My son took the SAT this weekend for a second time. Like the first time, our alarms went off at 5:45 a.m. so he could be up, ready, fed and in the car for our 40-minute drive to the closest testing center. Arrival time was 7:45 a.m.; the test began at 8 a.m.
A few things to know about my son in that context.
- He is a night owl. While some night owls can force themselves to sleep when they have an early wake-up call, my son is not one of them. His body and, more importantly, his brain simply won’t shut down until well past midnight.
- He takes a while to go from awake to fully functioning. He needs time to sit, to chat, to go through the tasks of getting ready and, ideally, to eat.
- He is not the greatest test taker under the best of circumstances. The pressure of standardized tests tends to weigh on him and impact his ability to recall and demonstrate the knowledge he holds.
An 8 a.m. start time for anything feels like he’s not being set up to succeed. An 8 a.m. start time for a high-stakes test that has impact on the next steps in his future plans feels like a failing at a systems level.
And let’s be clear. This isn’t just about my son. It’s about what we know about adolescents and how we are shaping the multiple systems they encounter.
Adolescents still need between 8 and 10 hours of sleep, yet most get closer to 7 hours. This is in part due to shifts in their natural sleep patterns (moving about 2 hours later after puberty), an increasingly heavy load of responsibilities such as jobs and a high volume of homework, and the consistency of early start times, like those of the SATs, many high schools across the country, and even many youth development programs, summer programs and extracurricular activities.
While adolescents are naturally inclined to sleep later than their young peers, the systems they engage in have decided that, instead of starting things later, they should start things earlier than they did when they were younger.
There’s an easy solution — shift start times. More than 500 school districts have taken on shifting bell schedules to accommodate what research tells us about adolescent sleep. The benefits are clear. Not only are the adolescents in these districts getting more sleep, but research is also showing that the later start times are correlated with:
- Less negative mood
- Better outcomes across social emotional, behavioral and physical health as well as cognitive development
- Attending school more and being late less
- Getting better grades
- Less likelihood of getting into a car crash
Yet, 500 school districts doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface on the overall population of high school students and doesn’t account for other high stakes engagements like the SAT. Districts face pushback when changing start times that includes concerns about engagement in afterschool activities (especially sports), logistical challenges (such as transportation loops), and complications for working families.
But the SAT doesn’t face these same challenges. There aren’t multiple testing blocks in the same day that need to be squeezed in. There aren’t consistent and widespread competing priorities for facilities on a Saturday afternoon. So why does the SAT still start at 8am?
As one young person put it on Reddit, “Does the College Board want us to be brain-dead during the exam? Even just knowing you need to be there before 8 is stressful enough to keep you up all night. Who benefits from the fact that it’s this early? WHY???”
I don’t know the answer, but I have a theory. My best guess is that the SAT starts early to accommodate the schedules of the proctors — the adults — getting them started and done early so they can get on with their day. I understand it might not be as appealing to proctor an exam from 11 to 1 and be faced with both a late lunch and having the middle of your day taken up. I know I’d be less inclined to sign up for that gig than one that got me out and on with my day by 11 or 12. But I also know that I want young people to be successful. We need to consider how we design systems not for convenience or for logistics but for youth thriving.
Shifting the SAT start time to even 9 or 10 in the morning, if not the early afternoon, has the potential to allow young people to be better positioned to leverage the full capacity of their brains.
It is worth noting that the ACT has found a solution—offering 8 a.m. or 1:30 p.m. start times. This doesn’t have to be a one-size-fits-all change, but something needs to shift. We know too much not to do better — and not to allow young people to demonstrate all that they know.
