, mouse (probably), display (maybe could use a TV for this if you have one). It seems like it'd be at least $100. That's still not a ton, but for a family working a bunch of minimum wage or gig jobs it's not nothing.

edit: not to mention internet, router, wifi dongle or ethernet cord, etc.

And the know how to do all of that and what to buy and where to buy it.

An alternative would be to buy a complete used PC, which can also be had for a total of around $100.

Most people with jobs —even low paying jobs have newish smartphones and tablets.

There likely are some parents who can’t afford those, but those parents are vanishingly small. Often times parents think that they “provide” the child and the school does the rest. Good parents, poor or otherwise know that it’s mostly on the parents to guide the kids.

In some countries, schools exist to teach students, rather than simply warehousing them and saying it's parents' fault for not teaching everything in the hours from 3 pm - 10 pm and weekends.

Truly, your comment does reflect the attitude of much of the teaching establishment: if children can't learn to read from their parents, they're hopeless [1]; if children can't learn math from their parents, they're hopeless. It's a total abdication of the vocation of teaching, and it's not universal. In Finland it's accepted that teachers teach children how to read, and accepted that every kid needs a good lunch in order to be able to concentrate. That's 'obvious' in their cultural context, but in the US cultural context poverty and struggle are just signs that God doesn't love you (the prosperity 'gospel' in action).

[1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-a...

Teachers can't bear to carry that load themselves. That's ridiculous. Parents have a load to carry. Parenting isn't easy. I know people whose idea or rearing is limited to feeding, dressing and sending their kids to school. "Kids are not expensive" is what they tell me.

> Teachers can't bear to carry that load themselves.

Why can't they bear the load?

- Because they are underfunded and understaffed

- Because society doesn't think it's the school's responsibility to teach

If society decided that reading and writing should be taught in school, then it would be taught in school and the system would be designed such that teachers would easily handle it.

Your "parents have a load to carry" in this case is throwing people under the bus like single mothers who are working two or more jobs just to put food on the table.

Your attitude is that their children should be left behind because those children belong to the unlucky sperm club.

And those children grow up to be disadvantaged and poor and the cycle continues indefinitely. I find it vile and revolting that HN can talk about the wonders of Elon Musk disrupting the automobile industry, can debate whether scooters will disrupt the ride sahring industry, which in turn disrupted the taxi industry, and so on...

And then when it comes to poverty, the attitude is, "C'mon, carry your load or fall behind."

This community talks a good line about disruption, but if the only kind of disruption that interests us is the disruption that happens to make people into billionaires, it's time to stop pretending that we're "hackers" and start calling ourselves capitalists.

The education system needs to be disrupted from the bottom up, but it needs people who actually care about educating children more than negotiating term sheets.

I don't know if we read "carry their load" the same.

I think of it that parents need to teach their kids how to behave, not math. Kids who come to class and don't listen, talk when the teacher is talking and disturb the other kids is going to be a problem. Children who act out violently or with screaming when confronted create big problems. Children who are not adjusted to being respectful towards other children and grownups will ruin any school.

That job is in my mind the job of the parent, the teacher should not have to use math class to try and get a child to be respectful. This is what it in my mind means when you tell someone that parents need to "carry their load".

If the teacher needs to do all these additional jobs, then I think we need to change the whole institution of school.

There’s a lot more to it than that. Even when they’re young, there’s a lot more hours in the day than the hours they spend at school (and below school age there’s an even bigger difference). Engaged parents will help their children a lot more in those hours (or ensure they have childcare providers who do if they are working). Reading to children at home. Having books they can read themselves and encouraging them to do it. Getting them to do simple maths puzzles in everyday settings (how much change? How long until bedtime? That sort of thing). Later on, making sure they do their homework and helping them out with parts they didn’t understand from school. Talking to them about the wider world. Etc.

Those engaged parents will also be the first to complain if the teachers spend too much time with the children who don’t get that at home. So without engaged parents and a supportive home environment, children are at a significant disadvantage.

> If society decided that reading and writing should be taught in school, then it would be taught in school and the system would be designed such that teachers would easily handle it.

I mean, society could also decide that houses shouldn't have roofs, but then they wouldn't be houses would they.

The word for "school where you don't learn to read" in the rest of the educated world is "daycare".

> Teachers can't bear to carry that load themselves.

So I'm gonna make the assumption that "teacher" still somewhat means the same thing in the US, and that they must be teaching the kids something.

What in goodness sake are they teaching the children if not how to read? Isn't that the very first thing you should be teaching them after kindergarten?

If there is ONE thing a kid could learn in school. Wouldn't you pick how to read over literally anything else?

The second thing would imho be math. But on that point people may say geography and history are also important and I can't really disagree cause I happen to be good at math and shamefully bad at the other two.

Wait. Is that for serious? Kids in the US don't learn to read in school??

I'm scanning that article and I'm being aghast.

There's a bar graph that mentions 4th and 8th grade, what ages do these grades roughly correspond to? Not that it really matters because the percentages are roughly equal, meaning they didn't improve their reading skill in 4 years. Guess that answers my first question.

Guys you need to fix this. Education is the future, there's literally no better place to dump money and resources on.

Most people with jobs —even low paying jobs have newish smartphones and tablets.

As someone who occasionally has to work with the working poor, I can tell you this is completely false.

Here's one example: I work in healthcare. We can't send text messages to people about their medical conditions, etc... because a startling number of working poor families not only have only a flip phone, but that phone is shared among several families.

Let me state that again: A single flip phone will be used by eight to ten people in three or four different families.

To think that anyone with a job just has a computer/table/smartphone lying around for their kid to do his homework on is just living in a fantasy land.

Yeah, I think people would be amazed by the number of people that have StraightTalk plans and phones from Walmart. A lot of $30-$50 phones paying as they go.

Agreed - but the milieu is that the child is bathed in ignorance of even basic computer concepts, both at school and at home.

They are also bathed in advertising, which drowns then in guilt at not being able to afford a multi-thousand dollar Windows or Macintosh rig, when a $40 Arm64 rig hooked up to a discarded flat screen TV and keyboard/mouse would be a superior learning option for their child.

> Are grade schoolers doing assignments that can't reasonably be completed on a raspberry pi grade computer or lower?

If the assignment involves a computer, the materials were probably not developed or tested on a Pi or anything similar, so, yeah, they probably often can't reasonably be completed on a Pi or lower as assigned, even if there is no technical reason that they couldn't have been developed with that in mind.

Outside of the tech bubble, no one knows what a raspberry pi even is, let alone knowing how to hook it up.

That's a very easy problem to solve given we have a captive audience of kids and their parents in a public school, wouldn't you agree? A school is purpose built to teach people new things.

> Are grade schoolers doing assignments that can't reasonably be completed on a raspberry pi grade computer or lower?

Any assignment that makes use of a proprietary software that the school has purchased.

That is to say that there are plenty of times when a student _must_ use X software that only runs on platform Y, and the school very rarely takes into account what platforms the student may have available to them.

I ran IT support for a Prepatory <-> Year 12 school. The number of times I had to gently remind the early grade teachers that not every child has access to an iPad at home and that an Android tablet cannot run iPad software was quite frequent.

That’s why Chromebooks are a lot better choice - $150 buys you a reasonable example and you also don’t have to worry about kid breaking it and loosing weeks of work.

Example: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-11-6-chromebook-intel-cele...

And for older kids, there’s Linux support, etc.

Teachers who cannot understand why you can't use the Apple Store on an Android fare no better at understanding that they can't run X proprietary Windows program on a Chromebook.

That could be solvable with something like cross-over: https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-chromeos

Of course, in the context of low income, ideally the district would provide standardized choices or offer crossover as a supported alternative.

I’m not familiar with this program, but it seems like Google has made efforts in this direction: https://edu.google.com/products/chromebooks/

Generally speaking, proprietary educational software cannot run under Wine and friends, mostly because it tends to be rather poorly written in the first place, full of Undefined Behaviour.

A lot of schools do generally offer standardised hardware & software. For example, at the last school I was admin at, we had a Lenovo range, and a series of programs to help poor families afford them. (Tablets at primary school, one kind of laptop at middle school and a more powerful laptop at senior school).

However, I still, in three years, could not force around a dozen teachers to understand the limitations of their platform. Official policy was actually that a teacher may not use a piece of software without getting it approved by IT - so that we could check it was compatible, and automate rollout across all the devices.

The problem, most simply put, is that teachers would get excited about a piece of software, build their entire curriculum around it, and not involve IT at any point in the process whilst simultaneously having no idea how software works.

This sore point wasn't isolated at all either, at conference when the entire town's IT teams got together (we exchanged talking points, software and regularly donated our older hardware to less-well-off schools), it was the most common anecdote, followed up by most school administrations being entirely unwilling to have IT's back when we would be unable to deploy a particular teacher's favourite software that wouldn't run on the accepted platform.

How long is a single Chromebook supposed to be viable? $150 is $150, but $150 for a Celeron and a nice display might not handle web standards for much longer.

In reply to the viability of Chromebooks: I have a 4 year old Asus Flip with a Rockchip processor & 4 GB. I still use it because I love the very small laptop form factor. Despite having a processor which would be jealous of the Celeron, it keeps up just fine. Most common websites do fine. YouTube is smooth. FB is mostly smooth. Google does a great job with Chrome OS. I’d have no hesitation buying a Celeron Chromebook for a kid. As long as it was new enough to have at least 5 years of support left, and had a minimum of 4 gigs memory, they should be fine for the foreseeable future.

Raspberry Pi are created for this exact purpose, and to think the school isn't giving everyone one to educate on basic computer science is beyond me. If you eventually learn trigonometry in math within the public education framework, I see no reason why people shouldn't be educated in more basic and practical things like computers.

> I see no reason why people shouldn't be educated in more basic and practical things like computers

Because the teachers and education department are useless. My nephews had to get an iPad for their programming class, an expensive device (and all the problems with that) that is less capable and far less practical to learn programming on.

Imagine how much better school could be if kids had raspberry pis and and use free tools like gnuplot in their maths and physics classes.

Not created for 3rd grades though - they where really for the 6th form (last two years of school) to actually get some experience of computers at a lower level before going to UNI.

> "What, your kid doesn't have their own computer at home?"

A friend of my son has a laptop provided by the city, presumably because his family is too poor. And because it's a laptop, he takes it with him when he comes over to play Minecraft. My son is a bit jealous, because despite his access to two excellent desktop PCs and numerous tablets, he doesn't have his own laptop. (I'll probably have to get him one when he goes to secondary school.)

> What, your kid doesn't have their own computer at home? Tough luck!

Then it should be provided to the kids by the school. My girlfriend works at a poor school where a lot of the students don't even speak english and they provide laptops to all the kids whose parents cannot afford one.

Reminds me of how my high school's borders (for which neighborhoods would be assigned to that high school) just so happened to only include affluent (or rural, in my case) areas and excluded less-affluent areas (instead of basing it purely on distance). It was a new school, too (it and the adjoining middle school opened for my 8th grade year), so of course it got all the nice stuff while the kids in poorer neighborhoods had to make do with older stuff in older buildings (and/or portables).

The same could be said about the Bay Area in general...

A place where affluent Palo Alto teens made fun of me (an adult) for driving a “2012 VW”...

Its pretty common world wide and has been so for ever.

Even in My grandfathers day (Head teacher in WW2 era) all the poor kids left school at 14.

And only a few smart and lucky kids from better off working class families made it to apprenticeships and the really lucky ones Grammar school.

If I had stayed in Birmingham (UK) my mum told me they would have tried to get me into King Edwards and use Granddads Influence to help.

BTW this is The King Edwards that Tolkien went to and is normally in the top 3 selective schools in the UK

8am or later start probably has more to do with kids being sufficiently awake, an important state when attending school.

Kids put properly to bed at proper time is more than fresh at 7. Thats the least of the problems here.

That's not true according to multiple studies. On mobile, but you can Google them. Kids were found to do better when starting later, regardless of how early the kids go to bed.

The effect is more pronounced in high school aged kids.

Additionally, there is something to be said for accommodating kids who don't have a stable enough home life or parents that care or realize the damage caused by not enough sleep.

I dont know what you mean with better, my two sons are top performers in their school and the school network is top 3% performing in NY state. They are in school at 7:45 latest each morning.

There are many benefits to getting an early start in the morning as ling as you have had a long nights sleep. So i would like to see the base if those studies as they dont reflect the reality and statistics i know of.

Edit to those who claim it's anecdotal: Their school network is Success Academy.

And I was originally responding to the claim that you can't be fresh as a kid at 7 if you go to bed in proper time which is simply wrong.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-on-the-phenomenal-eye-po...

