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The four-day school week: Research shows benefits and consequences

To save money and help recruit teachers, many U.S. schools are taking Mondays or Fridays off. We look at research on how the four-day school week affects student test scores, attendance and behavior.

four day school week research

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by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource September 6, 2023

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/education/four-day-school-week-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

We updated this piece on the four-day school week, originally published in June 2018, to include new figures, research and other information on Sept. 6, 2023.

Just over 2,100 schools in 26 states have switched to a four-day school week, often in hopes of recruiting teachers, saving money and boosting student attendance, according to the most recent estimate from the Four-Day School Week policy research team at Oregon State University.

Small, rural schools facing teacher shortages have led the trend, choosing to take Mondays or Fridays off and giving teachers and students a three-day weekend every week. To make up for the lost day of instruction, school officials tack time onto the remaining four days.

In places where schools have made the change, school district leaders have marveled at the resulting spikes in applications from teachers and other job seekers.

“The number of teacher applications that we’ve received have gone up more than 4-fold,” Dale Herl , superintendent of the Independence, Missouri school district, told CBS News last month .

Independence, which serves about 14,000 students outside Kansas City, introduced the new schedule when classes there resumed last month. In all, 30% of Missouri school districts now have a four-day school week, The Kansas City Star reported recently .

Schools nationwide faced teacher shortages long before the COVID-19 pandemic. But vacancies grew as the virus, which has killed 1.1 million Americans to date , spread.

In the spring before the pandemic, a total of 662 public school districts used the schedule – up more than 600% since 1999, Paul Thompson and Emily Morton , leading researchers in this field, write in a 2021 essay for the Brookings Institution. That number climbed to 876 during the 2022-23 academic year, Thompson and Morton told The Journalist’s Resource in email messages.

Brent Maddin , executive director of the Next Education Workforce project at Arizona State University, told The New York Times the pandemic has made many teachers feel more undervalued.

“If we’re serious about recruiting people into the profession, and retaining people in the profession, in addition to things like compensation we need to be focused on the working conditions,” he told the Times.

Scholars are still trying to understand the impact of cutting the school week by one day. Most studies focus on a single state or group of states, so their findings cannot be generalized to all schools on a four-day schedule. The research to date indicates:

  • The amount of time students spend in class varies from state to state.
  • Some schools offer less instructional time during a four-day school week than they did during a five-day week.
  • There’s limited cost savings, considering employee salaries and benefits make up the bulk of school expenses. In a 2021 analysis , Thompson estimates schools save 1% to 2% by shortening the school week by a day.
  • The impact of the condensed schedule differs depending on a range of factors, including the number of hours schools operate and how they structure their daily schedules. Recent research generally finds small drops in student achievement.
  • Staff morale improved under a four-day school week.
  • High school bullying and fighting declined.

“For journalists looking for a definitive answer to [the question] ‘Are four-day school weeks a good or bad thing?’, I would caution that it is still too early to tell,” Thompson, an associate professor of economics who is part of Oregon State’s Four-Day School Week policy research team, wrote to The Journalist’s Resource.

Both he and Morton urged journalists to explain that the amount of time schools dedicate to student learning makes a big difference.

“I think too often the importance of instructional time for the impacts of the policy is missed,” Morton, a researcher at the American Institutes of Research, wrote to JR. “It’s pretty critical to the story that districts with longer days (who are possibly delivering equal or more instructional time to their students than they were on a five-day week) are not seeing the same negative impacts that districts with shorter days are seeing.”

Keep reading to learn more about the research. We’ll update this collection periodically.

——————–

Impacts of the Four-Day School Week on Early Elementary Achievement Paul N. Thompson; et al. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2nd Quarter 2023.

Summary: This study is the first to examine the four-day school week’s impact on elementary schools’ youngest students. Researchers looked at how children in Oregon who went to school four days a week in kindergarten later performed in math and English Language Arts when they reached the third grade. What they found: Overall, there were “minimal and non-significant differences” in the test scores of third-graders who attended kindergarten on a four-day schedule between 2014 and 2016 and third-graders who went to kindergarten on a five-day schedule during the same period.

