My High School Schedule

Once again, the "Paper of Record" is following my lead--several years late. The first time it was the Iraq partition plan, which is finally getting some good press. Now it's how high schoolers should be scheduled.

This editorial pretty much argues what I've been saying all along--but from a much bigger and better credentialed pulpit. The gist of my argument, replicated here, is that high school students would learn better, achieve more, and be better prepared for college and life if school started later and ended later. As Lewis Black said of his 8am economics class in college, "Are you trying to keep this stuff a secret?!"

Study after study has shown that teenagers are biologically different from the rest of us, and do better later in the day. Learning in early the morning is harder and less productive than learning later in the day for the vast majority of youngster's we're preparing to compete in a globalized world.

Our school schedules are a product of an agrarian lifestyle, without much or any electricity (hence the hours) and with a huge demand for kids to help out on the farms (hence our exceedingly long summer vacation).

Students in the United States of America finish near or at the bottom of every list comparing the math and science skills of students in other countries. And here we are with a relic of a schedule that hurts their productivity. We have an opportunity to raise academic achievement all over the country with a measure that would cost virtually nothing. We do everything we're doing...pushed back two hours. Voila. Same effort, same expense, same teachers, same buildings, same buses, same EVERYTHING. And we're virtually guaranteed that the kids will learn more.

Why not do it?