Refuting the results of scientific studies with anecdotal evidence is not going to win any arguments. Surely you must understand how these scientific studies work?

Its not anectdotal and i would urge you to point to the scientific studies so we can debate their methodology and “scientific” base. I’m too old to just take these kind of studies as science without looking at the details. Now you dont have to take my examples for more than they are but they sure contradict the claims being made in this thread and onna state level.

Someone else already replied with links so I'm not going to rehash here, but your parent post was the very definition of anecdote. You tried to refute entire studies and the current scientific consensus with a single example of how your kids do great academically despite waking up early for school. That is literally what an anecdote is.

Here is exactly what I wrote:

, my two sons are top performers in their school and the school network is top 3% performing in NY state.

I wasn't just talking about my two sons but about the school network in New York state. That's not anecdotal what so ever.

Here are the actual results from Success Academy: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-on-the-phenomenal-eye-po...

How is that anecdotal?

"This one school performs well and it has a start time before 8" is anecdotal evidence. Only one school's performance or start time is considered.

Not single school, school network! I don't know how more clear I can be.

"This one school network..." doesn't stop it from being an anecdote.

It does when it results are compared to the entire new york state and its consistently in the top.

What’s your control? Do other schools in or out of the top 3% have earlier or later start times? How do you account for confounds like socioeconomics and demographics? If you don’t, what you have is an anecdote, not evidence. Others are pointing you to studies that look at real data and apply statistical rigor. You are arguing that your knowledge of a single example outweighs that evidence. That is precisely what people mean when they accuse you of using ‘anecdata’.

17.3% of schools in New York start later than 8.30, the majority starts between 8-8.30 SA starts at 7.45 yet they dominate the Top 30 out of a sample of 2400 schools.

I can live with that as a significant sample size and control group ESPECIALLY since I never said that the earlier you are up the better but simply that it's not a problem if you get early enough to sleep.

The study you refer to compares 2, TWO schools and doesn't come to any conclusion that contradicts mine in fact it support it. More sleep means better performance most of all.

But sure keep on claiming I am the one who is making anecdotal claims.

>But sure keep on claiming I am the one who is making anecdotal claims

You are. This doesn't mean they are for sure wrong, but you are looking at the success of one school system and saying that means that the start time does not matter. For all you know, that school system could change to starting at 8:30 and rank even higher. It is a textbook anecdotal claim.

>The study you refer to compares 2, TWO schools and doesn't come to any conclusion that contradicts mine in fact it support it. More sleep means better performance most of all.

That study doesn't compare two schools, it compares two classes in both of the schools against each other. This let's them better isolate the start time as the variable responsible for the change. It also references other studies with similar results. And it does disagree with you, the later start time was associated with kids getting 30 more minutes of sleep.

I am comparing +2400 schools in New York state with each other based on the stats I told you and with Success Academy both being the earliest and dominating the top of that list (two thirds of the top 1.8% of the school. And that's with a majority of the children being black and Hispanic and from less financially well of homes.

It's not just one school system it's various school systems Charter school vs. elementary school vs. different start time vs. different income groups etc.

You are just moving the goal post. For all intents and purposes what I am citing is as good if not better than the study you seem to think is more accurate.

With regards to the study, it compares two classes in two schools in high school. Yet somehow that's not anecdotal?

Furthermore no it actually says that the amount of sleep is what leads to better performance. NOT the time in the morning which was the entire claim of the parent I was answering so it does, in fact, agree with me even though it's, of course, actual anecdotal using two classes and it certainly isn't proving anything with regards to general performance or optimal time of day that kids can learn.

I am not even sure what we are debating anymore. But claiming my example is anecdotal is simply not true. It's much less anecdotal than any of the other studies being done here when it comes to performance which was what I originally responded to claims about.

Here's the definition of anecdotal

>Based on casual observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific analysis.

You're basing it off your own casual observation of one school system. Nobody is moving goalposts.

>With regards to the study, it compares two classes in two schools in high school. Yet somehow that's not anecdotal

Because they actually ran an experiment where they tracked and controlled as many variables as possible. It had scientific rigor.

>Furthermore no it actually says that the amount of sleep is what leads to better performance.

It also says the later start time gave children thirty more minutes of sleep. So yes, it does say that a later start time is better.

2400 schools and exactly the same school system the “scientific studies” are based on, so yes you are moving the goal post. What i have is a pretty clear indication that meeting early in school does not affect your abilities to perform well in fact when you compare SA which have the earliest meeting time they dominate of a top 30, 20 of those are SA. I was responding to a claim that Later was better for performance.

Whatever that stude had in scientific rigor it lagged in sample size, if anything that was the very definition of anecdotal no matter how deep itcwent it was still only two classes on two different schools. Also notice how it talks about the sociodemographic reality as a way to explain some of thecredults yet SA is mostly from exactly that sociodemographic group yet outperform 98.2% of all other elementary schools in new york state.

And no the later time is only better because they got more sleep, but that can wasily be solved by going to bed earlier.

I dont for a second believe you cant see that your positive is simply not supported by your evidence and if you really cant see the holes in your position then i guess there is nothing more i can do. You are the one supporting anecdotal evidence, however detailed it is, not me.

You loterally started claiming i was talking about one school only, then you just kept moving the goal post. That’s intellectually dishonest and not something i care continuing supporting. Thanks for the talk.

>What i have is a pretty clear indication that meeting early in school does not affect your abilities to perform well in fact when you compare SA which have the earliest meeting time they dominate of a top 30, 20 of those are SA.

All this shows is that there are more things that impact performance than start time. Those SA schools could still be performing better with a later start time, you have no idea.

>anything that was the very definition of anecdotal no matter how deep itcwent it was still only two classes on two different schools.

I gave you the definition of anecdotal, and it was not "based off of a small sample size." Only using two classes makes it a smaller experiment, but it still provides reliable data and it still cites other studies that have similar results.

>And no the later time is only better because they got more sleep, but that can wasily be solved by going to bed earlier.

Right, because children always do what is best for themselves and would never stay up later than they should.

> You are the one supporting anecdotal evidence, however detailed it is, not me.

I still can't believe you do not understand what anecdotal evidence is.

>You loterally started claiming i was talking about one school only, then you just kept moving the goal post

It was my mistake not to realize you were talking about a group of schools, I live in a rural area and a "school system" just means the elementary, middle, and high school in town. I have never moved the goalposts though, your statement was anecdotal whether talking about one school or a group of schools.

Of course there are other factors, but what I was responding to what the claim that meeting early lead to poorer performance. THATS the context here.

You are moving the goalpost whether you want to admit it or not. You made the mistake and you can't even live up to that. That says it all.

The mistake I admitted I made in my last post and gave context as to why I made the mistake? The mistake that doesn't even matter, as your evidence would still be defined as "anecdotal" either way? That says it all?

> It's much less anecdotal than (...) studies being done

You what? Come on man. There aren't degrees of "anecdotalness". That doesn't even make sense. Neither does calling a study anecdotal. I'm starting to think you don't know what the word means. I'll give you one hint: it does not have as much to do with the meaning of the word "anecdote" as you seem to think, but with the way factual evidence is collected and being compared.

You should have learned this in school.

Huh? I learned in school that sooner or later anecdotes become statistics. If you didn't learn that you are missing something.

So here is the statistics for you.

2400 elementary schools in NY state,

ALL 30 SA schools is in the top 3% and 2/3s of the top 1.5% is SA schools.

The claim was that the time you meet in school makes you perform poorer.

17% of NY elementary schools meet after 8.30, most meet between 8-8.30, SA schools meet 7.45.

In what universe is that anecdotal?

By all means.

It was anecdotal because your example started as a story about your kids. The statistics you quote here are pretty much meaningless, so it doesn't change a thing. Let me explain why.

If the SA schools perform consistently higher, and assuming for a school to be "SA" involves a bit more then starting at 7.45, then you need to compare the performance of SA schools that start at 7.45 with the performance of SA schools that start at 8.30. There aren't any? Then there is no way to tell. Not via statistics, at least.

Your comparison of statistics changes way too many variables to make any conclusion.

There's simply no way to tell if an SA school might not perform even better if they started later. Especially since the statistics you quote are not objective but "top X", which if they're already near the top, you couldn't measure improvement even if it was there.

Similarly, without quoting the proper statistics, there is also no way to tell if the schools starting at 8.30 might not perform worse if you changed nothing but starting them at 7.45. The numbers you quote simply do not say anything about this.

(also you're never going to prove anything about an effect in highschoolers by quoting irrelevant statistics about elementary schools)

Either way, your numbers don't prove what you are claiming, yet you still hold to this claim. If your claim is not anecdotal, then it is simply wrong.

Why We Sleep [1], by Matthew Walker, PhD.

Page 92:

"Adolescents face two other harmful challenges in their struggle to obtain sufficient sleep as their brains continue to develop. The first is a change in their circadian rhythm. The second is early school start times."

Also:

"... the circadian rhythm of a young child runs on an earlier schedule. Children therefore become sleepy earlier and wake up earlier than their adult parents. Adolescent teenagers, however, have a different circadian rhythm from their young siblings. During puberty, the timing of the suprachiasmatic nucleus is shifted progressively forward: a change that is common across all adolescents, irrespective of culture of geography."

It goes on to explain why this is the case, and the impact on your sleep schedule.

Also page 308-16 there's an entire chapter on Sleep and Education, and the problem of schools starting progressively early, mostly for the convenience of society at large, rather than a net benefit of the kids.

The book has been largely discussed on HN before; definitely worth reading.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

100% this - I read the Why We Sleep book earlier this year and this quote immediately came to my head when I read this news.

I just came here to see this citation :)

Nothing in that contradicts what i wrote, it supports it.

I love scientific studies, illustrating the standard distribution or exponential long-tail nature of whatever biological/ethnical/identity based feature they are studying.

Then, I hope that everyone makes the obvious blunder of categorizing the target population according to the results of the study. Because it’s “scientific”, am-I-rite?

Finally, I harvest the crackerjack-smart, hard-working people from the (now) under-appreciated group.

My team wins; the scientism-ists get the lazy offspring of the wealthy elites protected by “science”.

Everyone wins!

Your single anecdote does not outweigh the many, many scientific studies that been conducted on this subject (or any other subject for that matter).

I would have that would be obvious to a HN reader.

My single anecdote isnt single at all. We are talking about several schools using same method with kids in the top 3% on average.

Show me the research and we can debate it, until then the primary problem in the us is that parent put their kids to bed too late.

Here is NPR's article on it: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/12/6761187...

Here is the journal article referenced: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/12/eaau6200

Here is the CDC's summary referencing further studies: https://www.cdc.gov/features/school-start-times/index.html

Thanks, I read it:

1) The study doesn't conclude what the parent was claiming and what you seem to think it's claiming. 2) It's only for high school students and its sample is pretty small. 3) It actually supports my point of enough sleep more than anything else which seems to be completely ignored of course. 4) Here is my evidence https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-on-the-phenomenal-eye-po... my sons are Success Academy.

What do you suggest I conclude from that?

5) Just saying something is science isn't enough and just saying it's science because someone did some studies isn't enough either. I read through the paper and it wasn't even close to being anything but a very small sample especially when you factor in that two different schools yielded two different results. So perhaps rather than just scream science, it would help if people took a deep breath and looked into what they hold in front of them as science cause that wasn't it.

6) I was responding to a claim about not being fully awake in the morning with a simple observation that if you go to bed early you are not going to be tired in the morning. That was then challenged with a completely new challenge which was that kids perform better when they are in school later to which I know for a fact that's not true and from the article you are referencing that's not what's being said either.

I think arguing isn't worth the effort. The fact is, it's easier for the state to set start times later than it is for millions of parents to get their kids to bed on time (for all sorts of reasons).

Well but that's a very different discussion and not the one I was originally engaging in.

But claims of anecdotal evidence are simply factually wrong.

How is it you think that is evidence somehow? You might as well conclude that having a unicorn as your school mascot is why kids do so well at that school. http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

There are so many confounding factors that could be causing students to do better in those schools.

Here is my take away from your 'data': Imagine how much better those students would be doing if they also weren't getting up earlier than is natural or recommended.

Getting out of bed before ten no matter when I went to sleep was a mortal struggle until I was probably 25. Now I’m gassed by 11 and up by 6. The research has shown that circadian rhythms change with age.

I've noticed the same thing. In my twenties waking up before ten was extremely difficult and made getting into work stressful every morning. But now in my thirties I find myself awake when the sun rises without issue.

My lights are out at 11, but getting up at 7 is difficult still. On the other hand, it was straight impossible to do at 25.