When the researchers studied individual groups of students, though, they noticed small differences. For example, when they looked only at children who had scored highest on their pre-kindergarten assessments of letter sounds, letter names and early math skills, they learned that kids who went to kindergarten four days a week scored a little lower on third-grade tests than those who had gone to kindergarten five days a week.

The researchers write that they find no statistically significant evidence of detrimental four-day school week achievement impacts, and even some positive impacts” for minority students, lower-income students,  special education students, students enrolled in English as a Second Language programs and students who scored in the lower half on pre-kindergarten assessments.

There are multiple reasons why lower-achieving students might be less affected by school schedules than high achievers, the researchers point out. For example, higher-achieving students “may miss out on specialized instruction — such as gifted and enrichment activities — that they would have had time to receive under a five-day school schedule,” they write.

Effects of 4-Day School Weeks on Older Adolescents: Examining Impacts of the Schedule on Academic Achievement, Attendance, and Behavior in High School Emily Morton. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2022.

Summary: Oklahoma high schools saw less fighting and bullying among students after switching from a five-day-a-week schedule to a four-day schedule, this study finds. Fighting declined by 0.79 incidents per 100 students and bullying dropped by 0.65 incidents per 100 students.

The other types of student discipline problems examined, including weapons possession, vandalism and truancy, did not change, according to the analysis, based on a variety of student and school data collected through 2019 from the Oklahoma State Department of Education and National Center for Education Statistics.

“Results indicate that 4-day school weeks decrease per-pupil bullying incidents by approximately 39% and per-pupil fighting incidents by approximately 31%,” writes the author, Emily Morton , a research scientist at NWEA, a nonprofit research organization formerly known as the Northwest Evaluation Association.

Morton did not investigate what caused the reduction in bullying and fighting. She did find that moving to a four-day schedule had “no detectable effect” on high school attendance or student scores on the ACT college-entrance exam.

Only a Matter of Time? The Role of Time in School on Four-Day School Week Achievement Impacts Paul N. Thompson and Jason Ward. Economics of Education Review, February 2022.

Summary: Student test scores in math and language arts dipped at some schools that adopted a four-day schedule but did not change at others, according to this analysis of school schedule switches in 12 states.

Researchers discovered “small reductions” in test scores for students in grades 3 through 8 at schools offering what the researchers call “low time in school.” These schools operate an average of 29.95 hours during the four-day week. The decline in test scores is described in terms of standard deviation , not units of measurement such as points or percentages.

At schools offering “middle time in school” — an average of 31.03 hours over four days — test scores among kids in grades 3 through 8 did not change, write the researchers, Paul N. Thompson , an associate professor of economics at Oregon State University, and Jason Ward , an associate economist at the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization.

Scores also did not change at schools providing “high time in school,” or 32.14 hours over a four-day school week, on average.

When describing this paper’s findings, it’s inaccurate to say researchers found that test scores dropped as a result of schools adopting a four-day schedule. It is correct to say test scores dropped, on average, across the schools the researchers studied. But it’s worth noting the relationship between test scores and the four-day school week differs according to the average number of hours those schools operate each week.

For this analysis, researchers examined school districts in states that allowed four-day school weeks during the 2008-2009 academic year through the 2017-2018 academic years. They chose to focus on the 12 states where four-day school weeks were most common. The data they used came from the Stanford Educational Data Archive and “a proprietary, longitudinal, national database” that tracked the use of four-day school weeks from 2009 to 2018.

The researchers write that their findings “suggest that four-day school weeks that operate with adequate levels of time in school have no clear negative effect on achievement and, instead, that it is operating four-day school weeks in a low-time-in-school environment that should be cautioned against.”

