Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Later School Start Times May Foster Better Students

A new study mirrors previous research results in finding that starting school later in the morning allows high school students to get more sleep and increases alertness in class...

High school students at a private school in Rhode Island who started school a half-hour later in the morning were in better moods, more alert, less depressed and more likely to actually attend class than before the time change, a new study shows.

In fact, the experiment was so successful that the school has now permanently shifted its start time from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

"At the end of the experimental period, there was not a single faculty member, student or administrator who wanted to go back to the old start time," said Dr. Judith Owens, lead author of a paper appearing in the July issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The study bolsters the evidence that teens have special sleep needs.

"Sleep medicine specialists have long known that delaying high school start times helps teenagers sleep better," said Dr. Heidi V. Connolly, chief of the division of pediatric sleep medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "Teenagers are biologically programmed to prefer a later bedtime and a later wake-up time so it is not surprising that they struggle with early school start times."

After the time change, students went to bed an average of 18 minutes later at night and slept an average of 45 minutes longer. The proportion of students getting at least eight hours of sleep a night jumped from 16.4 percent to 54.7 percent, while those getting less than seven hours a night decreased by almost 80 percent.

Source: BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/640822.html

Early School Start Times Raise Risk of Teen Car Crashes

Starting the school day earlier may lead to more car accidents involving teenagers, new research suggests.

The study, which looked at schools in two cities in Virginia with different start times, found an association between earlier classes and more crashes among sleep-deprived students.

"Teenagers need over nine hours sleep a night, and it looks like a large number of teens don't get sufficient sleep... part of that relates to the time that high schools begin," said study author Dr. Robert Vorona, an associate professor of internal medicine in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va.

"There are data that demonstrate that lack of sleep has negative consequences for teens," he said. "And some data show that younger drivers are more likely to have crashes when they have inadequate sleep."

The study compared crash rates in 2008 for high school students with widely varying school starting times in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, two adjacent cities with similar demographics. Virginia Beach's classes started at 7:20 a.m.; Chesapeake's began at 8:40 a.m.

While the overall accident rate for all drivers was higher in Virginia Beach, the difference between teens in the two cities was stark, Vorona said. Chesapeake had 46.2 crashes for every 1,000 teen drivers, compared to 65.4 per 1,000 teen drivers in Virginia Beach -- a 41 percent difference.

Teens are "biologically programmed" to get sleepy and wake up later than adults, said Barbara Phillips, of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, a professor with the school's division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. "They truly can't help it. They're just not going to get sleepy at 10 p.m., so it's hard for them to get the eight to 10 hours of sleep they need to get when they have to catch the 7:30 bus."

Phillips is co-author of a study that compared car crash rates and increased sleep for adolescent drivers in Lexington, Ky., when the school district instituted a later school day in 1998. Data were analyzed from the two years before and after the change.

The study found that when teens increased their sleep, crash rates declined 16.5 percent during a period when teen crash rates throughout the state increased by 7.8 percent.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/sleep/articles/2010/06/09/early-school-start-times-raise-risk-of-teen-car-crashes.html

More School Friends May Equal Better Grades

School friends may play a major role in a teen's academic success, a new study suggests.

Students with higher grade-point averages (GPAs) had more school friends than out-of-school friends. The more school friends, the higher the GPA.

"We found that within an adolescent's friendship group, those with a higher proportion of friends who attended the same school received higher grades," Melissa R. Witkow, an assistant professor of psychology at Willamette University, said in a University of California, Los Angeles, news release. "This is partially because in-school friends are more likely to be achievement-oriented and share and support school-related activities, including studying, because they are all in the same environment."

Witkow was a UCLA graduate student when she conducted the study, which was recently published online in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/06/09/more-school-friends-may--better-grades.html

Virtual Public Schools Soon a Reality in Massachusetts

The schools would have no desks or lockers, not even a cafeteria to trade gossip over a plate of chicken nuggets. Instead, students could take classes from the comfort of their homes or a neighborhood coffeehouse, as teachers convey lessons via the Internet.

This is a snapshot of virtual public schools in Massachusetts, which could open as soon as this fall, enabling hundreds of students to take all their classes online.

