California law that helped students sleep more before school is getting high marks

One might think — or at least hope — that scientific research would be an important factor as politicians contemplate changes in public policy.

Alas, it’s generally given no more weight than other inputs, such as public opinion or political pressure from affected interests. It’s cited when it bolsters proposed changes and often ignored when it questions those changes.

Seven years ago, somewhat miraculously, the California Legislature required school days to start a bit later, implementing research findings that more sleep was vital to students’ welfare and overcoming opposition from many parents and most of the education establishment.

The issue had been kicking around for years, debated in academic circles, in the media and in the Legislature. While the contending factions generally agreed that children and teenagers needed more sleep, the sticking point was whether the state should mandate later starting times or leave it to parents and local school systems.

Opponents said later starts would upset such things as extracurricular activities and parents’ dropping their children off at school on their way to work. In brief, their objections were more about the effects on adults than the effects on kids.

“Not only would mandating a later start time across the board not have the desired effect, it would impose a hardship on too many working families,” Orange County’s then-superintendent of schools, Al Mijares, wrote in a 2019 guest commentary for CalMatters, as a bill mandating later start times was being considered. “In fact, this bill would disproportionately burden students whose socio-economic status is already a significant educational barrier.”

However, a legislative staff analysis of the issue put it this way: “The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are among the organizations and experts that have reported on the harm being done to the physical and emotional health of adolescents due to the sleep deprivation caused by such developmentally-misaligned school hours.

“Similarly, researchers report that academic success and school attendance is greatly improved by later starting school days.”

The Legislature passed a bill in 2018 during Jerry Brown’s last year as governor, but he vetoed it, saying, “This is a one-size-fits-all approach that’s opposed by teachers and school boards. Several schools have already moved to later start times. Others prefer beginning the school day earlier. These are the types of decisions best handled in the local community.”

Brown was never a father. But his successor, Gavin Newsom, had four children, and when the same bill reached him in 2019, he signed it, thus requiring most middle schools to start classes no earlier than 8 a.m. and high schools no earlier than 8:30 a.m., beginning with the 2022-23 school year.

The debate continued as local school systems and parents adjusted to the mandate. But whatever the logistical effects may have been, a new study concludes that California’s first-in-the-nation decree is having positive effects on kids’ educations.

That’s important because, as we all should be aware, California lags in academic achievement vis-à-vis other states.

Four academic researchers examined the data and, in a report published in May by the National Bureau of Economic Research, revealed that students are getting more sleep, having fewer mental health issues and are doing better on math and English tests.

The researchers used data from several sources to chart the trends between 2022 and 2025 and found that while improvements were noticed across all subgroups, they were especially evident among boys and Latino students.

“Rest and sleep are incredibly important in the function of schools,” Osea Giuntella, an author of the report, told the Los Angeles Times.

That should settle the matter once and for all.