Later Class Times Leads To Better Grades

Oh, science... always undermining doctrinaire parents and principals.

In news that anyone who has ever struggled to keep their eyes open in a first-period chemistry class already knows, starting school later in the day leads to a marked improvement in grades, according to a new study. Researchers at University of California, Davis say that starting classes as little as 50 minutes later leads to “raising teacher quality by one standard deviation," or, in other words, makes kids a lot smarter, with the effects of sleeping-in carrying on throughout the day. The research team says this is the first time that anyone has proved causation between late starting times and better grades, although dozens of studies from the past decade hinted at a correlation between the two. Of course, actually implementing this change requires going through teachers' unions, parent associations, and school boards, plus there's the chance that starting later would limit students' ability to work part time, or play sports. So, high school kids, don't expect to get to sleep in any longer before you graduate, but know that your early-morning sacrifices might not have been in vain.