The first such school is poised to open this fall in Greenfield, a small city of rolling pastures and a quaint downtown in Western Massachusetts. Just last week, its School Committee set an enrollment goal of up to 600 students, and is seeking a principal to further develop the “Massachusetts Virtual Academy at Greenfield,’’ which will be open to students statewide in kindergarten through grade 8.

The schools are being developed under a little-known provision of the state’s sweeping education law enacted in January. The law, which urges districts to pursue innovations, gave local school committees authority to create public schools that operate almost entirely in cyberspace.

State education leaders say virtual schools could even help reduce the statewide high school dropout rate, providing another alternative to students who struggle within the confines of a school building because of social issues or rigid time structures.

Across the nation, virtual public schools have been growing in popularity in such states as Texas, Colorado, and Arizona, online education specialists say.

Massachusetts students will have to comply with state requirements for class time, which in high school means completing 990 hours of “structured learning’’ annually. Their classes each year will have to match up with the state’s academic standards, which specify what subject matter should be taught at each grade level.

Source: Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/05/05/mass_about_to_enter_world_of_virtual_schools/

Students Drink More Living in Coed Dorms

Found this interesting piece... something that parents with teens approaching the college years should keep in mind. For college students, rates of drinking and sexual activity are higher when they live in coed dorms.

In the past 30 years, coed college dormitories have gone from rare to routine, with nearly all students who live on campus now sharing housing with members of the opposite sex.

But a new study suggests that the shift may have had unintended results.

It finds that students in coed dorms are far more likely than those in single-sex dorms to drink alcohol regularly – and nearly 2½ times as likely to drink to excess on a weekly basis.

More than 90% of college dorms today house both sexes, generally separated by floors or building wings, say the study's authors – yet very little research has accompanied the change.

The new findings, they say, suggest that colleges searching for ways to reduce binge drinking and other entrenched behaviors may consider whether the social pressures of coed housing are making matters worse.

These students were more likely to say they'd had a sexual partner in the past year and more likely to think it's all right "for two people to get together for sex and not necessarily expect anything further," the study says.

They were also more likely to say they drink alcohol at least weekly and far more likely to say they drink excessively on a regular basis – 41.5% reported weekly binge drinking. Among students in single-sex housing, the figure was 17.6%.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-11-17-coed17_ST_N.htm

UK Mandates Sex Ed for All 15-Year-Olds

Well, this is one way to handle the issue... Should be interesting to see how UK parents and faith groups respond.

Sex education is to be made compulsory for all pupils, prompting fury from faith groups which said that the move would contravene the right for children to be educated in accordance with their parents’ beliefs.

All 15-year-olds must receive at least one year of sex and relationship lessons, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said yesterday. Those whose religious or moral values prevent them from attending will be classed as truants and may be punished by the school. Until now parents could opt out of lessons about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and homosexuality until their children were 19.

Roman Catholic and Muslim groups said they would strongly oppose the move. Shahid Akmal, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s education board, said he would challenge the laws, which he called an imposition. “It is always better for the parents to talk to children about sex rather than the school over which the parents have no control,” he said.

The Catholic Education Service for England and Wales said it was “disappointed” that the “blanket right to withdrawal” had been removed.

The move is central to the Government’s attempts to lower the teenage pregnancy rate, which rose for the first time since 2002, according to the latest figures. There were 41.9 conceptions per 1,000 15 to 17-year-olds in 2007, up from 40.9 the year before. England has the highest rates of teenage mothers in Western Europe.

Source: TimesOnline
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6905543.ece

Is Texting Good For Teens? The Jury Is Out, But Does It Matter?

Rounding up the bits and pieces running through my brain this morning regarding texting...

• Nielsen reported in June that in the first quarter of '09, teens on average send/receive 2,900 texts a month, up from 2,272 in the fourth quarter of '08. That's a 28% increase in texting in just 3 months.

• I've seen articles that have warned that the advent of texting, with it's abbreviations (OMG) and word substitutions (gr8), is the harbinger of the end of the English language as we've known it.

• Now, some educators are saying that texting can be good for teens in terms of language development. Initial research indicated that when it comes to informal essays, kids who use some text-speak outperform kids who don't. When it comes to formal essays, (perhaps obviously) texting can hurt performance.

• I'm thinking the jury is still out on whether texting will end up being good or bad for teens, and that we won't know the ultimate answer for a very long time.

• My question is, does it really matter one way or the other?

