IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

When the Bell Tolls: The Effects of School Starting Times on Academic Achievement

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Peter Hinrichs

    ()

    (Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University)

Abstract

A number of high schools across the United States have moved to later bell times on the belief that their previous bell times were too early for the “biological clocks” of adolescents. In this article I study whether doing so improves academic performance. I first focus on the Twin Cities metropolitan area, where Minneapolis and several suburban districts have made large policy changes but St. Paul and other suburban districts have maintained early schedules. I use individual-level ACT data on all individuals from public high schools in this region who took the ACT between 1993 and 2002 to estimate the effects of school starting times on ACT scores. I then employ school-level data on schedules and test scores on statewide standardized tests from Kansas and Virginia to estimate the effects of bell times on achievement for a broader sample. The results do not suggest an effect of school starting times on achievement. © 2011 Association for Education Finance and Policy

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00045
Download Restriction: Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by MIT Press in its journal Education Finance and Policy.

Volume (Year): 6 (2011)
Issue (Month): 4 (October)
Pages: 486-507

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:tpr:edfpol:v:6:y:2011:i:4:p:486-507
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/

Order Information: Web: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/edfp

Keywords: school starting times; school schedules; ACT data; academic achievement; standardized test scores;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

  • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education, Elsevier.
  2. Frisvold, David E., 2015. "Nutrition and cognitive achievement: An evaluation of the School Breakfast Program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 91-104.
  3. Wang, Kurt & Sabia, Joseph J. & Cesur, Resul, 2016. "Sleepwalking through School: New Evidence on Sleep and Academic Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 9829, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  4. Cortes Kalena E. & Bricker Jesse & Rohlfs Chris, 2012. "The Role of Specific Subjects in Education Production Functions: Evidence from Morning Classes in Chicago Public High Schools," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-36, June.
  5. Scott E. Carrell & Teny Maghakian & James E. West, 2011. "A's from Zzzz's? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 62-81, August.
  6. Herber, Stefanie P. & Quis, Johanna Sophie & Heineck, Guido, 2015. "Does the transition into daylight saving time affect students' performance?," BERG Working Paper Series 100, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
  7. Ellegood, William A. & Campbell, James F. & North, Jeremy, 2015. "Continuous approximation models for mixed load school bus routing," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 182-198.
  8. Teny Maghakian Shapiro, 2015. "The educational effects of school start times," IZA World of Labor, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), pages 181-181, August.
  9. Lusher, Lester & Yasenov, Vasil, 2016. "Double-shift schooling and student success: Quasi-experimental evidence from Europe," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 36-39.
  10. Edwards, Finley, 2012. "Early to rise? The effect of daily start times on academic performance," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 970-983.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:edfpol:v:6:y:2011:i:4:p:486-507. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Kristin Waites)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.