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     of Kentucky’s Danner has studied how, on a national level, sleep decreases each year during high school. In their first year,
     60% of kids got at least eight hours on average. By the second year, that was down to 30%. Right alongside this decline went
     their moods; dropping below eight hours doubled the rate of
clinical-level
depression. Over one-eighth of the students reached this classification, which makes one only wonder how many more suffer
     from melancholy of a lesser degree.
    Another trailblazing school district is Lexington, Kentucky, which also moved its start time an hour later. Danner has been
     studying the before/after equation. The finding that most jumps out from his data is that after the time change, teenage car
     accidents in Lexington were down 25%, compared to the rest of the state.
    While the evidence is compelling, few districts have followed this lead. Conversely, 85% of America’s public high schools
     start before 8:15 a.m., and 35% start at or before 7:30 a.m.
    Obstacles against later start times are numerous. Having high schools start earlier often allows buses to first deliver the
     older students, then do a second run with the younger children. So starting later could mean doubling the size of the bus
     fleet. Teachers prefer driving to school before other commuters clog the roads. Coaches worry their student-athletes will
     miss games because they’re still in their class at kickoff time. Many simply aren’t persuaded by the science. When Westchester
     schools declined an initiative to start high schools later, then-superintendent Dr. Karen McCarthy opined, “There’s still
     something that doesn’t click for me.”
    Dr. Mark Mahowald has heard all those arguments. As Director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center, he’s been at
     the center of many school start time debates. But of all the arguments he’s heard, no one’s argument is that children
learn more
at 7:15 a.m. than at 8:30. Instead, he forcefully reasons, schools are scheduled for adult convenience: there’s no educational
     reason we start schools as early as we do. “If schools are for education, then we should promote learning instead of interfere
     with it,” he challenges.
    “We thought the evidence was staggering,” Carole Young-Kleinfeld recalled.
    Kleinfeld is a mother in Wilton, Connecticut, thirty miles up I-95 from New York City. Wilton, too, had saved money by running
     buses in two shifts, starting the high school at 7:35. Then a few years ago, Kleinfeld was at a meeting for the local League
     of Women Voters. Then-state senator Kevin Sullivan spoke about Carskadon and others’ research, and how starting high school
     at a more reasonable hour was the answer.
    Kleinfeld had a sullen teenager of her own, and when she went to local high schools to register kids to vote, she regularly
     saw students sleeping in the halls during class. So the idea hit home. She and others formed a committee to learn about the
     issue. Eventually, they convinced the district to move the high school’s start time to 8:20.
    For Kleinfeld, the change “was a godsend.”
    Her son Zach had once been a perfectly happy kid, but when he hit high school he became the prototypical disengaged, unenthralled-by-everything
     teen. He was so negative, so withdrawn that “I really thought we’d lost him,” Kleinfeld sighed. “We’d lost that sense of connection.”
    After the high school start time shifted, Kleinfeld couldn’t believe it. “We got our kid back.” Zack would bound downstairs
     in the morning with a smile, wanting to share a funny story he’d read in
The Onion
. His SAT scores went up, too.
    Several scholars have noted that many hallmark traits of modern adolescence—moodiness, impulsiveness, disengagement—are also
     symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation. Might our culture-wide perception of what it means to be a teenager be unwittingly
     skewed by the fact they don’t get