• Language changes. We don't speak the King's English anymore, although there are some who still cling to the King James Bible. I've heard my share of KJV-laced prayers in church ("We beseech thee, oh Lord") but not nearly as much these days.

• There will be plenty of English purists who stand watch and will be sure to warn along the way. Even so, will it matter?

• I'm confident kids will still be learning proper English in schools for the immediate future.

• I won't be surprised, however, if things change over time. Look at how learning the skill of handwriting has disappeared in school curriculum over the years.

• Today's teenagers are going to text. You might not like that fact, but if it's a button-pusher for you, you're going to have to get over it. Texting won't be going away anytime soon. There might be something else beyond texting as technologies continue to develop, but for now texting is a primary mode of communication.

• Back when my generation was moving through adolescence, I don't remember that writing notes to friends (other than when we were in a class) was popular. We primarily communicated in person or by phone. Were the adults of that time concerned because we had lost the art of note or letter writing? Perhaps there were some. Were adults concerned about our casual verbal communication when they overheard our conversations? Has it made a difference in our lives today? Were we negatively impacted by the lack of writing as a form of communication to our peers? Can anyone now provide a qualitative answer? Does anyone care? (I don't lose any sleep over this.)

• So now, kids are writing to communicate with their peers and adults at an impressively increasing rate. For language purists, it might be not be writing in the mode they would desire, but does it matter?

• When teens text they have to think about language. They have to express their thoughts. That cannot be all bad.

• If today's teens are still texting well into their adult years, the English language might just look different than it does today. But, at least they'll know the language and I'm thinking that they'll be able to communicate successfully.

Verily verily, I say unto thee.

Study Links GPA to Attractiveness

In a recent study published in the journal Labour Economics, University of Miami professors Michael French, Philip Robins, Jenny Homer and Lauren Tapsell showed that high school students’ grades may not be completely merit-based.

“What was found in the labor market [is that] those who are more attractive than average made wage premium and those below average made wage penalty, and we wanted to see if that relationship held up in grades for high school students,” French said in an interview.

The researchers found what they expected, as French and his colleagues discovered that female students who have good personalities tend to have higher GPAs, as do male students who are well groomed.

Twenty thousand different seventh to 12th graders were surveyed in the course of the study.

Source: The Tufts Daily
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/flash-a-smile-score-an-a-study-links-gpa-to-attractiveness-1.1868904

High School Put-Downs Make It Hard For Students To Learn

High-school put-downs are such a staple of teen culture that many educators don't take them seriously. However, a University of Illinois study suggests that classroom disruptions and psychologically hostile school environments can contribute to a climate in which good students have difficulty learning and students who are behind have trouble catching up.

"We need to get away from the idea that bullying is always physical. Bullying can also include verbal harassment, which can be just as damaging and detrimental to student learning," said Christy Lleras, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development.

The study used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study and included 10,060 African American, Latino, and white tenth graders in 659 U.S. high schools. It is one of the first to look at the national incidence of verbal harassment in public and private high schools, she said.

"In looking at whether students felt safe at school, students' fear for their physical safety was actually pretty low. But 70 percent of the students said they were bothered by disruptions in their classroom, and one in five students said that they were often put down by their peers in school," she said.

Source: EurekAlert!
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uoia-hpm090109.php

2009 SAT Scores Vary by Race, Gender, Family Income

Average national SAT scores for the high school class of 2009 dropped two points compared with last year, a report out recently says. And while the population of test takers was the most diverse ever, average scores vary widely by race and ethnicity.

On one end, students who identified themselves as Asian, Asian-American or Pacific Islander posted a 13-point gain. On the other end, students who identified themselves as Puerto Rican posted a 9-point drop in average scores.

Average scores dropped 5 points for females and 2 points for males. While females represent more than half (53.5%) of test takers, their total average score (1496) is 27 points below the average score for males (1523).

The highest average score of all (1702, up 26 points) was posted by students who said their families earned more than $200,000 a year. Students who reported family incomes of less than $20,000 a year averaged 1321, up 1 point.

AVERAGE SCORES, BY SUBJECT
Top score is 800 in each SAT section:

Critical reading
• Average score: 501
• Females: 498
• Males: 503

Math:
• Average score: 515
• Females: 499
• Males: 534

Writing:
• Average score: 493
• Females: 499
• Males: 486

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-25-SAT-scores_N.htm