Regardless of what time school actually started, “having math in the first two periods of the school day instead of the last two periods increases the math GPA of students” as well as their scores on California’s statewide tests. While Pope says it isn’t clear exactly why this is happening, “the results tend to show that students are more productive earlier in the school day, especially in math” and that schools could boost learning “with a simple rearrangement of when tasks are performed.”20
