Should the School Day Start Later?

By MICHAEL GONCHAR

Could letting teenagers sleep later in the morning do more than just make them happy? New evidence suggests that a later start to the school day could have all sorts of benefits, like better grades and fewer car crashes. But some worry that pushing the school day back might get in the way of after-school sports and jobs, and wouldn’t leave students enough time to finish homework.

Should the school day start later?

In “To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In,” Jan Hoffman writes:

Jilly Dos Santos really did try to get to school on time. She set three successive alarms on her phone. Skipped breakfast. Hastily applied makeup while her fuming father drove. But last year she rarely made it into the frantic scrum at the doors of Rock Bridge High School here by the first bell, at 7:50 a.m.

Then she heard that the school board was about to make the day start even earlier, at 7:20 a.m.

“I thought, if that happens, I will die,” recalled Jilly, 17. “I will drop out of school!”

That was when the sleep-deprived teenager turned into a sleep activist. She was determined to convince the board of a truth she knew in the core of her tired, lanky body: Teenagers are developmentally driven to be late to bed, late to rise. Could the board realign the first bell with that biological reality?

The sputtering, nearly 20-year movement to start high schools later has recently gained momentum in communities like this one, as hundreds of schools in dozens of districts across the country have bowed to the accumulating research on the adolescent body clock.

In just the last two years, high schools in Long Beach, Calif.; Stillwater, Okla.; Decatur, Ga.;, and Glens Falls, N.Y., have pushed back their first bells, joining early adopters in Connecticut, North Carolina, Kentucky and Minnesota. The Seattle school board will vote this month on whether to pursue the issue. The superintendent of Montgomery County, Md., supports the shift, and the school board for Fairfax County, Va., is working with consultants to develop options for starts after 8 a.m.

NOW YOU GO: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— What time does your school day start and end?

— Should your school day start later? Or do you like your daily schedule?

— Is an early start time leaving you sleep deprived? Are you staying up later than you should?

— What do you think the most important benefits of a later start time would be? What might the disadvantages be?

— What do you think about the campaign that Jilly Dos Santos led in her district to push back the high school start time?

How Much Do Test Results Matter?

How Much Does the SAT or ACT Matter in Your Life?

By MICHAEL GONCHAR

For millions of high school students, the SAT or ACT serves as a gatekeeper helping to determine where they go to college. Some families spend thousands of dollars on test preparation courses or private tutors because they think so much is riding on test scores.

How much does the SAT or ACT matter in your life? Is it an exam you care about, plan to prepare for or have already taken?

In “The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul,” Todd Balf writes about why major changes are coming to the SAT:

In July 2012, a few months before he was to officially take over as president of the College Board, David Coleman invited Les Perelman, then a director of writing at M.I.T., to come meet with him in Lower Manhattan. Of the many things the College Board does — take part in research, develop education policy, create curriculums — it is perhaps most recognized as the organization that administers the SAT, and Perelman was one of the exam’s harshest and most relentless critics. Since 2005, when the College Board added an essay to the SAT (raising the total possible score from 1,600 to 2,400), Perelman had been conducting research that highlighted what he believed were the inherent absurdities in how the essay questions were formulated and scored. His earliest findings showed that length, more than any other factor, correlated with a high score on the essay. More recently, Perelman coached 16 students who were retaking the test after having received mediocre scores on the essay section. He told them that details mattered but factual accuracy didn’t. “You can tell them the War of 1812 began in 1945,” he said. He encouraged them to sprinkle in little-used but fancy words like “plethora” or “myriad” and to use two or three preselected quotes from prominent figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, regardless of whether they were relevant to the question asked. Fifteen of his pupils scored higher than the 90th percentile on the essay when they retook the exam, he said.

Right around the time Coleman was appointed as the board’s next president, he read an article about Perelman’s research in The New York Times and decided to reach out to him. “Somebody takes a whack at the SAT, so what?” Coleman said when I met him in his office at the College Board headquarters near Lincoln Center last month. “They get some media coverage, it’s not that interesting. But this was a guy who devoted his lifetime to work you care about” — teaching students how to write — “and then looks at an instrument meant to celebrate writing and — ” Coleman’s words trailed off. “I wanted to go beyond the news presentation of his claim,” he finally added, “to the depth of his claim.”

Over the course of their two-hour conversation, Perelman told Coleman that he wasn’t opposed to an essay portion of the test, per se; he thought it was a good idea, if done well. But “when is there a situation in either college or life when you’re asked to write on demand about something you’ve never once thought about?” he asked. “I’ve never gotten an email from a boss saying: ‘Is failure necessary for success? Get back to me in 25 minutes?’ But that’s what the SAT does.” Perelman said that tutors commonly taught their students to create and memorize an all-purpose essay that contained the necessary elements for a top score — “a personal anecdote, a few historical references; Florence Nightingale seems a strangely popular reference.” When test day comes, they regurgitate what they’ve committed to memory, slightly reshaping depending on the question asked. But no one is actually learning anything about writing.

NOW YOU GO: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— How much does the SAT or ACT matter in your life?

— Is it an exam you care about, plan to prepare for or have already taken?

— Do you believe the SAT or ACT will provide an accurate measure of how well you will perform in college? Do you think your SAT or ACT scores will affect how successful you are in life?

— Scroll down to the list of key changes to the SAT in this article. What do you think about the redesign?

Is It Okay to Refuse to Serve Same-Sex Couples Based on Religious Beliefs?

By SHANNON DOYNE

Representative Justin Pierce favors an Arizona bill that would let religious beliefs be a legal justification for denying service. Related Article

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What happens when religious beliefs lead business owners to refuse to serve gay people? Is it living according to their faith? Is it discrimination?

In “Religious Right in Arizona Cheers Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse to Serve Gays,” Michael Paulson and Fernanda Santos write about the issues raised in the questions above:

In New Mexico, a photographer declined to take pictures of a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony. In Washington State, a florist would not provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. And in Colorado, a baker refused to make a cake for a party celebrating the wedding of two men.

The business owners cited religious beliefs in declining to provide services celebrating same-sex relationships. And in each case, they were sued.

Now, as states around the nation weigh how to balance the rights of same-sex couples with those of conservative religious business owners, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona must decide whether to sign legislation that would allow business owners to cite religious beliefs as a legal justification for denying service to same-sex couples.

… “In America, people should be free to live and work according to their faith, and the government shouldn’t be able to tell us we can’t do that,” said Joseph E. La Rue, the legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that advocates religious liberty and supports the measure passed by the State Legislature. “Faith shouldn’t be something we have to leave inside our house.”

But civil libertarians and gay rights advocates say there is a difference between protections for clergy and houses of worship that do not want to participate in same-sex marriage and the obligations of business owners that serve the general public.

NOW YOU GO: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— Who do you think is right: the business owners who acted on their religious beliefs when they refused to serve same-sex couples or the people who sued them?

— Do you think states need a law that would allow business owners to cite religious beliefs as a legal justification for denying service to same-sex couples? Why or why not?

— Do you think business owners have an obligation to serve the general public?

— What other religious beliefs might interfere with a business owner’s willingness to serve people?