I fall asleep around 2-3am every night and am up at 7:15am during the week. I'm 39. I've been a night owl since I was a teen, and even today I have to force myself to sleep. During vacations it becomes extreme, I easily stay up till 6-7am and sleep till 12 or so - which seems to be ideal as I always revert to those times given 3-4 days where I'm not required to be up early. Adjusting my schedule back to "normal" involves skipping sleep for a night.

> I dont know what you mean with better, my two sons are top performers in their school and

... presumably they, then, can explain to you the difference between anecdote and data.

They will first have to teach you the difference between taking part in a sentence out its full context and then actually being intellectually honest and not just strawman them. One of the first things I taught them.

A school network applied to all of New York state is hardly an anecdote and it's frankly telling how quick you and others where to jump onto that idea.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-on-the-phenomenal-eye-po...

Look, when I was in high school we had our first period starting at 7:07am, and the school overall was released at 2:15pm. Plenty of kids, myself included, performed just fine. But, that doesn't mean it's physiologically optimal, and it also doesn't mean it's practical for families to get kids in bed at an appropriate time. Anecdotally, I know lots of families whose middle schoolers are regularly up until 10-11pm doing homework. This is particularly true for those kids participating in time-consuming extra-curriculars.

It's probably physiologically accurate that later start times are better for children. This bill is research-backed. It also makes things harder for parents who will then need to find long before-care options or start their own commutes later.

Also anecdotally, I have two children in elementary school, who also play competitive soccer with training 4 days/wk. Soccer is typically 1.5hr at a time, and either 4:30-6pm or 5-6:30pm. Training fields are 15-20min drive from our house. School gets out at 2:15, but we have to pick up our 2yo from daycare before the older ones get home (no bussing service because we're <1mi from the school). The result is that the older ones get home, unpack their backpacks, change into soccer gear, have time for a snack and perhaps 15-30 minutes for homework (besides written homework, they also have to read 30 minutes every day) before leaving for soccer. My wife thankfully works from home and is able to handle the afternoon routine after having shifted her work schedule 3 timezones (5am-2pm). I pick everyone up from soccer practice and then we get home, shower and eat dinner from around 6:45-7:45. Then it's time to finish homework and reading. I'm lucky they get to go to bed by 8:30-9:00pm. Then I wake them up at 6:15 to get ready for band practice at school @7:15.

This is an anecdote about an 8 & 10 year old in the bay area, and we have excellent work situations (I work for a flexible tech company, and my wife works a shifted schedule from home). If we both worked traditional 8-5 schedules, the majority of what our kids are able to do now would not be possible: they'd go to YMCA before care on campus around 7am and then to aftercare until 5:30pm. Sports would be out of the question unless we made arrangements with friends. There would be no decompression time after school and before home/family/activity time.

Go back and read what I was responding to. I was responding to a claim that you are not awake at 8 to which I responded that depends on when you put your kids to sleep.

I wasn't even introducing the idea of performance. I was responding to a blanket claim about performance with a rather non-anecdotal example of SA schools dominating the performance list yet having one of the earliest times of school attendance. If you haven't seen it click on the link and if that doesn't convince you that it's more than anecdotal then I just don't know what will.

All the studies is fundamentally about sleeping time NOT about at which hour it's optimal to be in school which is exactly my point yet somehow it gets completely ignored and everyone just yells anecdotal.

It's not anecdotal it's statistical with a sample of more than 2000 schools and SA dominating almost all the top 30 results and that with schools that have a majority of black and hispanic kids.

> A school network applied to all of New York state is hardly an anecdote

Maybe another thing your top performing students in their top performing school network can explain to you is the difference between evidence and irrelevancy; specifically, that, with California being the first state to mandate a later start time, its unusual for schools to start later (New York is experimenting with some later start times, but very few schools have them [0]), so, really, neither your sons’ status nor those of their network indicate (as evidence or even anecdote) anything contrary to the research at issue here (nor, to take the next step, necessarily would their school even if a sizable number of others did start significantly later unless it was similar to those later-starting schools in all other respects besides start time; for some reason you've posted an argument from a libertarian propaganda mill which does nothing relative to the discussion but make a case as to why you raising it in this discussion is the farthest thing possible from relevant for that reason.)

I get that you are proud of your sons and like their school network. I can't figure out why you think either are relevant to the matter at hand.

18% of new york schools have a start time later than 8.30 a huge number have between 8 and 8.30, SA starts at 7:45 yet dominates the best performing elementary school.

If you can't see the relevance then perhaps my boys should teach you about statistical significance you are clearly confusing it with arrogance.

We are talking about 2400 elementary schools and SA being in the top 30 dominating almost every position there.

Can you at least try to understand what people are trying to tell you?

I am understanding what they are trying to tell me, they are just wrong about it for reasons I have already explained.

If school starts at 7:30, then that kid isn't waking up fresh at 7, they have to be woken up significantly earlier. I shudder to think of the other examples in the comments which have to already be in school at 7.

If kids get to bed around 8pm they will normally be up at around 6-6.30 plenty of time for most to get ready.

But sure if they are put to bed at 9-10 then its going to be tougher.

My bus came at 6:27 am all of junior high and high school. Yeah, I was still valedictorian, but I sure as f(*7 brought a pillow with me and slept through the bus ride and sometimes first period.

Are most people like this? I’ve always struggled with having myself fall asleep before 10:00pm even as a preteen. I once tried putting myself on a schedule for two months, but I’d just lie awake until later at night when I’d finally doze off.

The moment I got into university and could move my schedule my GPA went up two grades.

So no sports or after school clubs?

8pm bedtime is great with no other obligations, but I was regularly at school events past then (lacrosse games, robotics, quiz bowl, etc.), so that schedule would have prevented me from doing a lot of things I enjoyed in high school

The youngest at 6 has Chess 3 times a week and soccer 3 times a week. The oldest has soccer 3 times a week and is not home until 7 in the evening. They also have homework.

So they have plenty of obligations we are just very strict with when they go to bed which means that in general we don't have an issue with getting them to sleep.

How do you handle the family logistics that facilitate going to bed by 8pm?

Just don't break the chain. Kids are all about consistency in my experience.

Putting the kids to sleep at 8 doesn't mean going to bed at 8pm myself.

Again we keep a strict schedule. Dinner at 6, bedtime reading at 7.30, light out at 8.00.

Weekends we are a little less strict yet they normally wake up at 6 anyway because they are used to it.

All it requires is the same kind of prioritization and effort we put into so many other things we care about.

Kids going to bed at 8pm is absolutely unrealistic because of mismatch with the adults day cycle, the parents likely would not have even finished dinner by 8pm.

No, I went to bed at 8pm sharp every night in elementary school and I was never, ever up at 6-6:30am naturally! It was a struggle to get to school for a 7am start time.

Depending on the school district 7am start times means busses are going to start their pickups much earlier, sometimes as early as 6am for some students.

In elementary school I had an 8:00pm sharp bed time, which most people would consider "proper time." It was still extremely difficult waking up for a 7am start to the school day. I believe an extra hour of sleep would have made my life better.

This is dependent upon the school system. My school board has parent-teacher interviews during the daytime and evening as well as school tours for parents of students entering kindergarten in the evening. If only one parent is available in the evenings, the school I work at is typically prepared to put the students to work as helpers so that adults can do their stuff. The only thing that is scheduled during the daytime is a school day in June for incoming kindergarten students, which is supposed to make school less traumatic when they start the following September. This was the norm in my school day, in a distant time and a distant land ...

I understand the frustration, but I think it is absurd to expect teachers and school administrators (who are woefully underpaid, especially in the Bay area) to accommodate working parents by working extra hours just for the parent's benefit. It's a hard enough job as it is, what with the poor pay, large workload, dealing with entitled, helicopter parents and the diminishing societal appreciation for their contributions and importance to society.

At many schools the before care/after care staff is not comprised of teachers. But I bet some might sign up for extra hours either before or after school for extra cash.

Sure, but all the activities the OP complains about - parent teacher conferences, kindergarten/classroom tours, etc. all require the actual teachers involvement so it seems perfectly reasonable that those activities would occur during regular working hours. Plenty of schools offer before/after care for families with working parents so that they can drop-off/pick up their kids before/after work. I don't think that is an issue for anyone. But I think it is unreasonable to expect teachers at schools to work outside normal hours just for the convenience of parents with jobs who can't even take a few hours off work for things that they obviously deem important. That's an unreasonable burden to place on teachers, and in general seems like a waste of taxpayer money if they had to be paid overtime just to accommodate a small fraction of parents.

Are parent/teacher conferences not built into the schedule as working hours? If I recall correctly from my mother, who was a school teacher, they did these twice a year and those eight hours were counted as one of the days that they worked in their contract. Maybe that is not universally negotiated.

As she was a special ed teacher, she also had a whole slate of other meetings with parents to go over IEPs and testing, and if those were before 8 am or after 3 pm, she was paid an hourly rate for those meetings.

Overtime pay for IEP meetings is definitely not the norm everywhere.

It is unreasonable to work with assumption that parents don't work or penalize kids for parents (moms to be precise) working.

That assumes a single school employee covers the entire span. Our school in NYC had different shifts — so 7am class teachers were not the same ones doing late afternoon classes.

To me this sounds line a great way to give teachers non-curricular overtime pay. It’s good for all parties involved to have a face-to-face relationship, and a way for our public school teachers to supplement their income if they so desire.

That sounds great, but where is that extra money to pay the teachers going to come from? Propose raising property taxes to cover things like this and a large portion of the people wanting this will suddenly vanish.

That sounds great. Property values will vanish too and be realistic instead of the current bubble in some areas of the US. cough silicon valley.

I'm not saying teachers don't deserve to be paid more, but I was surprised to see how much Bay Area teachers make. It's public info for public schools.[1]

In Santa Clara County, with no experience, starting salary is $71000. It increases on a schedule each year up to over $131000.

Honestly, the job security, structured pay, and 3 months vacation per year is a pretty darn good deal.

[1] - https://www.santaclarausd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ash...

You picked an outlier. Most schools districts in the Bay Area (including San Francisco) have starting salaries for teachers in the $50k-$60k range. And in my experience, teachers work a lot more than 40 hours a week. I picked 3 randomly below:

Redwood City: https://www.rcsdk8.net/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?modul...

San Mateo: http://www.smfcsd.net/en/assets/files/Employment%20and%20HR/...

San Francisco: https://archive.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd-staff/contract%20a...

Thanks for the additional data points!

Enen with tech workers complaining about the high rents, I wonder how bad teachers fare? Or are these districts in "cheap" areas?

San Mateo and Redwood City are both expensive, but not as bad as SF. One article reported median rents were about 2.4k, which makes sense. There a few places advertising lower rents, but not many, and at that price you are giving stuff up. SF is worse.

Another issue is the commute. Traffic is really bad, so finding a cheaper place farther away from work will cost you in time and energy, especially if you have to cross a bridge.

It's so bad that some districts, including San Mateo, are building their own housing for teachers. https://edsource.org/2019/in-need-of-teacher-housing-more-ca...

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/20/20814179/housing-crisis-teac...

2.4k on rent when you're making between 31-3700 post-tax is kinda brutal.

> 3 months vacation per year

This perception is usually pretty inaccurate. There's no time given during the school year for essentials like curriculum development, continuing education requirements, training new teachers, etc, so that eats up time during the summer 'break'.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/07/myth-o...

> Klem says she’s spending the rest of her summer this year attending meetings, developing school curriculum, helping train new teachers, and contacting families of her students, among other tasks. Past summers, she says, have been equally busy: graduate-school coursework to complete her master’s degree (which isn’t required but can mean higher pay), classroom organization or relocation, and so on. While some of these responsibilities come with a stipend, teachers say they’re relatively negligible given how much time they take—no more than $1,000.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/16/hold-on-before-you-get-too-j...

> As an educator you constantly have to be on top of trends, so it’s not like it’s just six weeks of me laying by the pool,” said Sara Holloway, a fifth-grade English language arts teacher from Monongahela, Pa.

> “You are taking classes in the summer, or you are reading material, or you are conferencing or blogging with other teachers, you are planning for the next year,” she said.

I appreciate the perspective that you’re coming from, but I come from a family of educators. They do have occasional in service days over the summer and obviously are expected back at work a week or so before classes start. Other than that, it very much is a three-month vacation, one that shaped a large part of my childhood.

The distribution seems bi-modal. My wife was a teacher, and she had maybe one free week the whole summer, between development classes, curriculum work, and so on. On some summer days I would leave work at 7pm and then join her in her classroom until 8 or 9pm where she was just finishing up a 12 hour day.

