The following is retrieved form

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100705190532.htm

Clues: Science Daily is a specialty magazine with a good reputation; the article references a
scholarly journal; experts are quoted; numbers are given which can be checked against the
original report

ScienceDaily (July 8, 2010) — A short delay in school start time appears to be

associated with significant improvements in adolescent alertness, mood and
health, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics &
Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Beginning at the onset of puberty, adolescents develop

as much as a two-hour sleep-wake phase delay (later
sleep onset and wake times) relative to sleep-wake
cycles in middle childhood," the authors write as
background to the study. The study also notes that,
"adolescent sleep needs do not decrease dramatically,
and optimal sleep amounts remain about nine to 9 1/4
hours per night."
Judith A. Owens, M.D., M.P.H., of the Hasbro Children's
Hospital, Providence, and colleagues, studied 201
students in grades 9 through 12 attending an
independent high school in Rhode Island. For the
purposes of the study, class start time was delayed 30
minutes, from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Additionally, students
were required to complete the online retrospective Sleep
Habits Survey before and after the change in school start
time.
According to the study, after the delayed start time,
"students reported significantly more satisfaction with
sleep and experienced improved motivation. Daytime
sleepiness, fatigue and depressed mood were all
reduced. Most health-related variables, including Health
Center visits for fatigue-related complaints, and class
attendance also improved." The later start was also
associated with a significant increase in sleep duration
on school nights of 45 minutes as well as a reduction in
weekend oversleep (the difference between school day
and non-school day wake times).
The percentage of students getting less than seven
hours of sleep decreased by 79.4 percent, and those
reporting at least eight hours of sleep increased from
16.4 percent to 54.7 percent. Additionally, the
percentage of students rating themselves as at least
somewhat unhappy or depressed decreased significantly
(from 65.8 percent to 45.1 percent), as well as the
percentage who felt annoyed or irritated throughout the
day (from 84 percent to 62.6 percent). In terms of health
consequences, significantly more students self-reported
visiting the Health Center for fatigue-related symptoms
before the delayed start time (15.3 percent versus 4.6
percent).
The study also found that after the delayed start,
"students rated themselves as less depressed and more
motivated to participate in a variety of activities and were
less likely to seek medical attention for fatigue-related
concerns in conjunction with the change in start times."
Additionally, "despite the initial considerable resistance
voiced by the faculty and athletic coaches to instituting
the start time delay and the original intentions of the
school administration to return to the 8 a.m. start time
after the trial period, students and faculty overwhelmingly
voted to retain the 8:30 a.m. start for the spring term."
Editorial: School Start Time and Sleepy Teens
"Given that Owens et al report similar findings to the
earliest research, there is a growing body of evidence
that changing start time for high schools is good for
adolescents. So, the follow-up question is: 'Why aren't
more schools changing to a later time?'" writes Kyla
Wahlstrom, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, St.
Paul, in an accompanying editorial. "The answer to that
is actually very complicated…The time that a school
starts is felt to be sacrosanct by those who have come to
rely on it as a predictable part of their day and life."
"The role of data and factual information in discussing
and advocating for changing school start times is key…
when the first findings emerged in 1997, the question
remaining at that time concerned the effect of the later
start time on academic outcomes. Longitudinal research
has since found several significant academic effects,
such as decreasing the dropout rate, but a direct
correlation between later start time and academic
achievement on normed tests has not been
substantiated."
"In the end, having comprehensive information and
impartial presentation of what is known, and not
assumed, is needed to really begin the local dialogue,"
Dr. Wahlstrom concludes. "The community at large is,
after all, the final arbiter, as all must truly live with the
consequences. Our teenagers need and deserve our
best informed thinking about all of this; having the facts
in hand is the best place to start."

The following is retrieved form http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/how-many-hours-of-sleep-

are-enough/AN01487
Clues: It’s the Mayo Clinic, written by an expert, no agenda, date given for publication- fixed

How many hours of sleep are

enough for good health?
Answer
from Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D.
The amount of sleep you need depends on various
factors — especially your age. Consider these
general guidelines for different age groups:

Age group Recommended amount of sleep

Infants 14 to 15 hours

Toddlers 12 to 14 hours

School-age 10 to 11 hours
children

Adults 7 to 9 hours

In addition to age, other factors may affect how

many hours of sleep you need. For example:
 Pregnancy. Changes in a woman's body during
pregnancy can increase the need for sleep.

