Isai De Leon

Mr. Garcia

English II Honors

30 April 2019

Problem-solution essay
Sleep deprivation is a problem among high school students. According to Smaldone,

Honig, and; bBryne (2007), ”Approximately 15 million American children are affected by

inadequate sleep.”. On average, high school students get one to one and a half fewer hours of

sleep than their recommended 8-10 hours of sleep. If students don’t get their recommended time

of sleep, then their health and academic scores go down. Sleep deprivation is also linked to

mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. This is known to cause a possible decrease

in a student academic performance. If student's academic scores go down then they don’t (do

not: avoid contractions in formal essay) graduate with good grades or don’t graduate at all. Then,

students won’t be able to go to college and get a good paying job, or their dream job. Colleges

would lose money because not as many people would get accepted to college (unless they lower

their standards). That means there will be fewer people in the next generation of the workforce.

This would make more people not have the enough credentials to apply to a job. Meaning major

businesses and people would lose money and would be very unhappy on losing that money

(fragment). This problem of sleep deprivation amongst teens could be resolved with these two

solutions.

The first solution to sleep deprivation amongst teens is starting schools at a later time.

Starting schools at around 8-9 a.m. could benefit high school students in a lot of ways.

According to Goral (2019), Hhigh school students typically go to sleep at around 11 a.m.
Making school start at around 8-9 a.m. would make high school students get the proper amount

of sleep, which is about 9 hours. If high school students get the proper amount of sleep they have

more energy to go to school and are more happier. According to Goral(2019), “school districts

that have already made their school start at 8-9 a.m. have higher graduation rates, reduced

truancy(less absences), and academic performances have improved”. This solution to sleep

deprivation works but there are some flaws.

The first flaw of the solution is figuring out bus routes and schedules for elementary,

middle, and high schools. If high schools were to start at a later time we would have to figure out

the schedules and bus routes for all of the school. According to Goral(2019), “ Younger children

have a different physiology. They get up earlier. They can start school earlier. They need to go to

bed earlier. So a lot of times, all you have to do is flip it. Oftentimes, school districts will bus the

younger elementary school children last and the high school and middle school kids first, and

that's completely antithetical to human physiology. If you just flipped that around, you could go

a long way toward solving that problem.. Meaning these schedules would work for both parties

and they would get their required sleep. Bus routes would pick up elementary school kids first,

middle school kids next, and then high school kids last. Another flaw of this solution is people

have practice for a sports team or a club after school. Most of the practices for a sports team are

around 5 for most practices;sometimes even later. And after school clubs or activities would

remain after school just a little later due to school ending later.

Another solution to resolving sleep deprivation amongst teens is reducing the amount of

homework high school students receive. According to Basinger(2018), “By assigning less
homework, you’ll likely find that students will love learning, get more sleep, enjoy themselves

more with outside activities, be less overworked, and have more time to spend with family.”

With this spare time they could use it to build skills to become a better person. This solution to

sleep deprivation could work but there are some flaws.

The first flaw to reducing homework amongst high school students is that their will be

reduced practice to students for the material the students are learning about. With reduced

practice, students will not most likely not learn the material. Another flaw of reducing

homework amongst high school students is that even if students don’t have a lot of homework,

they will probably still stay up late. (good thinking: if you didn’t go there, I was going to) Teens

generally go to sleep at around 10-11 p.m. most nights because that is how their bodiesbodys

work. Reducing homework would not make them less tired waking up in the morning because

they would still have to wake up at the same time which is around 6 a.m.

I believe starting high schools at later times is a better solution to sleep deprivation

amongst teens than giving less homework to high school students. Naturally high school students

go to sleep at around 10-11 p.m. most nights. Giving students less homework wouldn’t make

them go to sleep earlier because we cannot control their actions. So by starting schools at a later

time, student would get more sleep. With students getting more sleep they are more engaged and

focused in school resulting in better academic scores, better health, and a better environment in

school for students.

Intro: 8
Argument: 8
Organization: 9
Language: 8
Conclusion: 4 (This last paragaph should be a SPES advocating a particular solution)

Source Citation

Goral, Tim. "Sleep now, learn later: Delayed school start times can have a big
impact on student health." District Administration, Feb. 2019, p. 10+.
Academic OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A573714320/AONE?u=ncowl&sid=AONE
&xid=f95836b2. Accessed 30 Apr. 2019.

Basinger, Rachel. “Giving Less Homework May Actually Produce Better Results.”
Classcraft, 2018, Giving less homework may actually produce better results.