LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: High School students and sleep deprivation. “Taken together, the evidence we have on the connection between sleep and academic performance suggests that the problem isn’t merely an issue of student behavior, and the solution probably shouldn’t be confined to lecturing kids on how they ought to be getting a full 8 hours of rest. It’s also a systemic problem with the way we do education. Consider when high school starts, for instance. Studies in Minnesota (and elsewhere) have shown that simply shifting first period from 7:20 to 8:30 makes a difference not only in attendance, but also in how well students do once they get to school.”