Then there were other teachers at the school who took off on the last day of school and you didn't see them again until the week before school started. Those were the teachers that were still teaching material from 30 years ago that all the parents dreaded their kids getting.

Similar experience for my wife. Some teachers just don’t give a shit and never update their curriculum or materials and repeat the same drivel over and over. She on the other hand spent the majority of her free time developing new material and kids actually looked forward to her lessons.

I would get suspicious in my wife was going to work for 3 months while her colleagues enjoy their vacation

My understanding is that it's also often heavily weighted to the early years, unless you have someone else's lesson plans to use (and even then, you probably want to prep and maybe do a dry run).

Just like any job, if 90% of what you're doing is new to you or something you have to develop yourself if vastly different than if 10% of what you're doing is new or something you're developing yourself. Given the actual in class time doing the lesson plans is fairly static, that means the non-classroom hours of the day, or your own time, is what is required to make up the slack.

I imagine teachers of fields that have lots of changes (or of districts or states that adopt whole new curriculums) have it worse than some others. At least if they care about doing a good job.

It would be interesting to hear what your family members have to say about their first few years teaching compared to later years, and what period your memories correspond to.

I wrote a whole story about a family member being incredibly inefficient in preparing for a class she got (but was completely unqualified for, save for a masters in education). It turned out to just be really depressing, so I'll just say this:

1. Teachers in positions new to them probably do have more work to do

2. A lot of that work may be due to their own inefficiency having not yet learned the role.

3. That inefficiency ends up being paid for with a) time and b) stress, including family stress.

4. Even still, I sincerely cannot remember a single time in my childhood where we were not traveling all summer long.

5. Fortunately budget cuts can end nonsensical programs and save everyone the hassle :-/

What a weird period of time that was.

As an engineer, I have to pursue a lot of "keeping up with trends" on my own time. I spend my own time setting up my computers. I get a stipend for professional development, but I bare the bulk of the cost and time (most of the time). I often work a lot more than 40h. I think all that you mention is not uncommon for professionals who want to develop their skills in a continuous manner. I could say the same for lawyers, business people, etc.

Sure, but no one claims you have 3 months of vacation when you are spending time doing those things...

My mother was a teacher in Ontario. She insisted her salary should be looked at over a 12 month period, not ~9.5 month. Even though for those ~2.5 months, she was free to do whatever she wanted, including taking on additional full time work (though, more often than not, she vacationed).

No, but this is my free time and how I use it. If I chose to do that during my vacations, no one would be "well poor you, you don't really have 4 weeks of vacation a year, since you decided to pursue professional development during these weeks". People would simply say that I chose to use my free time to do these things, and some of these things are quite essential to my continued employment.

The line between that decision being made freely vs. being forced by labor market competition or other economic reasons is pretty fuzzy.

A young teacher still getting their masters and fighting for tenure will probably put in some work, yes. Young people in any profession will try to get out ahead of their peers early on.

The idea that most teachers are attending conferences or blogging about teaching all summer is odd though.

I come from a family of teachers. My mother started teaching later in life, got her Masters and was hustling when I was a teenager. After a decade teaching, I don't think she spends even a minute thinking about school during the summer.

My dad is now retired and has probably the best sort of pension imaginable in this country. Certainly nothing like that safety net will ever exist for me. I can't really compare his experience though because it was a different generation of teachers. He was very involved with his union too.

Teaching just seems like a varied profession based on where you are. I hear and believe the talk about teachers being undervalued, underpaid, overworked etc. But my family has done very well for themselves back in NY, with a lot less uncertainty than a lot of other professions.

My teachers in suburban Michigan had starting salaries in the $70ks... in 2007.

Starting salaries in North Carolina -- in 2019 -- are $35,000 for first year teachers. The top end is $58k. It's embarrassing.

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/fbs/finance/salary/sched...

Also, for a married couple raising a family, it's hard to beat a job that, by definition, coincides with the kids' schedule. If one spouse has a decent full-time job, the additional income from teaching is almost incidental compared to the flexibility of working the same hours and location as the kids.

There’s a 20:1 to 30:1 ratio so are you suggesting it’s better for 20-30 working, single parent families? Maybe the government should pay teachers more and pay less on defense and we’d have a more productive society.

In an ideal world, routing money from defence anywhere makes for a more productive society (except maybe black jack and hookers - and I am not even sure on that).

Of course investing into the future (kids and environment) has the biggest long-term impact and should be top priority.

I think lately western governments (other than the obvious example) have figured out that it's a much better short term play to simply allow immigration to boost the economy rather than longer-than-their-term ideas like education.

I doubt that is true in the current xenophobic administration.

I've read multiple studies that the biggest influence in a kids success in school is their parents involvement.

Don't make the assumption that throwing more money at teachers will improve our schools. Zuckerberg tried that with little success, as have many before him.

I'd rather a focus on ensuring every kid has a healthy meal at the table. A support group who's invested in tbe individual kids success. A family that encourages and supports during the best and worst of times.

Arguably the "advantage" well to-do middle class families get.

A quick peruse of Google scholar’s highly cited journal articles suggests it’s not as clear cut as you suggest:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

I don't doubt your main point, but your main example does not support it. How much of Zuckerberg's money trickled down all the way to teachers? From what I remember seeing reported, most of it went to consulting and administration.

Parental involvement is not the same thing as "made up obstacles so that parents have hard time in work or additional pointless chores". It is not the same as "mom got forced toward different work track as otherwise kid is in trouble in school".

Oddly, parents ability to work is actually beneficial towards kids ability to eat regularly and healthy. Especially for poor famillies.

Maybe people could vote for politicians that prioritize education over defense?

How about those parents who need it, just take their kids to pre-school care, so everybody else can have a normal night's sleep?

I can’t speak to administrators, but for teachers factoring(especially pensions) in total benefits and a 10 month work year this isn’t really true.

School is publicly funded child care, thats how it started and it hasn't changed since inception. School needs to cater to working parents better since thats its whole point.

California doesn't want people to have families, that's not the progressive mindset unless you're making over 300-400k on a single income

California is a place where you can make 300-400k on a single income. Not many states where that's the norm.

It's certainly not the majority of people here.

> " school tours for parents of kids entering kindergarten, middle school and high school are during the school hours, mostly in the morning."

Yeah, but not every day. Just take half a day off, or arrange to work 4 days a week, like many Dutch parents are doing.

I'm Dutch and I'm not under the illusion that most of the US population gets the metric fuckton of benefits we do.

It's one thing to say that, as a society, it would be beneficial to make sure that all people have the opportunity to make these choices. Because currently a large amount of people in the US do not.

It's IMO not right to say that parents should just "arrange" having more time off. That's not how US job culture works.

>Unfortunately, the school systems still rely on one parent at home. It is not just drop off and pick up times: school activities, parent-teacher conferences, etc.

"or a job structure that allows parents to have time off and not be penalized for it."

For this there's an easy fix: mandatory, with company-closing-fines-if-not-accepted, days off for employees for a number of school activities per year (with school provided documentation).

Anecdotally, parent teacher conferences in my area (MA) utilize a "sign up sheet" where you can pick a time, starting in the afternoon and extending into the evening. Furthermore, orientation events were always scheduled in the evening. I suggest you get involved in your local school board / parent groups.

My high school started at 7am. I also took the bus; which picked up around 6:15am; so I usually woke up around 5:45am during the week. I would often nod off during my first or second period; and routinely took 2-3 hour naps when I got home from school; which screwed up my ability to fall asleep early at night or get much homework done. I sometimes wonder what my academics would have been like if I was actually awake during those first two periods.

(This was in the 90's)

I've always been confused by TV shows showing kids leaving for school and it's bright outside with the whole family awake. Growing up, it was dark when we got up for school and just barely sun up (depending on the season still dark) by the time we left to get on the bus.

On the shortest days of the year in Los Angeles[1], there is civil twilight around 6:30am and full daylight before 7am. Maybe the writers, who even have children, live close to the schools they attend.

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/los-angeles

Wow, this really gives you perspective. My corresponding times are 8:21 and 9:55.

I would give the world for the opportunity of sunlight evenly distributed over the year.

Move to the tropics; there's some variation but it's never very great.

I do kind of enjoy the over 15 hours a day of sunlight Seattle gets in the summer, it peaks at around 16hrs on the longest day! I can get off work at 6, be home at 7, and still have 2 hours of sunlight left!

Less than 9 hours in the winter though... that part is harsh.

The thing with evenly distributed sunlight is that, if you work in an office, you're not going to have a lot of free time to be outside and not commuting while the sun is out during the week.

With a big skew between winter and summer hours, it's dark in the winter but you don't actually lose that much in-the-sun free time while you gain a huge amount of light during the long summer evenings.

Los Angeles is far south, even in the context of California; that's not true for San Francisco.

Also the shortest day of the year isn't the day of the latest sunrise - that'd be the day before daylight savings time ends. On that day in San Francisco civil Twilight is at 7:08 and full daylight isn't until 7:35.

If we put aside daylight savings shenanigans, it's still not the same day (because of how the earth's orbit works); it's in fact early January and still 7:25 AM for full sunrise.

I definitely shared the experience (growing up in the mid Atlantic) of catching busses before true sunrise so I could get to a 7:40 AM start in the winter months. I don't remember it being fully dark, though that time in my life is a bit of a haze in no small part because I was completely exhausted all the time.

> I definitely shared the experience (growing up in the mid Atlantic) of catching buses before true sunrise so I could get to a 7:40 AM start in the winter months. I

That reminds me I have a vague memory that there was a lot of pissing when Nixon Admin moved up daylights savings time during the first oil crisis. Parents were complaining that their kids were having to walk to school in the dark. Back then city and suburban kids didn't get rides to school, they all walked.

Except high school kids with driver's licenses. Which is not even safer or anything.

Yeah, here in Oregon it is already pitch dark at 7am and we are only halfway through October.

The simple answer is that TV shows are easier to watch if the events take place in the daytime. That's where the suspension of disbelief comes in.

That's true, but even for example, I've cartoons with the same thing.

And mom is fixing bacon and eggs and no one is eating, dad is seated with the morning paper with his tie on. Mom in her robe or apron is the stove happily serving everyone.

Geographical latitude can make a big difference. Right now, there is a 30 minute difference between sunrise in Los Angeles (6:59am) and Seattle (7:29am).

Given that most US television programming has historically been produced in Los Angeles, it's not surprising that we should see daylight more commonly depicted during waking hours than what many Americans experience.

Presumably this reverses during the opposite season.

Schools are generally not in session during the summer.

In UK schools are in session in April, May, June and July (the equivalent of Oct,Nov,Dec,Jan), aside from a week off in may.

I think you’d have to be in the Southern Hemisphere to notice such a thing.

I have to say that is not productive, especially as a teenager, or old child, where sleep patterns shift to a "late-night-owl" more, and extra sleep beyond 7-8 hours is critical.

In the fall/winter when we were doing drama productions here (Indiana) in high school, I never saw the sun except via windows in classrooms that had windows. On the bus before the sun was up, at school before the sun was up, leave school after the sun had set. In junior high even in the spring we'd get to school (by walking) as the sun was coming up a couple times a week for FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes, at a public school in the cafeteria before school).

For that matter, that's basically work for me as an adult that time of year. Sun comes up after I get to work and sets within an hour or so of me leaving work late fall through early to mid winter.

Personally though I've never minded it. I've pretty much woken up between 5:45 and 6:45 my entire life, if I'm lucky I'll sleep in til 7-7:15 on the weekends. Getting up to get on the road for hunting or fishing as a kid meant getting up as early as 3:30 sometimes.

Suspension of disbelief. I live in Germany, and every movie and most shows take place during the summer when it's sunny and the characters are not wearing a jacket even in the evening.

That kind of weather is seen for a few days in July and August, current anomalous weather notwithstanding.

I don’t get how this is supposed to work with sports and other activities. In high school I had water polo/swimming practice mornings at 6:15. Is that now illegal?

I suspect the start time is meant only for classes, not extra-curriculars.

Nobody ever thinks about the edge cases

Yes they do. Under this law, extracurricular and voluntary "early bird" classes are still allowed before 8am.

Typically they don't until they are forced to by an adversarial process. Compare AB5 in its original form versus what was eventually passed. The number of professional groups that stepped in and pushed for exceptions for their trade is a testament to how poorly the original authors of AB5 did thinking about the edge cases. By the time it passed, it was largely exceptions.

So the legislative process worked, cool.

Usually very late for many people by that point.

Since it doesn't apply to "zero-period" classes, it probably doesn't apply to sports practices either.

