Edina High School Later Start Program Summary
The decision to change the Edina High School start time from 7:25 to 8:30 was made in the spring of 1996 and implemented in the 1996-97 school year. The decision was made in response to a request from the Minnesota Medical Association (to all superintendents in Minnesota) to start high schools later, and that was in response to definitive medical research on adolescent sleep patterns from Brown and Johns Hopkins Universities. USA Today states that Edina was the first district in the nation to change start times based on that research.
The goal in Edina Public Schools was to create the best academic learning day for our students. With a great deal of national and international discussion on lengthening the school day or school year in the USA, we believed ensuring the best opportunity to learn throughout the day would, in effect, lengthen the day. In other words, if they were awake we had a better chance of teaching them. That focus allowed us to navigate through all the issues of transportation, lunchtime changes, after school jobs, etc.
Parents, students and staff all agree it has been a good change. It is unusual to have so much agreement about an issue in education today. We have measured fewer absences and fewer students arriving late. Teachers report more alert students and improved learning beginning at 8:30 as compared to the 7:25 start. There has been no drop off in after-school sport or extracurricular activities as was predicted. In fact, there has been a slight increase.
We have continued the start time for four years, believe it to be very beneficial to our students and plan to continue it into the future. We have been contacted by hundreds of schools around the nation--students, parents and staff who would like to do the same. Common sense and experience with adolescents seems to be corroborating the research.
The Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota has studied the project and believes they have identified a modest performance improvement on norm-referenced tests. Eight-thirty continues to be the start time for Edina High School. In 2000, Edina was named the National Sleep Capitol of the Nation by the National Sleep Institute for its pioneering work to start the high school later.
Prepared for Dr. William Dement, Stanford University, to assist in a presentation at the White House Conference on Adolescence in Washington, D. C. May 2, 2000.