Currently only 15% of high schools start at 8:30 or later, with 40% of high schools starting before 8:00 (Schute, Nancy). How do schools that start at 8:30 or later fare compared to those that don't? A study conducted by Dr. Kayla Wahlstrom on changing school start times from 7:15 am to 8:40 am on 18,000 students in the Minneapolis Public School District showed better grades, higher attendance, decreased cases of depression, and lower rates of school dropout (Rosenberg, Russell). Only by postponing the start time by one hour and 25 minutes was it possible to increase the students' overall academic performance. Delaying start times by just one hour increases standardized test scores in both math and reading by about 3 percentile points (Edwards, Finley). This may seem like a small comparison, but it's actually a pretty big improvement for standardization