It should be. There's a lot of research showing that kids need 8+ hours of sleep even more than adults.

Why can't you get 8+ hours of sleep if you have practice at 6:15?

How many people did you know in school that went to bed at 10pm? I don't think I knew any.

I just slept through third period every day.

Let’s say you can sleep until 5, which is somewhat optimistic for many families with multiple responsibilities in the morning.

That means you have to be asleep no later than 9, which means depending on the time of year it may still be light out, and certainly the community is still fairly active. Plus I recall a recent study that essentially said teenagers are naturally night owls.

Expecting teenagers to be asleep by 9 is a losing battle.

Because it is tough for high school students to fall asleep early enough.

"In the teenage years, the hormonal response to the 24-hour daily light/dark exposure that influences circadian rhythm is altered, making adolescents physiologically yearn to stay awake later at night and to remain asleep later in the day."

https://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-rhythm

As noted, it's not illegal.

But, you could also move practice to the afternoon like most school sports. None of my high school's athletic programs were before class.

As someone who lives in a country where schools all uniformly started at 9:00 am (i'm probably wrong on that, but lets just go with it), what's the social-background/theoretical reason for starting the school day at 7:00am?

From the outside that just seems absolutely bonkers?

Not knowing the real reason, I suspect it's so that parents can drive their children to school before starting their commutes to work. What proportion of kids do you reckon walk/bike/transit to school in your country?

Honestly (Aus), relatively few. Drop-offs would traditionally be from about 8:00 am onwards (so kids had up to an hour before hand waiting for classes to start). Not everyone arrived from 8:00, but getting there well before that was exceptional.

We don't generally have "dedicated" buses for school, though there are some schools that have dedicated routes at certain times of the days usually contracted out to bus companies, otherwise its on the parents or the public transport system to get children to and from schools.

When I was younger (sub-12 years old, both parents working), parents dropped me off on the way to work, then we had a kind of neighbourhood arrangement with other parents at the school where we'd be picked up by them (car-pooling i guess) and go and spend the afternoon at their place before my parents picked us up from their place on the way home.

For high-schoolers, its a bit "well, they're capable of getting themselves to and from school by now...", with obvious exceptions if you live out in the sticks or miles away from the school (then the question would be, why are you going to that school without a way to get there?) and no real stigma to it if you can sync up with parents or after-school activities.

You know, i'm much older now, so its possible I'm out of touch, but I doubt I'm THAT out of touch to make a 7:00 starting time seem vaguely sane...

Edit: I've looked into it and I'm not that out of touch. State recommendations where I live are from 8:30 onwards, with most starting at 9:00.

The part about this logic that confuses me is starting early enough to early morning commutes (7ish) puts kids out of school long before parents are home (2-3ish). I remember briefly running with a crowd's whose daily ritual was, after being dismissed at I think 2:40, was to go home and smoke pot for a few hours before everyone's parents were home. Unless kids are in school for 9+ hours, I don't see how parental commute is a reasonable argument. Similarly, there's no reason there couldn't be early classes for kids who absolutely couldn't get to school otherwise.

Another perspective from Australia. When I was in high school virtually everyone took the bus to school except a few of the yr 12s who could drive themselves. The only problem was the nearest bus stop was an hours walk away from my house so I still had to get driven to the bus stop.

Buses need time to do 2 or 3 routes.

School scheduling is thanks to suburban sprawl and the twi-income trap bringing mothers and fathers out of the home.

Remember that 7am in one place is not the same as 7am in another place. Time zones, latitude, seasons combine to cause big differences in what a time "means".

For instance on the equator sunrise and sunset is very consistent and so people tend to wake up earlier so that they can maximise daylight. Closer to the poles, it makes sense for school days (which tend to be shorter than work days) to start around the time that the sun rises in the winter so that they are in daylight all year. This is all relative what error your time zone has, as shown in this famous map:

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--pY-JErG4...

There are two distinct equators which are not equal: celestial (perpendicular towards the axis of planet's spin) and ecliptic (a circle from planet's sphere on a same plane with orbit from a celestial body). On Earth they differ for 23°44' now (it's changing over time) which is why we have distinct seasons. As default we talk about celestial poles and equator which isn't right for theme of sunlight.

Also the "famous" map is outdated at least by 5 years, Russia has switched from permanent summer time to permanent standard time in 2014. Wikimedia has an version[0] which is somewhat maintained.

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_Time_Zones_Map...

Yep, like lonelappde says, it's so the buses can do

* an hour-long route for high schoolers (6:30-7:30) then * 45 minutes for junior high (7:45-8:30) * potentially a last route for elementary (8:30-9)

As noted, bus scheduling. Because the US doesn't have a robust public transit system in most regions, it relies on dedicated school buses.

The really goofy thing is the schools are traditionally backwards. High school starts earliest (call it 7:30am), then middle school (call it 8:15am), and then elementary school (9am).

Physiologically, that should be reversed, as teenagers have a harder time getting enough sleep and functioning in the morning.

Timing-wise, starting ES earlier works out better for many parents, as a 9am school drop-off is too late for them to start their commute. So, one parent ends up time-shifting their work day in one direction (to drop off or walk to bus stop), and the other parent time shifts the other direction (to be home at the end of the school day). Failing that, the kid gets sent to in-school day-care before and/or after school.

If ES started at 7:30am, both parents could start their day at the same time, and only worry about child care after school (if neither can be home mid-afternoon).

Or, we could just stop sprawling all over the darn place, build some transit, and start all the school at whatever time makes sense for those students.

My solution is I would come home at around 3-4pm (after hanging out with friends for an hour) and then sleep for about 8 hours. I'd wake up around midnight and have a good ~5 hours to myself. With my parents asleep I'd cook for myself and do my homework and watch tv. When I had zero period having a rotated sleep schedule only helped. It was like living alone. I preferred the responsibility and the sleep schedule. There is nothing quite like that 3-4am calm in the morning.

I had similar experiences. I and many other students would sleep in our winter coats on the morning bus ride, and it was hard to focus until about 10AM.

I strongly suspect that school hours are based around parents work hours, even if that is not what they say.

In high school, they're based around having time after school for sports practice and other extracurriculars, mostly, from what I understand (I know a lot of K-12 teachers). That's why so many districts still make elementary schools start like 2hrs after those kids are wide awake and already having some of their best hours of the day, while the high schools start before the damn sun's up for about half the school year—not enough buses to start everyone at once, so if you want the high school football players to have a nice long stretch to practice in the afternoon, you have to start high school very early and other schools very late.

Why don’t they just shorten the duration of school? Why does a senior in high school need 7 hours of classes 5 days a week, but one summer later only need 4-5 hours of classes 3 times a week as a freshman in college?

Specialization in college/university?

Our district solved that probably entirely by discontinuing bus service for all except special needs students. Kids can walk, or be driven by their parents. The district has partnered with the metro transit to provide dedicated buses on some routes, but only up til 8th grade. After that, you're on your own. Yet our property taxes are just as high as most districts...

Grew up in Ohio in the 80's same deal from 6th through 11th grade. Hour long bus ride, class started at 7am. Nice thing was we were the first off the bus on the way home, so we were home by ~3pm and got to sleep for a couple hours before parents came home.

Another benefit of delaying start is fewer kids driving in the dark in winter and more time for morning fog to burn off on those marginal days that weren't bad enough in town for a delay.

I had a similar experience. I went to a magnet school, so it actually started one hour later than other schools (8am instead of 7am). However, since I rode the school bus, I still needed to be up early enough to catch the bus at 6am. The bus would first stop at the local school to drop kids off before driving to my school. I'd get home around 4pm, so all in all I was at school or going to and from school for 10 hours.

But the 10 hours wasn't my biggest complaint -- it was how little time we had to eat lunch. Lunch period was only 30 minutes, and the line to get food was 15-20 minutes long. So I only had like ~10 minutes to eat my lunch once I got it and use the remaining ~5 to be back in class in my seat or be tardy. We weren't allowed to eat in class or we'd get into trouble and get written up, so that ~10 minutes to eat once you actually account for all the logistics was it.

I don't think people realize how important it is for kids to get their nutrition when they're in school for so long trying to learn. Nutrition has a direct impact to learning. I think lunch period should have been longer. It felt like an afterthought in the schedule.

should've slept during school like the pros ;)

School children are sleeping on average 1 hour less than theirs peers did 50 years ago. This has been driven by earlier and earlier school start times. Sleep deprivation in school age children has been linked to lower test scores, lower knowledge retention, higher rates of "trouble making".

Really happy to see these laws getting put in place!

> This has been driven by earlier and earlier school start times

What about later and later bed times?

If both where true you would see more than 1 hour of lost sleep.

When I was kid I took apart my tv to disconnect the speakers and wire up my walkman headphones. This was so I could put a blanket over my head and tv and watch some Letterman at night. My mom would notice if there was light and noise coming from my room after bedtime.

Now the kids have phones. If I had a phone and internet access I would have never slept.

Phones have parental controls. Learning how to hack those is a worthwhile skill to learn, too.

Humans get tired from being up for a certain number of hours and also from waning daylight. In teens, both of these are delayed relative to adults and children. You can send a teen to bed early but their bodies aren’t trying to sleep.

> What about later and later bed times?

This is the real factor. When I was a kid - it was in bed, lights out and go to sleep at 9pm the latest during school nights - strictly enforced by my parents.

Now I regularly see small children (< 10 years old) out at the store past 10pm or 11pm on school nights.

I highly doubt you went to bed at 9pm when you were in high school.

Junior and Senior year, I had a lot more freedom - yes, but not in the 5th grade.

I also had my own car Junior/Senior year and drove myself to school... and if I was late I had to deal with the consequences both at school and at home.

I also had a "Zero Period" starting at 7am - so ya, I still went to bed pretty early, even when it was my decision.

This is also anecdotal. While it will of course vary from person to person, it's been conclusively shown teenagers circadian rhythms are shifted later than adults. Sleeping later and waking up later in teenagers is biological and it doesn't do anyone good to fight it.

While what you say is true, does pushing the start time of class back 30 minutes or 1 hour make any difference? I'm skeptical.

When I was a teen, on weekends with no where to be, I'd regularly sleep until noon, 1pm, sometimes 2pm or later. Should we push school back until, say, 4pm through 10pm-12am? Doubtful that's good either.

On some level, it teaches kids that they have to be someplace at a certain time, regardless of what they might want... You know, obligations and responsibility.

> While what you say is true, does pushing the start time of class back 30 minutes or 1 hour make any difference? I'm skeptical.

Did you read the article? They have done several studies to show a significance difference in academic performance with a slight shift. That's the whole reason for this change.

"One three-year study (pdf, p.1) of 9,000 high-school students across three states, for example, found that academic performance, “including grades earned in core subject areas of math, English, science and social studies, plus performance on state and national achievement tests, attendance rates and reduced tardiness show significantly positive improvement with the later start times of 8:35 AM or later.”

Like I said - why not push it to a start time of noon or later then? Was that studied too? Or are we just basing policy off a half-baked idea, here in Calunicornia?

I can be skeptical this will have any real impact, despite the findings of one survey-study.

The cited study was a survey students voluntarily completed... which opens the door for response bias. The study was only conducted over a single school year, and no two schools had the same modified schedule. Nor did they repeat the study for a second school year to ensure they didn't observe anomalies, nor go back to the old schedule to see if a simple schedule change - not the late start time - is what prompted the changes. Nor did they follow students through their student career, maintaining the altered schedule to see if performance results were consistent.

The 9,000 students might sound impressive - but this is not actually a good long term study... far from it.

In my day I had to walk uphill to school - both ways!!

Me too -- it happens when both one's home and school are on two separate hills.

School didn't start until 08:00 though, and it was definitely too early if you asked teenage me.

Bed times aren't mandated by a government board. School start times are.

Also, later school start times have in other states led to better academic performance, better behavior, etc., independent of any control for bedtime.

This decision has no downside. It's like mandating that hot dog vendors not sell disguised dog turds.

>Also, later school start times have in other states led to better academic performance, better behavior, etc., independent of any control for bedtime.

And how much of that is because kids are staying up to watch the Walking Talking After Dead Chat Show that start at 9, 10, 11pm or because they start getting tired playing Fortnight that late instead of learning how to fall asleep naturally and thus starting school later lets them stay up later and still get sleep?

This true for other countries or just the US?

Absolutely not for UK & Australia.

>School children are sleeping on average 1 hour less than theirs peers did 50 years ago.

And how much of that is due to

- Social media

- Gaming

- SMS/MMS/Marco Polo/etc

... I'm guessing quite a bit. Until I was 12 you were in bed, lights out, no tv by 8pm PERIOD for me and many of my friends. Past that if I wasn't in bed at 10 it was "why aren't you in bed? Turn the computer and TV off and if I pick up the phone you better not be on it!"

