Is the school day running at the wrong hours?

One day I was joking with my students and said that I'd love for the school day to be from 8 until 3 but I wished it was 8 PM until 3 AM. I wasn't sure what the reaction from the students would be but interestingly enough they loved the idea. There have been some studies and reports that recommend the high school school day start later in the day because teen sleep patterns just don't work well with the normal schedule.
And yet even though studies show that younger kids work better earlier and older kids work better later most school systems start the older kids earlier in the day. It is all just the reverse of how, in theory, it should be. The fact of the matter is that the high school day is optomized for sports and not academics. That seems wrong to me.
One last data point. I found this article about online summer school in the Clarion Ledger. One of the most interesting parts of the article is that they track when during the day students are doing their school work online. Most of the work is being done between 10 PM and 3 AM. Now isn't that interesting?