Three Midwest Rural School Districts’ First Year Transition to the Four Day School Week Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe-Zarain. The Rural Educator, 2019.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of parents who live in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data from 584 parents in three rural Missouri school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis identifies significant differences in the perceptions of parents classified by the age of children, special education identification, and free and reduced lunch status. Strong parental support for the four-day school week was identified in all demographic areas investigated; however, families with only elementary aged children and families with students receiving special education services were less supportive than other groups.”

Juvenile Crime and the Four-Day School Week Stefanie Fischer and Daniel Argyle. Economics of Education Review, 2018.

Abstract: “We leverage the adoption of a four-day school week across schools within the jurisdiction of rural law enforcement agencies in Colorado to examine the causal link between school attendance and youth crime. Those affected by the policy attend school for the same number of hours each week as students on a typical five-day week; however, treated students do not attend school on Friday. This policy allows us to learn about two aspects of the school-crime relationship that have previously been unstudied: one, the effects of a frequent and permanent schedule change on short-term crime, and two, the impact that school attendance has on youth crime in rural areas. Our difference-in-difference estimates show that following policy adoption, agencies containing students on a four-day week experience about a 20 percent increase in juvenile criminal offenses, where the strongest effect is observed for property crime.”

Staff Perspectives of the Four-Day School Week: A New Analysis of Compressed School Schedules Jon Turner , Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe – Zarian . Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2018.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of staff that work in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data from 136 faculty and staff members in three rural Missouri school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis identifies strong support of the four-day school week model from both certified educational staff and classified support staff perspectives. All staff responded that the calendar change had improved staff morale, and certified staff responded that the four-day week had a positive impact on what is taught in classrooms and had increased academic quality. Qualitative analysis identifies staff suggestions for schools implementing the four-day school week including the importance of community outreach prior to implementation. No significant differences were identified between certified and classified staff perspectives. Strong staff support for the four-day school week was identified in all demographic areas investigated. Findings support conclusions made in research in business and government sectors that identify strong employee support of a compressed workweek across all work categories.”

The Economics of a Four-Day School Week: Community and Business Leaders’ Perspectives Jon Turner , Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe – Zarian . Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2018.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools in the United States for decades and the number of schools moving to the four-day school week is growing. In many rural communities, the school district is the largest regional employer which provides a region with permanent, high paying jobs that support the local economy. This study collects data from 71 community and business leaders in three rural school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis is used to investigate the perceptions of community and business leaders related to the economic impact upon their businesses and the community and the impact the four-day school week has had upon perception of quality of the school district. Significant differences were identified between community/business leaders that currently have no children in school as compared to community/business leaders with children currently enrolled in four-day school week schools. Overall, community/business leaders were evenly divided concerning the economic impact on their businesses and the community. Community/business leaders’ perceptions of the impact the four-day school week was also evenly divided concerning the impact on the quality of the school district. Slightly more negative opinions were identified related to the economic impact on the profitability of their personal businesses which may impact considerations by school leaders. Overall, community/business leaders were evenly divided when asked if they would prefer their school district return to the traditional five-day week school calendar.”

Impact of a 4-Day School Week on Student Academic Performance, Food Insecurity, and Youth Crime Report from the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s Office of Partner Engagement, 2017.

Summary: “A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) utilizes a variety of data sources and analytic methods to evaluate the consequences of proposed or implemented policy on health. A rapid (HIA) was chosen to research the impact of the four-day school week on youth. The shift to a four-day school week was a strategy employed by many school districts in Oklahoma to address an $878 million budget shortfall, subsequent budget cuts, and teacher shortages. The HIA aimed to assess the impact of the four-day school week on student academic performance, food insecurity, and juvenile crime … An extensive review of literature and stakeholder engagement on these topic areas was mostly inconclusive or did not reveal any clear-cut evidence to identify effects of the four-day school week on student outcomes — academic performance, food insecurity or juvenile crime. Moreover, there are many published articles about the pros and cons of the four-day school week, but a lack of comprehensive research is available on the practice.”

Does Shortening the School Week Impact Student Performance? Evidence from the Four-Day School Week D. Mark Anderson and Mary Beth Walker. Education Finance and Policy, 2015.

