01551833

Component

Efforts to reform education, including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top as well as a variety of local efforts, often include provisions that allow, encourage, or require greater numbers of parents to send their children to schools outside of their immediate neighborhoods. How might the resulting increase in the journey to school time affect the way young people spend their time? The authors use data from the American Time Use survey to examine patterns of activity participation among high school students. Using hierarchal cluster analysis they identify eight distinct time use patterns, and find that students who spent more than about 45 minutes commuting to school on the survey day tend to spend less time studying, exercising, or participating in structured extracurricular activities than their peers. This is troubling, given that (1) study, exercise, and structured activities are known to correlate with a number of positive life outcomes and (2) teens whose time use patterns are characterized by long commutes to school come disproportionately from low-income and minority households. The authors conclude that education reforms that may increase the journey to school duration should explicitly consider the possible effects on how teens spend their time outside of the classroom, particularly among already disadvantaged students.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD50 Environmental Justice in Transportation.

01550057

15-2239

English

0000-0003-0556-924X

17p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Activity choices; Commuting; High school students; School trips; Time duration

Activity participation

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-2239

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 12:47PM