Everything does vary a substantial amount between districts and even individual schools since at the national level there are only a few guidelines(although sta

Everything does vary a substantial amount between districts and even individual schools since at the national level there are only a few guidelines(although standardized tests have crept in since No Child Left Behind), so even with the public system the schools vary between feeding the "school-to-prison" pipeline where students walk through metal detectors and have little breathing room, and "magnet" schools that soak up all the academic achievers and give them back-breaking workloads. In general the school schedules are arranged for the benefit of the faculty more than the kids, though. The days start too early for most teens, and there's a lot of rushing between overly-short classes, to the point where I recall witnessing some students being marked persistently late simply because one teacher ends the class late and the other starts early. The upside of that is that you do tend to have a break because every single class has a few minutes of administrative work before it can really start.