Abstract: “School districts use a variety of policies to close budget gaps and stave off teacher layoffs and furloughs. More schools are implementing four-day school weeks to reduce overhead and transportation costs. The four-day week requires substantial schedule changes as schools must increase the length of their school day to meet minimum instructional hour requirements. Although some schools have indicated this policy eases financial pressures, it is unknown whether there is an impact on student outcomes. We use school-level data from Colorado to investigate the relationship between the four-day week and academic performance among elementary school students. Our results generally indicate a positive relationship between the four-day week and performance in reading and mathematics. These findings suggest there is little evidence that moving to a four-day week compromises student academic achievement. This research has policy relevance to the current U.S. education system, where many school districts must cut costs.”

Other resources

  • The Education Commission of the States offers a 50-state comparison of public school students’ instructional time requirements. For example, students in Colorado are required to be in school for a minimum of 160 days each academic year while in Vermont, the minimum is 175 days and in North Carolina, it’s 185.
  • The State of the American Teacher project offers insights into how teachers feel about their jobs and the education field as a whole. In early 2022, RAND Corp. surveyed a nationally representative sample of teachers, asking questions on topics such as job-related stress, school safety, COVID-19 mitigation policies and career plans. Survey results show that 56% of teachers who answered a question about their attitude toward their job “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “The stress and disappointments involved in teaching aren’t really worth it.” Meanwhile, 78% “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “I don’t seem to have as much enthusiasm now as I did when I began teaching.”
  • Opinions about the four-day school week vary among school board members, district-level administrators, school principals and teachers. These organizations can provide insights: the Schools Superintendents Association , National School Boards Association , National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals .

Looking for more research on public schools? Check out our other collections of research on student lunches , school uniforms,   teacher salaries and teacher misconduct .

About The Author

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Denise-Marie Ordway

4-day school weeks: Educational innovation or detriment?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, evidence suggests instructional time makes the difference, paul thompson and paul thompson associate professor, school of public policy - oregon state university @paul_n_thompson emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea @emily_r_morton.

July 12, 2021

Four-day school week schedules are becoming an increasingly common experience for America’s rural youth. These schedules typically involve increasing the length of the school day four days per week and “dropping” the fifth day. In the spring before the COVID-19 pandemic, 662 districts were using the schedule across 24 states, an increase of over 600% since 1999.

During the pandemic, many additional schools in both rural and non-rural areas adopted alternative school schedules, such as the four-day school week. These schedules generally altered the amounts and proportions of synchronous (in-seat) and asynchronous (at-home) learning students received. School administrators have described the pandemic as a “ catalyst ” for necessary innovations to school schedules and in-seat learning time.

Most of these changes were unprecedented, and their effects on students’ learning and well-being beyond the pandemic remain largely unknown. However, emergent research on the four-day school week may allow us to better assess its effectiveness as a school model in post-pandemic educational policy.

Recent survey findings show that four-day school weeks have been adopted as a way to alleviate budgetary issues, attract teachers, and reduce student absences—issues that the pandemic exacerbated for many districts. Although conditions may be ripe for more schools to turn to such a model in the wake of the pandemic, the research suggests that most of these aims fail to be realized.

Here, we describe the key takeaways from this emerging body of evidence.

Shorter weeks may attract teachers, but don’t expect major cost savings or attendance gains

National and state-specific research finds minimal impacts of the four-day school week on overall cost savings, but it suggests that four-day school weeks may allow school districts greater resource flexibility in the wake of budget shortfalls. The four-day school week may also be used as a form of non-monetary compensation to facilitate instructional cost reductions, as research finds that teachers generally prefer it .

In terms of student attendance, the research to date finds minimal impacts on measures of recorded daily attendance . However, some educators reason  that that the four-day week could improve attendance in more nuanced ways undetected by traditional measures of attendance. Most notably, the schedule could decrease the class time that rural students miss for lengthy travel to appointments or extracurricular activities by shifting many of these activities to the off-day.

