Kalish, Nancy. "The Early Bird Gets the Bad Grade." The New York Times, 14 Jan. 2008.

Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Nancy Kalish, an author from the New York Times, is always advocating whats right for our schools and what can help improve the overall system of schooling. Through her article, The Early Bird Gets the Bad Grade, she goes through many statistics for why having such early school start times for high schools are dramatically effecting a teens education. Kalish points out that, as many as 28 percent of students fall asleep according to the National Sleep Foundation. She also points out that changing school start times could lead to a decrease in obesity because insufficient sleep leads to issues such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A major point that she establishes is that school districts from Kentucky, Virginia, and Connecticut have tried pushing high school start times back by an hour and have show dramatic increase in attendance as well as a big bump for standardized test scores. Looking through Kalishs, writing I find it that I agree with her on most of her ideals regarding to changing school start times and for why it would be beneficial. Also I love how she uses real life situations to prove her point that the idea that she is proposing has been used before in other states and has shown great success. She doesnt necessarily give every possible option for what a school can do in order to go through the process of changing their busing system or how it could effect the families of the children but for the most, she is spot on for her argumentative points. Schwab, Richard, Dr. "Start School Later in the Morning, Say Sleepy Teens." American Thoracic Society, 20 May 2007. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Dr. Richard Schwab, of the University of Pennsylvania, led a study at Harriton High School in which he found substantially high results of sleep deprivation from over 75% of the observation group. Dr. Schwab states that teens biological clocks (circadian rhythm) are phase shifted compared to that of adults and young adolescents to where their ideal bedtime is around midnight to 1 a.m. which pushes their ideal wake up time to around 7:30-8:30 a.m. which is when melatonin (chemical in brain that makes one sleep) stops producing. Currently, Schwab believes that the start times of high schools and elementary schools should be reversed if it were to be based on ones circadian rhythm cycles. Even if it meant having to change the entire busing system, it would substantially increase ones learning environment. Looking through Dr. Schwabs writing, I found myself nodding my head in agreeance with him on how he uses his daughter as an example, seeing her get up for school noticing how hard it was for her that early in the morning. Through Dr. Schwabs research I agree with all the factual information and can understand it to a better degree due to me being a teen and currently/recently dealing with the issue firsthand.

Strauss, Valerie. "Schools Waking Up to Teens' Unique Sleep Needs." The Washington Post, 10 Jan. 2006. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Valerie Strauss, a Washington Post Staff Writer talks about Professor Mary Carskadons study on the Melatonin levels of teens throughout various times of the day. Coinciding with countless other researchers, Carskadons findings are similar in the idea that teens melatonin levels stay consistently raised through the early parts of the day to where they drop off around 8 or 9 a.m. From this, Strauss builds upon her ideas and gives prime reasons for why school districts should seriously look into changing the start times of their schools to overall improve their scores and improve ones learning environment. Strauss also looks into how changing school start times would affect students jobs and school sports. She found that areas with these adopted start times found that student employers did not necessarily mind the change in times or truly find much of a difference in work ethic or attitude towards working later in the day. Also for sports teams, having less time in the afternoon will be forced to build a stronger work ethic and train harder for games. From reading Strauss work, I believe she is spot on with changing the school start times to be based on ones sleep cycle at various ages. From here, she goes through the many obstacles that the schools would have to face and, in a way, dismantles them and shows how they can work around certain problems that the school may think they would have from switching start times. If I were to position myself behind one of my five sources I would have to say Strauss would be the person I feel that I would agree with on most circumstances because she shows overwhelmingly clear facts for everything she backs up in her argument.