I'm 22 right now--when I was in middle and high school, I didn't have TV, video games, a phone, or a computer. But I still had to get up at 6 to get to school on time. Combined with late nights doing homework, it was miserable. This opinion about gaming and media is such a "kids these days" meme. I was mature enough to be capable of self-regulation but that didn't help the sleep deprivation due to early school start times.

Wonderful.

Now can we pay attention to all of the research saying that homework creates stress but doesn't work, and have schools stop assigning so much?

More precisely, the research shows that homework done right helps, done wrong hurts, and the result is that more homework increases the correlation between parent's socioeconomic status and student performance. But on average is approximately net neutral for learning.

But there is one very strong correlation. More homework means more conflict in the home...

I have 4 children and I actively help them with/cheat on their homework. They are assigned too damn much of it. They are all getting good grades and I don't think it is impacting them academically.

If you're doing it right, it's probably helping.

Good on you. I find the American school system utterly absurd, especially the amount of homework you get.

A more specific case of the general principle that work involves conflict.

FWIW my 5-year-old started kindergarten this year, and not only is he given about two hours of homework a week (expected to be spread out over a few days), but he is expected to do it without parental help/supervision, beyond getting him started/explaining the assignment (because he can't read).

If you've ever been around a 5-year-old boy, you know how ridiculous this is.

2 hours of homework at 5? That's nuts. 5 year olds should play, and learn through play, not through study.

I've got the feeling even my 10 year old doesn't get 2 hours of homework per week (or if he does, he doesn't tell me).

(I also recently learned that Dutch schools have stopped standardised tests at kindergarten. I was appalled when my oldest son had to do those.)

You are misinformed about research on homework. Even when you control for socioeconomic status homework has a large positive impact. [This is a nice review of many papers](http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar0...). The only place where homework is questionable is for very young children, like in kindergarten.

Gains from homework in primary school are derisory and not much better in middle school. Even in high school the gains are a quarter of a standard deviation. Not worth the enormous cost in time, sleep and stress.

———

Homework and attainment in primary schools

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1080/014119299025...

The findings indicated that the highest test scores were achieved by those pupils who reported doing homework ‘once a month’ in each of the core subjects. Homework reported more frequently than ‘once a month’ was generally associated with lower attainment. Multilevel models that controlled for important variables did not lend support to the ‘more is better’ view of homework.

Special Topic / The Case For and Against Homework

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar0...

Although teachers across the K–12 spectrum commonly assign homework, research has produced no clear-cut consensus on the benefits of homework at the early elementary grade levels. In his early meta-analysis, Cooper (1989a) reported the following effect sizes (p. 71): Grades 4–6: ES = .15 (Percentile gain = 6) Grades 7–9: ES = .31 (Percentile gain = 12) Grades 10–12: ES = .64 (Percentile gain = 24)

The paper by Cooper cited positively in your link claims:

> For elementary school students, the effect of homework on achievement is trivial, if it exists at all https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86753143098932071...

Which is diametrically different from the “large positive impact” you described in your comment. Maybe by “very young children” you mean to include 5–10 year olds?

(For what it’s worth, I don’t find Cooper’s arguments that arbitrary amounts of homework are beneficial for secondary students very convincing. But we should at least not mischaracterize the claims about primary students.)

My 5th grader has never had homework. Each year the new teacher says the same thing: homework has been conclusively proven to not only provide no benefit, and actually to increase negative outcomes. Each teacher says she stopped assigning homework about 5 to 15 years ago, and the result has been categorically positive.

Our district has a new policy this year for primary school: no project work at home (This was historically a HUGE time sync), and no at-home writing assignments. Typically, this means homework is whatever math the kids didn't finish in math class. It has been a HUGE benefit vis-a-vis family time and overall stress. Our oldest, now in 5th grade, had a similar experience to another commenter in grades K-4, where he had multiple hours/wk of work, plus writing assignments and periodic projects. So hard on everybody, with extremely limited ROI.

All this commotion around what time to begin soul-crushing conformity factory amuses me grimly. Studies show children are slightly less psychologically crippled for life if you let them sleep in for an hour before putting them in the electric Skinner Box. Terrific.

We're gonna need a box tightener over here, someone is thinking outside it.

Charter schools and home schooling are viable alternatives, and if done well they have decent results as far as college admissions and career opportunities go.

I didn't even realize schools started before 8... I believe that's when my high school started. Thinking back to the useless slug that I was in the mornings as a teenager, I can't imagine this will do anything but help learning.

If only there had been a law saying college classes couldn't start before 11am (or 2pm on Fridays) when I was there...

My last six years of public school in South Florida all started before 0800.

As for college, there was one year I was getting on a train at 0530 to make my first class...

I used to have both a technical math and a statistics class that started at 7am in college. Fridays if i remember right for the math class. That was always a 'fun' way to start the day.

Foreign language drill classes at 7 AM was quite possibly the worst thing I dealt with during college. Rapid-fire German when it is dark and frozen and you are hung over is very rough.

For us, first period started at 7:10. I had a zero hour class that started some weird amount less than an hour before that.

My bus throughout the majority of k-12 showed up at 6:50, and first bell rang at 7:23.

This is a great move by California. My family engaged with school district officials a few times on why we started school so early, when there is so much research showing it is harmful for teenager. The answer we got was... buses and sports. And little kids.

Basically, the district needed to make sure that elementary school kids weren't walking to school or waiting for buses in the dark, so they had to start around 9a at the earliest. Since they needed to share the buses, they couldn't start all grade levels at the same time.

The reason why they went 725a, 750a, and 9a instead of something like 8a, 9a, 930a is that if you started Jr high or High school at 930a, they wouldn't start after school activities till 4p and would go after dark in the winter.

This always seemed an insane argument to me, but was said multiple times. My home district looks to still use the same bell schedule too.

As a non-American I find this interesting, that school start times would be decided based on availability of buses.

Here in Australia, most schools don't own their own buses (I see a few expensive private schools do). Buses are provided by private bus companies and/or by a government-owned bus company (depending on who provides regular non-school bus services in the area). The bus fare is either paid by the student's parents, or else by the government, depending on factors like how long it would take the student to walk, how old the student is, whether they have a disability, etc. The government subsidises buses for all school students equally, irrespective of whether they attend private schools or government-run schools. I don't know how exactly schools decide their start times, but I doubt bus availability would have much to do with it. Bus availability is something for bus companies to worry about, not schools.

In America, most areas (even many cities) lack public bus infrastructure with the reliability or capacity to serve this role. However, in cities that do, busing is often outsourced to public transit - each student in my city gets a bus pass with their student ID.

School bussing in the United States has an incredibly complex legal history related to desegration and civil rights. Moving to a fee for use system is probably legally impossible(or at least very difficult) in most of the United States.

There are also reasonably strong public sector unions representing school bus drivers, who in many areas have gotten various job requirements codified that make outsourcing difficult.

Even with all that, my school district runs the bus system fairly efficiently-around a $2.25/trip with all overhead included.

No buses in California or NYC for the most part kids take public transportation.

That doesn't sound right. A quick check on LA Unified's web site says they operate ~1300 buses, while all of LA's bus network operates 2600 buses. While only 42000 of 734,641 students are taking the district provided buses, I'd bet a huge portion of the remaining aren't taking public transit, but are walking, are being driven by a parent, or driving themselves.

While I don't have data, I'd be willing to bet that areas like the Inland Empire, Bakersfield, Fresno, or Sacramento have much higher portions of their population busing as well, probably near the 50% mark for most of the US.

California doesn't require it except in special cases and due to impacted budgets it is diminishing. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-school-bus-service...

>Bus availability is something for bus companies to worry about, not schools.

If you have all 3 classes of students going to school at the same time, your bus costs are going to be 3 times as high. It doesn't matter if it's public or private, that's just how it works.

> If you have all 3 classes of students going to school at the same time, your bus costs are going to be 3 times as high. It doesn't matter if it's public or private, that's just how it works.

In Australia, it is also normal that all 3 classes of students also start at around the same time. (8:45-9:00am).

This doesn't seem to be a problem that the public transit system seems incapable of handling.

Australia has less people in it than California.

I don't see how that is relevant. Yes, given that the US has a bigger population (roughly 13 times bigger), it must spend more money in total on bus trips to/from school than Australia does; but, it also has a much larger economy (roughly 14 times bigger) with which to pay for those bus trips.

What is a public transit system? What a quaint idea.

Seriously though, public transit is such a joke in most parts of the USA (especially the rural areas) that this is basically a non-starter.

I live in a part of the country that does have a pretty good public transit system, I just checked on taking public transit from my neighborhood to my son's high school and discovered that it's not possible. There is no public transit (bus, light rail, tram, trolley - all of which we have) within 2 miles of the high school.

People say "flyover country" as metonymy of the two different realities that are both called "USA", but "transit country" and "SUV country" may be better images.

Outside the USA, 80% of what we see on TV shows is NYC. Sometimes I have this acute FOMO that I should be miserably scraping by in NYC just to be in the Navel of the World. It's just a mindfuck to us unamericans how big the US really is and how empty and boring.

Empty, yes. Boring? No. The empty parts are where the national parks are like the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zions, Canyonlands, Arches, Yellowstone, Crate Lake, etc.

> There is no public transit (bus, light rail, tram, trolley - all of which we have) within 2 miles of the high school.

The way it works in Australia (at least in the parts of Australia I've lived in, obviously can't speak for the whole country) – as well as the scheduled route bus services scheduled for general transport needs, we have special school bus services dedicated[1] to taking kids to/from school. But, the school bus services and the route bus services are run by the same bus company, using the same pool of buses and drivers. So, even if there is no regular bus route going near a school, doesn't mean they can't run a school service to/from it.

In other words, if a public transit system provides ordinary bus routes, why can't the same public transit system (using same buses and drivers) provide special school services?

[1] Strictly speaking, at least in NSW, they aren't completely dedicated to school kids, since in theory any adult can buy a fare on them–but, in practice, very few adults ever do that.

Maybe we just spend 3 times as much money on busses than Americans do??? (I wouldn't know.)

Children and teenagers starting school at a reasonable hour seems far more important than saving money on buses.

I don’t know what to say..I grew up in India. My mom would wake me up at 4.30, make me a hot beverage and go back to sleep. I would study in the early hours because she believed that early morning is the best time for the mind to absorb and retain what I study.

Go for a brisk walk at 6.00 and leave for school by 7.15-7.30. School was from 8.30-3.30. 8.00-8.30 was morning assembly which was mandatory.

Extra curricular activities like music or dance or outdoor sports till sunset(6.00). My grandmother won’t let me in before 6.00 because she thought that outdoor play was important and in the sun. Freshen up and homework till 8.00. Dinner and then TV time. Reading and to bed by 9.00-9.30.

In high school, less play and more classes. But these tutoring classes were outside. And I would leave by 5.00 to catch the bus to get to them. I was old enough to travel by myself. I loved school. I loved my teachers.

My math tutor from 1989..we keep in touch and she is now teaching me Indian classical music by whatsapp video chat thrice a week. I call her once a year and this year I told her I am joining a neighborhood music group. She made me sing. Entirely disapproved my technique and we started classes immediately.

If my teachers asked me ‘jump’, I would. My school years were the best years of my life. I don’t think I would have had this experience had I grown up in CA in this time and age..and gone to public schools here. Case in point: The public school teachers in my Bay Area city recruit parents and students to strike in their support during their union wage negotiations. It’s a travesty.

I think children should wake up earlier. It’s delightful to wake up before dawn and have a goal. The rest of the day at school becomes easy peasy.

Children can still wake up early. They're just not forced to PERFORM well early.

You have to understand that not everyone does well in the morning. It's completely unfair to expect everyone to get up and be functioning at the same level in the early morning. That's going to advantage some, and disadvantage others. That's what this is about.

Nothing stops the early bird from getting up early and doing all the things you ascribe to.

It’s not about fairness. Why is everything about ‘fairness’? It’s not a biological impediment. Getting up early is not a super power nor is childhood a disability.

Getting up early and getting an early start gives you a buffer towards the end of the day. If you start late and run out of time, the whole rest of the day will be derailed.

Anyways..just my 2c. I am not here to argue because I have no dog in this fight.

You assume similar sleep requirements in children and adults.

i think this new 'ban' is also based on a lot of assumptions.

california is continuing to experience what george carlin called a 'child fetish'.

> It’s not about fairness. Why is everything about ‘fairness’?