Maintaining instructional time key for mitigating academic harm

A key concern surrounding the four-day school week is the impact on students’ academic progress. While the evidence regarding overall student achievement impacts is mixed, recent evidence has found primarily negative achievement impacts of four-day school weeks in Oklahoma and Oregon . This has led to a prevailing perception that four-day school weeks are bad for student achievement, a sentiment that was articulated in a recent Education Next piece on the Oregon study . However, the Oregon four-day school week experience is hardly the norm. A more nuanced take of the evidence would suggest that the effects on achievement may depend on whether instructional time stays mostly intact.

In the Oregon study , for example, the stark reductions in math and reading achievement were associated with reductions of three to four hours in weekly time in school. Recent national evidence also suggests that the schools where four-day weeks led to reductions in learning time see the most negative outcomes on student academic progress, with little to no impact on achievement among schools that maintain adequate learning time. Thus, structuring the four-day school week to maintain adequate learning time seems to be the key to avoiding student learning loss and presents a path forward for schools considering this schedule.

Across the country, students on four-day weeks spend about 85 fewer hours per year at school. Some of that time is likely to be lost instructional time, but a portion of it is also non-instructional time, like lunch, recess, and hallway passing time. It’s theoretically possible for a district to maintain its instructional time if it sufficiently extends its school days and reduces the proportion of time spent on non-instructional activities. But in practice, the schedule changes we observe show most schools are reducing instructional time to facilitate the switch.

Few schools with four-day weeks have historically provided any in-school or asynchronous learning opportunities on the off-day. Approximately 50% of schools report being completely closed and only 30% offered any sort of remedial or enrichment activities with any frequency (e.g., regularly or as-needed).

More to worry about than just achievement losses

Lost exposure to the school environment doesn’t only mean missing in-person academic instruction, but also reduced access to school-meal programs, physical activity opportunities, and structured social interactions with peers, teachers, and administrators. A recent study from Colorado finds mixed evidence on health outcomes in schools using a four-day week, but much more research is needed to understand various potential impacts of the schedule on student health.

Worries about child care and unsupervised children on the off-day also abound in discussions of four-day school week implementation. Evidence from Colorado suggests that adolescent students may engage in more criminal activity as a result of the off-day, while a multi-state study found that maternal employment and labor market earnings were reduced as a result of the four-day school week. Despite this evidence, much more research is needed to understand the impact of the four-day school week on family dynamics, relationships, and time use.

The future of four-day school weeks

In the wake of the forced educational innovation during the pandemic, many schools will reconsider their schedules, their policies on in-seat learning time, and synchronous versus asynchronous learning. These decisions could have long-term implications for students’ achievement and well-being.

For districts that have adopted or are interested in adopting four-day weeks, offering asynchronous learning on the off-day could be a creative way for districts to maintain instructional time. Asynchronous learning has been a staple of many pandemic-related educational provision options and, while likely inferior to in-person instruction (as the pandemic learning-loss research suggests), it could be seen as a beneficial supplement to regular in-person school instruction in a post-pandemic educational climate. Incorporating at-home, off-day learning could allow school districts to experience the potential benefits of the four-day school week model while helping to mitigate the achievement losses if in-person time in school is to be reduced.

Increased internet infrastructure, especially in rural and remote areas, has facilitated online synchronous and asynchronous instruction during the pandemic. And while there is worry that some of the new infrastructure investment may be temporary , continued long-term investments in connecting remote communities–as suggested in the recent Biden administration’s “ American Jobs Plan ”–may make at-home learning more feasible in the areas where four-day school weeks have generally been adopted.

If four-day school weeks continue to be implemented nationwide, issues related to shifting the burdens of food provision and child care on the off-day onto families are likely to remain substantial in many areas. However, continuing to expand “grab-and-go meal” programs that have been a staple of school-meal provision during the pandemic could be a promising strategy for providing school meals on the off-day for students on four-day weeks in the future. (The USDA recently extended these programs through the 2022 academic year .) The American Jobs Plan also outlines expansions to child-care infrastructure, potentially paving the way for more off-day child-care options for parents in these four-day school week communities.

