4 ms·

High school starts at 3 p.m. for some Michigan students

47 points by ecliptik 7y ago

rmason 7y ago
I live in the Lansing area and wasn't aware this was even going on. The things you learn on HN ;<). I would have loved this option as I've always done my best work later in the day.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Me too. I knew I was doomed if I had an exam before lunch. Fortunately, Caltech often gave take-home exams, so I could do them at my best time, which was evenings.
echelon 7y ago
I like this a lot. Now we just need jobs to switch to allowing the same sorts of working schedules. Not everyone is a morning person.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  I think there’s a huge opportunity for remote jobs cross time zones if you can work the paperwork logistics out. Just advertise what time zone you want the work to take place in, and let folks pick from those based on the hours they want to work in their local time zone (or even better, if the work is of an asynchronous nature and can be done on the worker’s schedule).
- tasogare 7y ago
  > Not everyone is a morning person. This is one reason why I'm in academia: getting up early is quite difficult for me, and researcher schedule is more flexible than a traditional job. In one of my previous lab, the second highest ranked member once told something alone the line of "for me waking up at 7 is like waking up at 3 for a normal person".
hammock 7y ago
What about the teachers and other staff? How is it for a woman or man to be coming home after her kids are fed and put to bed?
- c0nducktr 7y ago
  Well, there's a couple ways you could look at it. Maybe the staff for those positions are people who would like the hours. After all, not everyone has kids to come home to. Maybe it's a nice thing? Although there's another way; which is that those teachers are already getting fucked over in every situation and the state knows they'll continue to take it because they really want to teach. I have friends and family who teach, and they went in debt up to their eyeballs to work a low paying job because there's nothing more they want to do than to be educators. They're great people. Rare people. I sure wouldn't do it. Then the electorate who often tasks them with raising their children fucks them over time and time again.
somada141 7y ago
I grew up in a small town in northern Greece where due to the large number of students in my zone the middle school and high school operated in a bi weekly morning/afternoon schedule where one week you’d have school between 8am-2pm and the next between 2pm-8pm. Eventually a new school was built switching all schedules to the morning but I found my last 6yrs of school incredibly hard having to those bimodal schedules.
- quotz 7y ago
  I had the same. Afternoon shift was horrible. I suppose they could make it less horrible with good sun-mimicking lightning indoors.
thamer 7y ago
While I can appreciate the benefits of getting enough sleep for a student, I don't really understand how they can cover the full curriculum with only 4-5 hours a day (3 p.m. to 8 p.m. with a break for dinner.) Is it common in the U.S. for high school students to have only 4 hours of class per day? When I was in high school my typical day was 9-5:30 or so with an extra hour or so of homework later, 5 days a week.
- droithomme 7y ago
  A lot of states 4 hrs is the minimum instruction hours to be counted as a school day. Homeschoolers in particular often will make use of this and say they cover much more in 4 hrs of one-on-one instruction than they could at a regular school. At high school level though where there needs to be so many units the minimum doesn't work so well. > Is it common in the U.S. for high school students to have only 4 hours of class per day? No, it's not common at all, it's almost unheard of. Will be interesting to see how this experiment works out.
- wahern 7y ago
  The average school day in the U.S. is ~6.5 hours according to https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp The article suggests most subjects are taught using online courses. And because they all take math and english (the only non-online classes) in the first part of the day, I think there's the implication of a relatively small number of students, perhaps comprising only one or two classes. So compressing 6.5 hours into 5 hours that way doesn't seem unreasonable. Though that still leaves the question of the efficacy of online instruction.
- thrower123 7y ago
  The length of the school day has more to do with the length of the work day than the length of time that is required to cover the material. We've basically settled on 7:30 to 3, with after school activities and sports running to 5, 5:30, to enable parents time enough to get their kids to school, work an eight hour day, and pick them up again.
- barry-cotter 7y ago

47 points by ecliptik 7y ago

I live in the Lansing area and wasn't aware this was even going on. The things you learn on HN ;<). I would have loved this option as I've always done my best work later in the day.

WalterBright 7y ago
Me too. I knew I was doomed if I had an exam before lunch. Fortunately, Caltech often gave take-home exams, so I could do them at my best time, which was evenings.

echelon 7y ago

I like this a lot. Now we just need jobs to switch to allowing the same sorts of working schedules. Not everyone is a morning person.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
I think there’s a huge opportunity for remote jobs cross time zones if you can work the paperwork logistics out. Just advertise what time zone you want the work to take place in, and let folks pick from those based on the hours they want to work in their local time zone (or even better, if the work is of an asynchronous nature and can be done on the worker’s schedule).
tasogare 7y ago
> Not everyone is a morning person. This is one reason why I'm in academia: getting up early is quite difficult for me, and researcher schedule is more flexible than a traditional job. In one of my previous lab, the second highest ranked member once told something alone the line of "for me waking up at 7 is like waking up at 3 for a normal person".

hammock 7y ago

What about the teachers and other staff? How is it for a woman or man to be coming home after her kids are fed and put to bed?

c0nducktr 7y ago
Well, there's a couple ways you could look at it. Maybe the staff for those positions are people who would like the hours. After all, not everyone has kids to come home to. Maybe it's a nice thing? Although there's another way; which is that those teachers are already getting fucked over in every situation and the state knows they'll continue to take it because they really want to teach. I have friends and family who teach, and they went in debt up to their eyeballs to work a low paying job because there's nothing more they want to do than to be educators. They're great people. Rare people. I sure wouldn't do it. Then the electorate who often tasks them with raising their children fucks them over time and time again.

somada141 7y ago

I grew up in a small town in northern Greece where due to the large number of students in my zone the middle school and high school operated in a bi weekly morning/afternoon schedule where one week you’d have school between 8am-2pm and the next between 2pm-8pm. Eventually a new school was built switching all schedules to the morning but I found my last 6yrs of school incredibly hard having to those bimodal schedules.

quotz 7y ago
I had the same. Afternoon shift was horrible. I suppose they could make it less horrible with good sun-mimicking lightning indoors.

thamer 7y ago

While I can appreciate the benefits of getting enough sleep for a student, I don't really understand how they can cover the full curriculum with only 4-5 hours a day (3 p.m. to 8 p.m. with a break for dinner.) Is it common in the U.S. for high school students to have only 4 hours of class per day? When I was in high school my typical day was 9-5:30 or so with an extra hour or so of homework later, 5 days a week.

droithomme 7y ago
A lot of states 4 hrs is the minimum instruction hours to be counted as a school day. Homeschoolers in particular often will make use of this and say they cover much more in 4 hrs of one-on-one instruction than they could at a regular school. At high school level though where there needs to be so many units the minimum doesn't work so well. > Is it common in the U.S. for high school students to have only 4 hours of class per day? No, it's not common at all, it's almost unheard of. Will be interesting to see how this experiment works out.
wahern 7y ago
The average school day in the U.S. is ~6.5 hours according to https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp The article suggests most subjects are taught using online courses. And because they all take math and english (the only non-online classes) in the first part of the day, I think there's the implication of a relatively small number of students, perhaps comprising only one or two classes. So compressing 6.5 hours into 5 hours that way doesn't seem unreasonable. Though that still leaves the question of the efficacy of online instruction.
thrower123 7y ago
The length of the school day has more to do with the length of the work day than the length of time that is required to cover the material. We've basically settled on 7:30 to 3, with after school activities and sports running to 5, 5:30, to enable parents time enough to get their kids to school, work an eight hour day, and pick them up again.
barry-cotter 7y ago