 Aging. Older adults need about the same

amount of sleep as younger adults. As you get
older, however, your sleeping patterns may change.
Older adults tend to sleep more lightly and awaken
more frequently during the night than do younger
adults. This may create a need for or tendency
toward daytime napping.

 Previous sleep deprivation. If you're sleep

deprived, the amount of sleep you need increases.

 Sleep quality. If your sleep is frequently

interrupted or cut short, you're not getting quality
sleep — and the quality of your sleep is just as
important as the quantity.

Although some people claim to feel rested on just a

few hours of sleep a night, research shows that
people who sleep so little over many nights don't
perform as well on complex mental tasks as do
people who get closer to seven hours of sleep a
night. Additionally, studies among adults show that
getting much more or less than seven hours of sleep
a night is associated with a higher mortality rate.
 If you experience frequent daytime sleepiness, even
after increasing the amount of quality sleep you get,
consult your doctor. He or she may be able to
identify any underlying causes — and help you get a
better night's sleep.

Dec. 4, 2010

The following is retrieved form http://www.brookings.edu/events/2003/1001education.aspx

Clues: .edu; cites research done by credible institutions; talk done by experts, it’s a presentation,
no just one person’s internet rant

Homework: An Easy
Load?
Education

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EVENT SUMMARY
A new Brookings Institution report debunks the popular
notion that U.S. schoolchildren suffer from a growing
homework load, and do not have enough time to play
and just be kids. According to data analyzed by the
Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, the
great majority of students at all grade levels now spend
less than one hour studying on a typical day—an amount
that has not changed substantially in at least twenty
years. The research suggests that rather than having too
much homework, children are not doing enough—a
cause for concern because homework is correlated with
school success.
Event Information
When
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Where
Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036
Map
Contact: Office of Communications
Email:communications@brookings.edu
Phone: 202.797.6105
RELATED CONTENT

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Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
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February 25, 2009

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August 27, 2009

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Behind
Tom Loveless
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
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More Related Content »

Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center, will release

the report at a briefing for the press and the public.
Loveless will discuss his research—which includes data
from surveys conducted by the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, the Third International Math and
Science Study, the Population Studies Center at the
Institute for Social Research at the University of
Michigan, and the Higher Education Research Institute at
UCLA—and take questions from the audience.
TRANSCRIPT
TOM LOVELESS: The section poses a question, Do
students have too much homework? Let me tell you what
motivated me to conduct the study. It had to do with a
number of popular press accounts--Newsweek:
"Homework Doesn't Help." Newsweek had as the lead-
off in their article a story, I believe it was of a third-grader
with just an awful amount of homework crying at home,
really a terrible scene. People magazine: "Overbooked"
was the title of their homework story about this horrible
crushing burden on American students. Time magazine
cover story says it all: "Too Much Homework!"--and if
you look at the subtitle, "The homework ate my family."
Kids are dazed, parents are stressed.

So there is this view in the popular media that there has

been a terrible burden on American children in terms of
homework and that this homework burden is increasing.
And those are the two questions that I wanted to gather
social science and look at: What does the homework
burden look like for the typical student? and Has it been
increasing or decreasing?
Now, the first data I looked at--you will definitely not be
able to see this, but hopefully you can see in your hard
copy. You can follow along. It's the first table, 2-1.

There was a study that was released in 1999 conducted

by researchers at the University of Michigan. And this
study, quite frankly, was misreported in the press. This
was a study of how families use their time. And families
filled out time diaries, and from that the researchers were
able to compile estimates of the amount of time devoted
to various activities.

Now, if you look down there at the bottom, the one in

red--you look down the left-hand column, the various
activities--this one here, the next-to-the-last one, is
Studying. And that includes homework. And what the
researchers found was there had been an increase in
homework. If you go clear to the last column, the amount
of time devoted to studying, in the last column you'll see
that the average amount of time for this sample, in 1981,
was 1 hour 53 minutes. And it rose by 23 minutes--this is
weekly amounts of homework, expressed in hours and
minutes. 1 hour 53 minutes in 1981; in 1997, the second
time the study was conducted, that number had gone up
to 2 hours 16 minutes.

Read the complete event transcript (PDF—42KB)

View Full Transcript »

PARTICIPANTS
Discussant

Brian Gill
Social Scientist, RAND Corporation

Presentation by

Tom Loveless
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

The following is retrieved from