Protecting Students During the Dark Days of Covid… And the Dark Days
Here’s another guest post by Jonathan Helton. His first post for this blog about childhood obesity was great, and now he’s back with a post that is very timely for me as my son returns to in-person learning for the first time since last March in the coming days. -Scott
This is not the usual time for “back to school” but there’s not much about this year that is “usual.”
With the return to school for many students, however, the topic comes back up about what the right time is to start school, especially relative to Daylight Saving Time.
It can be more than a little disconcerting sending your kids to a bus stop in the morning dark. This fear has reflexively pushed some people to favor permanent Standard Time if they had to pick one time zone to stick in to avoid the madness of changing time zones twice per year.
As the argument goes, an hour of sunlight shifted towards the morning will keep kids safe on their way to school. It’s certainly a noble sentiment.
Noble, but misinformed. In reality, these clock changes endanger kids and by permanently ending these shifts we would be doing more to actually protect them.
Here’s why:
After the failed experiment of changing into DST in January, 1974, (who thought it would be a good idea to change the clocks in January?!?!?) the Department of Transportation decided to study what actually worked, and what did not work.
That study debunked the idea that school kids faced additional risk from year-round Daylight Saving Time. A review of the DOT study by the National Bureau of Standards concluded that there was no increased accident risk for students in the morning (pg. 4-5).
Actually, the opposite is likely true. Year-long DST would probably better protect students overall. A 2008 Wake Forest Law Review piece backed this claim. It looked again at the 1974 changes. While perhaps 10 additional children were killed during the morning hours, there were “sixty fewer afternoon school children fatalities during the same period,” the authors reported (pg. 87).
That’s not all. In 1995, researchers studied car accidents and lighting levels. Pedestrians—a group which certainly includes students walking home—faced a 300 percent increased likelihood of being in a fatal crash once light was shifted from the afternoon to the morning. That’s exactly what Standard Time, the time we’re on now, between November and March, does.
Other studies indicate similar things. Lighting changes and sleep loss throw off normal driving habits and increase the risk of being in a wreck.
But permanent DST protects children in other ways. Criminals, who are more likely to be active at night, are deterred during DST. Robberies go down during DST, as compared to Standard Time. Homicides, too, decrease in DST.
No matter what side of the issue you’re on, then—permanent DST, permanent ST, or the convoluted system we have now—it’s fairly clear that Standard Time does not protect students from crime or traffic accidents. It’s an argument lacking empirical merit.
Of course, apart from protecting students, there are numerous other reasons to #LockTheClock. More sleep, less stress, fewer heart attacks, etc. Either permanent ST or DST would be better than what we have now, regardless of the school situation.
But the question of school start times relative to the clock is a legitimate one. In the past school advocates have said that changing what time schools start is just too hard. Well, if we’ve learned anything this last year, it’s that schools can indeed be flexible in scheduling to protect students and do what is best for them academically. Changing start times for school will be a modest change indeed compared to all the other changes made recently.
More than a dozen states have already passed bills in favor of permanent DST. That is clearly the trend, especially for states on the eastern edge of their time zones. That is also the trend in all the federal legislation proposed. Given that, if you are involved with schools in any way, it might be time to start having the conversation about finding the right start times for school if what now seems almost inevitable happens: the country decides to #LockTheClock.
Jonathan Helton is an independent researcher and aspiring graduate student He covers policy topics from transportation to foreign aid and has published with The Strategy Bride, The Borgen Project, and elsewhere.