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Schools Seen as Out of Sync With Teens

Driving her bleary-eyed daughter to school at 7:20 a.m. one day this spring, Lanning Taliaferro was bemoaning a threat of violence that had closed a nearby school. Her daughter Anne Lange, a junior at Ossining High School in Ossining, N.Y., had a different take on the incident: "I wish someone would do that here so I could get some sleep."

Anne and her sleep-deprived peers have been championed by a growing band of researchers who protest the early starting times of many high schools. The scientists contend that the schedules fail to take into account the sleep rhythms that naturally accompany adolescents' maturing bodies.

Yet as compelling as parents and the news media have found those conclusions, research into the sleep patterns of teenagers forms just one part of a larger inquiry. Specialists in various fields are looking at the innate, or at least the universal, needs of adolescents and asking whether the nation's high...