Is that not a worthy ideal to strive for, as a community?

Wouldn't you prefer a world where we all have equal opportunity? Where, it comes down to who wants it more, not who had the best start?

...

The rest of what you have to say is clear evidence that you've always been naturally a morning person. You don't understand what it's like to perform at 50% of your ability just because you're forced to be awake at that hour.

I'd personally love to see all these pro-morning people espouse the non-biological bull rhetoric, when they're asked to stay up until 4am. Lets see you perform your best, passing tests, focussing in class, etc, at 2am in the morning.

Studies show children don't perform as well in the early morning which is why this change was made. I don't want to de-value your experiences because they sound fantastic. However. Anecdota is not a substitute for science. I suggest skimming the summary by the Centers for Disease Control [1] which references numerous studies in support of schools starting later than 830am. You are of course welcome to wake your children up at any time, should you disagree with the CDC's findings, or you know, if they're morning people.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/features/school-start-times/index.html

I did begin my reply with ‘I don’t know what to say’. It was intended to be anecdotal.

> " one-quarter will need to wait an additional 31 to 60 minutes to get going."

So one quarter of Californian schools were starting between 7 and 7:30? I'm surprised there haven't been revolts in the streets about that. That's completely ridiculous.

Apparently this is to accommodate parents who need to leave for work at ridiculously early hours, but if you want to accommodate parents, why only those, and not the parents who prefer to get out of bed a bit later?

My wife and I have arranged it so that she works early (she often leaves at 7:15 when the rest of the family is barely out of bed) and is home in time to pick the kids up from day care, while I take the kids to school at 8:30 and am usually home a bit too late to pick them up (though I work fairly nearby and can still pick them up if I have to).

But if this isn't an option for whatever reason, why not take your kids to pre-school care? Leave early, drop the kids off at pre-school care, go to work, and when school starts, pre-school care ensures the kids get there on time.

> why not take your kids to pre-school care?

That’s a very privileged view. I would imagine most of the country cannot afford any sort of paid external care.

I think it's a Western European view. Such services are often free or at least heavily subsidized here.

So what do working parents do after school? Schools starting early also end early, I assume. If kids can't go to school on their own, I guess they can't come home on their own either.

Weird thing is the assumption there is a single one-time-fits-all solution. Give some flexibility to kids and families on start time. Optional period 1 paired with optional period 8(or 7 or 9).

Thats not how public schooling works: its mechanics are rules on rules.

I am going to ask this again, as I never receive a satisfactory answer when this subject comes up.

Isn't time all relative? Its just a number, which we adjust by an hour twice a year. It takes us a couple of days to get used to it. Can't people just be more disciplined and go to bed an hour earlier if they need an hours extra sleep? That's effectively what we do in spring when the clocks change.

I came to this conclusion travelling from Chile to Peru, going pretty much directly north. One country had daylight saving for summer the other didn't and on top of that there was an hour difference for time zone - so in total two hours difference. As I say, it took a couple of days to get used to it.

Can anyone give me a decent rebuttal to this argument?

No, not all time is relative and the presence of light has profound impacts on our biological circadian rhythm. Even DST has shown negative health impacts. [1]

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-dead...

Ok, that's a fair point, but don't certain countries effectively rise a lot earlier than others? (Greenwich meantime for example passes through London and also through Spain, yet there is an hour difference in the time zone). Is there evidence that that affects these countries differently? Plus we have light bulbs in this day and age, so lighting is not affected by the sun in the same way that it used to be.

Physiologically there's no difficulty in pushing your circadian around. Heck, various studies have shown that in isolation people's clocks will drift by an hour or more a week.

Culturally though, there is a preferred cycle, and it's some weighted average of the cycle of all the people you interact with. Moving from Chile to Peru and shifting your cycle 2hrs _to match the Peruvian clock_ isn't so bad, but if you shifted 2hrs the other way you'd find it a lot more painful. This is the problem with shifting school hours: not the hours themselves, but how they interact with everyone else's hours.

Finally, there is a privileged circadian, and it's the Sun's. Free, global lighting is just too good to pass up on.

> Can't people just be more disciplined and go to bed an hour earlier if they need an hours extra sleep?

You ever met kids?

I think this doesn't go far enough, there should be a ban on starting before 10 am. During high school I recall frequently falling asleep around 3-4 am and having the alarm go off at 6:30.

California: everything is either banned or required.

Ultimately the buck for public education in US states stops at the state, therefore, this amounts to an administrative change. They set the curricula, is it a stretch to say they should also decide when that curriculum is administered?

Here, in Brazil, when my classes was in the morning, it started 7:00AM. To be at class on time, i was off the bed at 6:00AM, took a breakfast and walked 20 minutes to the school. It was rough.

They had 2 classes shifts, a 7-11:30AM and another 1-5:30AM, depending of your grade and the school, it could be on the morning or the evening shift.

Edit: I forgot to mention that i live in a city with 80k habitants, a small-medium city. At the biggest cities here, like São Paulo, the kids usually have to wake even early to take the bus.

I wonder how the policy discussions looked when considering the impact on poor parents who have to be at work. Maybe the thinking was that the start time of 7:30-8AM was already too late to save these folks, so 8:30AM would not make them much worse off? Or maybe there are fewer people in these circumstances than I fear?

This law is only for grades 7-12, so most affected kids can get themselves to school, or don't need direct supervision between when parents leave for work and when the bus arrives.

My 7 and 9yo kids start school at 8:50am, and don't get off the bus until 4:30pm. It's ridiculous. They're young and need time off but because the district moved everyone back to make room for the High Schools now elementary kids aren't home until half past 4.

Not enough time for them to play in the afternoons now.

Either their elementary school is in session for an awful long time (mine was 6 hours), or they have a really long bus ride home.

I'd also point out I've never lived in a school district that started elementary school before 8a, so these parents must have had solutions for those years. The real problem is going to be if elementary schools get pushed forward to start at 7a and release at 1p or something crazy like that, but I know most districts don't want the liability of 8 year olds waiting for the bus in the dark along side a major road.

"Every parent in California" is pretty big negotiating block when it comes to setting standard work hours.

There will always be people for whom a school start time of X is inconvenient, will there not be? And, while middle- and upper-class people might be more likely to have the standard 9-to-5, there are still plenty that don't (nurses & doctors, for example).

Poor kids and parents are almost always penalised: Remove one and another comes up. These same folks are simply being penalised at a different time of day - morning instead of afternoon. This is solved in a number of ways - the most basic being providing before-school programs for the (especially!) the younger children. This can include things like breakfast too.

School K-12 started at 8:30am where / when I grew up. I assumed that was just the universal time school started everywhere.

I have a feeling we're in for quite a shock when my daughter starts school in a couple years. Our current routine has her waking up sometime between 7:30 and 9.

I'm extremely oblivious to what the benefits to starting later are, and how stable the benefits will be over time. Anyone care to explain?

I'm particularly concerned that this will incentivize students to just stay up later, negating many benefits of increased sleep.

As the parent of a high school freshman boy, I've observed that his demand for sleep seems to have recently gone up, but so has his school work load. He's regularly up until 11pm doing homework as it is, and waking up tired at 7am the following day. If they simply shift his school start and end times 30 minutes later, I don't see much net benefit for him.

That assumes sleep(2100, 0500) == sleep(2300, 0700), which anecdataly is false.

Could you elaborate? I think you mean that there are benefits to waking up later due to the effect light has on circadian rhythm, but I don't want to assume.

That, and that some people are naturally early birds and others are night owls.

The benefits are sleep, as the article says. I would guess this outweighs the risk that a few students use the opportunity to stay up longer. (although pre 8am seems excessively early to me - we started around 8:50)

> I'm particularly concerned that this will incentivize students to just stay up later, negating many benefits of increased sleep.

This is missing the point. Teenagers staying up late is often interpreted as laziness or disobedience, when there is increasing evidence that it's a symptom of an (ab)normal circadian rhythm.

I'm familiar with delayed sleep phase syndrome, is that what you are referring to? You state that it's a symptom of abnormal circadian rhythm, which as far as I know is greatly affected by light exposure. If students are awake later, using their phones/computers, won't that negatively affect their socially acceptable circadian rhythm? I agree that staying up late shouldn't be considered being lazy or disobedient, but I'm having trouble understanding your point. Maybe you could elaborate on your point regarding the circadian rhythm?

Not abnormal, maybe a bad choice of phrasing there. Rather that during puberty people need more sleep and their rhythm shifts forward. This is exacerbated by poor sleep hygiene (eg screen use), but in general teenagers get tired later on than their parents.

Hence suggesting that kids will just stay up later is missing the point. The stereotype that kids stay up late partially arises becuase they have shifted circadian rhythms and they can't help it, not that they want to take advantage of later school starts.

And so the benefits of later starts are important becuase it more naturally fits with teenage sleep patterns.

For more info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19546564/

> Adolescents continue to show a delayed circadian (or internal clock) phase as indicated by daily endocrine rhythms even after several weeks of regulated schedules that allow for sufficient sleep. This delay is maintained under controlled laboratory conditions in which there is limited possibility for social influence

I found the statistics in Dr. Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep [1] pretty compelling.

Starting an hour layer improves SAT scores:

One of the first test cases happened in the township of Edina, Minnesota. Here, school start times for teenagers were shifted from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. More striking than the forty-three minutes of extra sleep that these teens reported getting was the change in academic performance, indexed using a standardized measure called the Scholastic Assessment Test, or SAT.

In the year before this time change, the average verbal SAT scores of the top-performing students was a very respectable 605. The following year, after switching to an 8:30 a.m. start time, that score rose to an average 761 for the same top-tier bracket of students. Math SAT scores also improved, increasing from an average of 683 in the year prior to the time change, to 739 in the year after. Add this all up, and you see that investing in delaying school start times—allowing students more sleep and better alignment with their unchangeable biological rhythms—returned a net SAT profit of 212 points. That improvement will change which tier of university those teenagers go to, potentially altering their subsequent life trajectories as a consequence.

(This is one example, that has been replicated many times, he covers more in the book.)

It saves even saves lives:

Yet something even more profound has happened in this ongoing story of later school start times—something that researchers did not anticipate: the life expectancy of students increased. The leading cause of death among teenagers is road traffic accidents, and in this regard, even the slightest dose of insufficient sleep can have marked consequences, as we have discussed. When the Mahtomedi School District of Minnesota pushed their school start time from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m., there was a 60 percent reduction in traffic accidents in drivers sixteen to eighteen years of age. Teton County in Wyoming enacted an even more dramatic change in school start time, shifting from a 7:35 a.m. bell to a far more biologically reasonable one of 8:55 a.m. The result was astonishing—a 70 percent reduction in traffic accidents in sixteen- to eighteen-year-old drivers.

To place that in context, the advent of anti-lock brake technology (ABS)—which prevents the wheels of a car from seizing up under hard braking, allowing the driver to still maneuver the vehicle—reduced accident rates by around 20 to 25 percent. It was deemed a revolution. Here is a simple biological factor—sufficient sleep—that will drop accident rates by more than double that amount in our teens.

There's more reasons, like improving attendance and decreasing drug/alcohol use, but these are the ones that stuck out to me. There was another statistic that I can't immediately find a quotation for that was pretty mind-blowing for me, which was that in university, the difference in performance in controls and students who started class an hour later was equivalent to the difference between controls and students who had a professor a standard deviation above the average. They even showed that this was dose dependent (an extra hour later had more effect). I think it's pretty incredible, considering the skill gap between an average professor and a great one, that simply taking a class at a 10am instead of 8am can increase learning so much.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

I have a couple questions/concerns about this:

- Does this only impact "regular" classes, or does it also impact optionally-early schedules (a.k.a. "0 Period", as the middle and high schools called it where I grew up)?

- Has there been any consideration on the impact from students having less time to do homework every night if school starts (and therefore ends) later?

Of course this happens after I leave California

My mother works for a school district in California. There was an open hearing around moving the starting school time from 8:00 am to 7:00 am. There's been countless research showing that this is generally bad for children to wake up this early (I'm sorry for not linking a reference).

At the hearing, there are some words that go something like "Children come first" printed on some wall in a large font. My mother made her case that starting so early isn't a good idea, and is bad for children and they may as well remove those words. The reason for the change is that teachers generally live pretty close to the school they teach at. They also have a car. So, for them they can wake up at 6:30 and make it on time. Whereas kids, especially poor kids, might live further and may be taking a bus where the bus pick up times could be as early as 6:00 am so the kids are waking up even earlier just to make it. An early starting time, generally, benefited the teachers as they can wake up later and they get out of class around 2:00 pm. The after-school programs then rake in cash by keeping kids longer since most parents don't get off work until 5:00 pm.

tl;dr the early starting times were to make teachers happy. Good on California to put students over teachers. Now, if only we can raise teacher's salaries.

