EDITORIAL: The school bell should toll later for better test scores

The importance of local control of schools is one of the most critical components of a successful public school system, but there are times when only the state can fix a pervasive problem.

This is one of those times.

For the past few decades, state lawmakers and local school officials alike have been wringing their hands and your wallets in finding ways to improve student test performance. Colorado families and students have been subjected to outcome-based education, site-based management, performance-based curricula, the new math, the old math and an endless battery of standardized tests and even more reasons why students continue to perform so poorly on them.

Aurora Public Schools, Cherry Creek Schools and just about every school district in the state has spent millions and millions of dollars looking for ways to squeeze a few more percentage points out of state test scores and the graduation rates.

Two recent stories pointing to low-hanging fruit in the world of student performance are again dismissed, because they’re hard and cost money.

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics added their voice to the growing chorus that says high school student performance suffers because teenagers have to go to school too early.

Anyone who was a teenager or is parent to a one gets this. Because of hormones and other biological reasons, teenagers naturally stay up later than the rest of the family, and they sleep in later, unless they have to get up at the crack of stupid to make the 7:30 a.m. school bell. This arbitrary and harmful school day means lots of students, probably most of them, have the same day you do when you’re sleep deprived and off your natural sleep rhythm — every day of the school year. Pediatricians and others have no doubt that sending teenagers to school later would demonstrably improve their performance. That means higher standardized test scores.

And this week, a federal study shows that Colorado students have a higher rate of absenteeism than their national peers, and that — get this — students who miss school perform more poorly on standardized tests.

There’s no doubt a later high-school start time would improve absenteeism and test scores.

So why not just do what makes sense? The biggest reason, local school officials say, is money. Since most Colorado school districts provide school buses for many students, getting those bus systems to efficiently accommodate elementary and secondary schools is tricky and expensive, but not impossible. Another reason is that school systems hate change, and this would be a big change, bumping into teacher preferences, parent work schedules and after-school activities.

Yes, it would be hard. Yes, it would yield substantial and long-lasting benefits. The arguments against making the change are really arguments for making the change statewide, or at least regionally.

It just makes sense. Colorado pours hundreds of millions of dollars on ineffective ways to hike test scores while this sure-thing goes wanting. All the state needs is a few state legislators ready to step up and be the hero. We’re ready to take names.