Public school administrators are continually looking for ways to boost student achievement. In recent decades, some school districts have lengthened school days and others have experimented with school start and end times to try to improve student learning. In various parts of the country, high schools have begun implementing later start times, a response to complaints from parents and educators who say teenagers need more sleep and have trouble getting to class on time. In late 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics took a stance on the issue, recommending that middle schools and high schools start classes at 8:30 a.m. or later to “align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents.”

Academic scholars have studied the relationship between time of day and student learning to better understand the opportune time for teaching core subjects such as reading and math or administering high-stakes standardized tests. A growing body of research examines the issue from multiple angles. A 2016 study published in PNAS, for example, suggests that students aged 8 to 15 years are more likely to do better on standardized exams in the morning because, over the course of a school day, children may experience cognitive fatigue. Meanwhile, a 2011 study led by scholars at the University of California, Davis indicates that college freshmen’s grades tend to be lower when they study certain subjects — chemistry and computer science, for instance — very early in the morning.

A 2016 study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics sought to determine whether scheduling math and English courses at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day would result in higher grades and test scores for adolescents. For the study, “How the Time of Day Affects Productivity: Evidence from School Schedules,” Nolan G. Pope of the University of Chicago analyzed the grade-point averages and standardized test scores of nearly 2 million students enrolled in grades 6 through 11 in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He examined data collected between 2003 and 2009, including scores from the math and English sections of the annual California Standards Test (CST). For the middle school students and high school students in the study sample, the school day typically started around 8 a.m. and ended around 3:10 p.m.

The study’s key findings include:

• Students who had a math class during the first two periods of the school day earned higher scores on the CST math section than students who had math class during the last two periods of the day. The average math CST score of students who had math during periods 1 and 2 was 309.8. The average score of students who had math during periods 5 and 6 was 304.5. Students who had math class early in the day also had slightly higher grades in their math courses.
• Students who had English during first or second period had slightly higher grades in the subject than students who had English class late in the day. There was no significant difference in English CST scores.
• Advanced Placement (AP) courses — advanced-level courses that high school students can take for college credit — were almost three times more likely to be scheduled during the first or second period of the school day than during the last two periods of the day.

This study suggests that students tend to be more productive in the morning than they are in the afternoon, especially in math. While the author cannot say for certain why, he identifies three possible causes or contributing factors: changes in the quality of instruction over the course of the school day, changes in students’ learning ability during the school day and differences in student attendance at the start and end of the school day. The author states that “rearranging school schedules can lead to increased academic performance,” but notes there are constraints to how much school administrators can alter those schedules. One constraint is the supply of teachers at a given school who teach a particular subject.

Related research: A 2015 study published in Learning, Media and Technology, “Synchronizing Education to Adolescent Biology: ‘Let Teens Sleep, Start School Later,’” examines the consequences of an early school start time. A 2011 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, “A’s from Zzzz’s? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents,” looks at how starting the school day later influenced academic achievement among U.S. Air Force Academy students. A 2006 study in the Review of Educational Research, “An Analysis of Research on Block Scheduling,” offers a review of 58 empirical studies on high school block schedules, including their effect on student performance.

Keywords: education, high school, middle school, learning, adolescence, class schedule, school schedule, math, reading, academic achievement

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When global technology giant Google released statistics on the diversity of its workforce in May 2014, it was pelted with criticism. And media organizations have tracked the company’s slow progress in closing gender gaps and hiring more black and Hispanic employees. However, the reality is that far fewer women and minorities enter careers in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. A striking illustration of this disparity is the number of girls and minority students who take and pass the Advanced Placement computer science exam in high school. In 2015, about 22 percent of the 49,000 students nationwide who took the AP Computer Science A test were female. Thirteen percent of all test takers were students of color.

Jobs in STEM fields often are high paying and in high demand, which is why government leaders have been pressing colleges and universities to produce more STEM graduates. President Barack Obama has said that science and innovation are key to the country’s  economy and that offering more opportunities for Americans to gain related skills can help create jobs. School districts nationwide have launched programs designed to improve the “STEM pipeline,” with the aim of helping pique and support children’s interest in science and technology during elementary, middle and high school. Organizations such as Black Girls CODE offer workshops and after-school programs to teach computer coding to girls from underrepresented communities.

A January 2016 study published in Social Problems considers how teacher demographics could influence that effort. For the study, six researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Duke University analyzed a sample of 16,300 students who went to middle school and high school in North Carolina and later attended one of the 16 colleges in the University of North Carolina system in 2004. The authors focus on the race and gender of teachers in hopes of gauging whether girls who attended high schools with more female math and science teachers were more likely to pursue STEM subjects. The study, titled “Demographic Characteristics of High School Math and Science Teachers and Girls’ Success in STEM,” also looks at whether teacher demographics affected the likelihood of black students to study STEM subjects in college. Because of the limited number of Asian, Hispanic and Native American students in the population that the authors studied, the authors were only able to create research models for white and black students.

Among the key findings:

• There is a “positive and significant” association between the proportion of female math and science teachers in a high school and the likelihood that a white female student will choose a STEM-related major.
• Young white women have a greater likelihood of graduating with a college degree in a STEM field if they attend a high school with a higher proportion of female math and science teachers.
• The race of the female math and science teachers does not appear to have a large influence on the likelihood that a white female student will choose a STEM-related major and graduate with a STEM degree.
• Results for black female students are inconclusive.

The authors state that female math and science teachers may help encourage interest among girls by pushing them to take risks and go against stereotypes and by raising their confidence in their abilities. They note the importance of focusing on students’ high school years to help boost the number of women entering STEM-related fields. “Our findings show evidence that suggests that a policy that advocates for even more female secondary math and science teachers in high schools would be effective in increasing the number of white female STEM majors,” the authors state.

Related research: A 2015 study published in Research in Higher Education, “‘But I’m Not Good at Math’: The Changing Salience of Mathematical Self-Concept in Shaping Women’s and Men’s STEM Aspirations,” examines how students’ confidence in their math abilities influences which STEM fields they study in college. A 2013 study published in the American Educational Research Journal, “Why Students Choose STEM Majors: Motivation, High School Learning, and Postsecondary Context of Support,” looks at the important factors that lead students to major in STEM fields.

Keywords: gender, education, STEM, higher education, majors, college, high school, science, engineering, mathematics, technology

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