> tl;dr the early starting times were to make teachers happy.

I've wondered about adverse section being the cause of this. People that don't wake up early typically won't become teachers. Eventually all your teachers and staff are 'morning people' like my dad. My dad loved going into work at 6am. And getting home at 3 or 4pm.

I'm also pretty sure at the higher grade levels (Middle to high school) it is partially about keeping other professions out of sports coaching. If high school starts at 930a and ends at 4p, an awful lot of working professionals could still be there by 415-430p to coach. When high school let out at 245, it's a lot harder.

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/2017/ss6708.p...

8am is still too early for teenagers. Not only their brains need more sleep than adults (9+ hours) but their clocks shift which is why it's common for teenagers to go to bed later than adults.

A lot of the comments are focusing on the burden for the parents, but there is also negative impact on the kids from less wealthy backgrounds.

My last 2 years of high school, I went to 7am first period to be able to get out early enough to put in 6-8 hours of work and still have enough time for homework. That extra hour and a half was critical to making it work.

Without the work and extra cash, I probably would have had a lot different experience and may have not stayed motivated for college/grad school/etc. But more importantly, this income let me feel on the level around much wealthier kids who didn’t work or worked for their parents businesses. Confidence is priceless at that age!

School may start at 8am but morning begins at 5am in an industrious household. Even one solid hour of daily morning practice before school is a great gain.

Some classes in my uni started at 7:45am. I never went.

Shouldn't the school do what's appropriate for the local community it is in? Now they won't be able to.

My High-school started at 8 and university at 9.. I thought it was too early for both!

Does this allow for before / after school care at schools to start before 8?

Why not elementary schools too? :(

Great, now just add a law banning parents' workplaces from starting before 8am and we are all set

Public schools are a cancer. They are worse for your intellectual development than just being left alone. They actually damage your mind by suffocating you of free thought and experimentation. And in the name of doing this, they pile on the stress and expose you to viscous bullies. The kids run these schools now, they are closer to day-care centers or zoos than schools. The teachers just watch idly while their students succumb to the horrible circumstances that they are forced into. I know because it happened to me. American public schools in particular are a disgrace. And to top it all off they woke me up at 6AM 5.5 days a week which was never necessary and has been shown to be detrimental to students wellbeing. God damn if there is one thing in this world that I resent it is the mother fucking public schools. God fucking damn them.

They’re the only place that most people will ever experience physical violence.

This is true for me. Public schools are so horrible that it drives me insane just to think about it. And people brush it off because of some vague notion that there’s no other choice. Look at billy eilish. She’s fantastic and very successful and she was homeschooled. Palmer luckey who founded oculus and is now worth something like 500 million dollars, homeschooled. “I can’t afford homeschooling. I have never even tried to assemble a budget or think critically about it but I just know it would be too expensive and would not work because nobody was ever successful after homeschooling. I guess I’ll just throw my child to the lions and hope they don’t become a shooter.”

Of course there are exceptions, but most homeschooled people I've met have displayed some sort of social deficiency. I wouldn't support a blanket statement that the solution is more home schooling.

Most homeschooled kids probably fall into religious zealot parent group or homeschooled because of obvious deficiencies displayed early on group. There is no intrinsic quality of homeschooling that makes kids deficient in any area. There is no reason why you can’t sign your kid up for little league and have him hanging out with other kids and adults. I’m just not convinced. And it wouldn’t matter anyway because literally anything is better than public school. If I have kids I will be forced to homeschool them.

I'd be very careful of making statements like that. Confirmation bias is a very dangerous thing. How many well adjusted home schooled people have you met without realizing or remembering they were home schooled?

You have to look at studies to have any hope of fairly evaluating the efficacy of home school.

You obviously haven't met many homeschooled people.

Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited

https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia...

This article reviews recent research on homeschooled children’s socialization. The research indicates that homeschooling parents expect their children to respect and get along with people of diverse backgrounds, provide their children with a variety of social opportunities outside the family, and believe their children’s social skills are at least as good as those of other children. What homeschooled children think about their own social skills is less clear. Compared to children attending conventional schools, however, research suggest that they have higher quality friendships and better relationships with their parents and other adults. They are happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives. Their moral reasoning is at least as advanced as that of other children, and they may be more likely to act unselfishly. As adolescents, they have a strong sense of social responsibility and exhibit less emotional turmoil and problem behaviors than their peers. Those who go on to college are socially involved and open to new experiences. Adults who were homeschooled as children are civically engaged and functioning competently in every way measured so far. An alarmist view of homeschooling, therefore, is not supported by empirical research. It is suggested that future studies focus not on outcomes of socialization but on the process itself.

I had to look up this billy eilish and what is so fantastic about her?

Palmer - right.

That was a highly negative recollection, sorry that you had such a bad experience. I was schooled through public in a poor urban district and it was rough but I learned a lot. I also taught science in very poor districts for years and most students liked school. Its akin to a job for kids, somewhat crushing to many but ultimately we do need to train and socialize and educate our populace. Home and private and charter schools all are important but public schools are essential to training our next generation.

I really enjoyed my public education, but I realize we happen to have very very good public schools in my city. I'm sorry your experience was so bad.

Thank you. But what really matters is not the well-being of individual people who fall through the cracks but the well-being of the whole country. Our public schools on the whole are simply not equipping people to be good citizens. Look at the average Americans knowledge of geography. We are an international embarrassment. How will people vote intelligently when they can’t even point to Germany on a map? It’s a very serious problem.

I'm sorry for your truly traumatizing experience, but you should know that not all public schools are like yours was.

There are a lot of public schools where students have great experiences on balance, but they tend to be in communities with resources, and importantly, involved parents, often via a PTA that is actively involved in keeping the school a safe place for children, usually with active anti-bullying programs and interventions.

Any school is ultimately an extension of the community it serves, and the problems and virtues of that community will manifest themselves in the school. For example, many wealthy private schools have severe problems with students who have access to high cost dangerous drugs. I personally know many people who have seen that phenomenon up close. Bullying can take place in these schools too, but be covered up by the fact that parents are paying very high tuition fees.

I think you need some therapy dude.

Don't worry, we'll work around that law by switching to year-round DST.

On which day and timezone?

On schools day, in the time zone in use in California (PT).

Ah, meddling central-planners preventing hard-working families from doing what it takes to achieve their dreams...

Don’t you just have to shake your head at people who’ve literally never had to accomplish anything life-and-death in their entitled little lives, making rules to protect us?

It brings a tear to the eye.

My entire family would be on the bus a full hour before dawn at -20C, and wouldn’t return home until dark for 6 months of the year.

Learning to bear hardship isn’t a tragedy, in a loving home. One of these things is the important factor to focus on, and one isn’t.

As usual, bureaucrats focus on exactly the wrong one.

Just because you went through something counterproductive and unhelpful and found positivity in it doesn't mean then next generation should be subjected to it too when we now objectively know better.

Nope, it's science (https://www.cdc.gov/features/school-start-times/index.html).

Science says 8:30, law says 8:00, so the state is not following the state's recommendation.

Also, what is best for an ideal scenario for the idealized kid is not the same as what is best for the parents.

Finally the biggest perpetrator of sending kids early is precisely public schooling, private schooling has variety that suits the parent's choices.

What is the best public policy then? school vouchers, and let parents decide.

> What is the best public policy then? school vouchers, and let parents decide.

That may work, it does in Sweden apparently, but your conclusion certainly doesn’t follow from your premise. This feels like classic junior engineer baby-with-the-bath water thinking. It’s easier to throw a system out and start over than make the modifications to your existing system but somehow it never does turn out exactly right, more like a ruined fresco meme.

I used to get up well before the sun rose for private school, it wasn't a big deal, we just went to bed earlier than most.

It was nice to have more time to myself before parents got home from work.

It seems strange for the state to be meddling in this.

A bunch of studies came out saying that students are better with more sleep and generally waking up after 7 is best so we get this law. The problem here is that I am betting that the kids still get home before their parents from work and now they will have to start after their parents leave for work so it will put an economic crunch on dual working parents.

Why don't kids just go to sleep earlier?

Isn't part of raising children teaching them self-discipline? Things like putting down the electronic gadgets at night, not consuming stimulating food/drinks in the evening, etc.

It's shit like this that makes California look so ridiculous to the rest of the nation.

No, it's biology.

The implied assumption in all this discussion is that everyone stays up late so 7am doesn't work. Perhaps the question should be why society is so geared for waking hours shifted partly into the night. Perhaps people should wake with the sun and sleep soon after dark. But so much entertainment is scheduled during the evening, and everyone is so deeply entrenched in their habits.

I don't think that is the implied assumption; the stated reason for this change, FTA:

> The American Academy of Pediatrics, which backed the bill, said in 2014 policy statement that getting too little sleep puts teenagers’ physical and mental health at risk, as well as their academic performance. The organization cited research that shows that biological changes in puberty make it difficult for the average teenager to fall asleep before 11pm, and that teenagers need between 8.5 and 9.5 hours of sleep to function at their best.

Did they give a cause as to why it's hard for them to sleep before 11pm? That doesn't contradict what I said in the slightest.

> The organization cited research that shows that biological changes in puberty make it difficult for the average teenager to fall asleep before 11pm

I didn't follow the citation, but that would be my suggestion for the first place to look if you want to understand their theory better.

If students are to wake with the sun in winter months, that would mean waking up at 8AM where I went to school. You would need to start school around 9:30AM since some students spent over 1 hour on the bus.

Ok, so then school times should be adjusted for time of year and latitude, rather than blindly sticking to the same time everywhere.

This seems to flagrantly ignore the parents' need to be to work on time. I think the kids will ultimately be the ones suffering because the parents will struggle that much more.

No, the bus is not always an option, nor is leaving your kid alone at home for any amount of time.

Given that this will be a job-negotiating concern of literally every parent in California, businesses will just have to adapt to the new normal.

It's the lower-class parents who can't afford babysitters or who might be divorced that will be the most affected by this. Coincidentally, it's those same parents who have the least room to negotiate in their positions.

Many schools have programs to drop your kids off early. The same program is there to keep kids late. If kids are getting out of school at 2:00 pm then the kids are either home alone or taking a bus one way or the other. In my opinion, this has very little to do with parents.

> No, the bus is not always an option, nor is leaving your kid alone at home for any amount of time.

This bill applies to middle and high school kids. If you can't leave your high schooler home alone for any amount of time then you probably have bigger problems to deal with than school start time.

If the objective is for people to get more hours of sleep probably it would have been better to pass a law dividing the day in 32 hours... Kids will sleep the same amount of time in all cases, but it would be 50% more hours.

The "early wakeup time makes people groggy" story always looked puzzling to me.

I mean, when DST kicks in everyone adjusts in day or two. What prevents one from setting up their own personal DST and getting up earlier still? Certainly not biology.

Biology is a factor because the sun isn't up.

Also there is the desire to do things in the evening, such as a parent having dinner and interacting with their kids before they have to go to bed. Or to get home from work to help them with their homework.

Or let's say as a parent I don't want to have to wake up at 6am because my kids have to wake up that early for school when I don't have to be to work until 9 or 10.

DST is a huge mess for at least a month, sometimes longer. It's massively disruptive. This may be more of an issue in higher latitudes, though.

It was always the last straw that signalled the effective end of the school year in the spring. Everyone was so frigged up and groggy from that shift ahead that we might as well have not been there, and by the time people did adjust, there wasn't any time left to recoup.

Every time this comes up, I recommend "Internal Time" by Till Roenneburg. It is wonderfully written, and it demolishes this concept quite thoroughly. It really is biology.

Summary of the book as relates here though: People really do have internal clocks and preferred awake/sleep cycles. These internal clocks vary between individuals, and are there is most likely a genetic component. These internal clocks vary with age- in particular, teenagers and young adults clocks are generally shifted much later than kids or older adults. Shifts to people's schedules (such as DST) that cause them to leave their preferred sleep/awake cycle mitigate with time, but do not fully go away.

Outside that book, there are plenty of studies showing that a non-standard hours shift work is biologically harmful.

It certainly is biology. Your circadian rhythm is strongly influenced by the timing of day (well, blue) light being received by your eyes. It also shifts naturally as you age - for example, in your teenage years you tend to fall asleep and wake up later.

There are also interesting effects like the significant differences in school performance between students living at the eastern edge of a time zone vs living at the western.

Your circadian rhythm is not independent from your environment, especially if you're a teenager.

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