For better or for worse, four-day school weeks–once dubbed a “ troubling contagion ”–appear to be a fixture of the post-pandemic educational landscape. The evidence to date suggests that how schools structure the four-day schedule is a key determinant in this model’s impact on learning outcomes. Minimizing the loss of instructional time appears to be the best chance at avoiding negative results, though more research is needed to understand the full scope of impacts on students, families, and communities. It also remains to be seen whether other educational innovations in the wake of the pandemic–including remote learning opportunities, greater access to meal programs, and off-day child care–will further the effectiveness of the four-day school week in a post-pandemic world.

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A Four-Day School Week?

  • Posted June 28, 2018
  • By Denise-Marie Ordway

Photo of a calendar

To save money and help with teacher recruitment, numerous school districts in the United States have decided to give students and employees Fridays off. An estimated 560 districts in 25 states have allowed at least some of their schools to adopt a four-day week, with most moving to a Monday-to-Thursday schedule, according to the National Conference of State Legislators . Generally, schools make up for the lost day by adding extra time to the remaining four days.

Four states — Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma and Oregon — are leading the trend, which is especially popular in rural areas. More than 60 school systems in Montana alone were using a compressed schedule in 2016-17, state records show. Meanwhile, four-day scheduling has spread so quickly across New Mexico that lawmakers have placed a moratorium on the practice until state leaders can study its impact on student performance and working-class families.

"If local leaders are lucky, graduates of these schools won’t be any less well educated than their siblings who went to school all week. But, in an environment where young rural adults already suffer from isolation and low economic opportunity, the shorter school week could exacerbate their problems." – Paul T. Hill

Critics point out that the change can be tough on lower-income parents, who may have trouble paying for childcare on the day their kids no longer have class. Also, low-income students rely on public schools for almost half their meals — breakfasts and lunches during the week. Paul T. Hill , a research professor at the University of Washington Bothell who founded the Center on Reinventing Public Education, has argued that while some adults like the new schedule, it could end up hurting rural students.

“The idea has proved contagious because adults like it: Teachers have more free time, and stay-at-home parents like the convenience of taking kids to doctors and doing errands on Friday,” Hill co-wrote in a piece published on the Brown Center Chalkboard blog in 2017. “If local leaders are lucky, graduates of these schools won’t be any less well educated than their siblings who went to school all week. But, in an environment where young rural adults already suffer from isolation and low economic opportunity, the shorter school week could exacerbate their problems.”

It appears that while a truncated schedule does cut costs, the savings is small. A 2011 report from the Education Commission of the States examined six school districts and found that switching to a four-day schedule helped them shave their budgets by 0.4 percent to 2.5 percent. “In the Duval [County, Florida] school district, moving to a four-day week produced only a 0.7 percent savings, yet that resulted in a budget reduction of $7 million. That $7 million could be used to retain up to 70 teaching positions,” the report states.

See below for recent journal articles and government reports, as well as links to other resources, including a 50-state comparison of local laws outlining student instructional time requirements.

Excerpted from an article by  Journalist's Resource , a project at the  Harvard Kennedy School 's  Shorenstein Center  on Media, Politics and Public Policy . Read the  original piece .

Additional Resources

  • Juvenile Crime and the Four-Day School Week
  • Staff Perspectives of the Four-Day School Week: A New Analysis of Compressed School Schedules
  • The Economics of a Four-Day School Week: Community and Business Leaders’ Perspectives
  • Impact of a 4-Day School Week on Student Academic Performance, Food Insecurity, and Youth Crime
  • Does Shortening the School Week Impact Student Performance? Evidence from the Four-Day School Week
  • A 50-state comparison of students’ instructional time requirement, from the Education Commission of the States

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4 Studies to Know on 4-Day School Weeks

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In the last decade, shortened school weeks have been adopted in more than 1,600 schools in 650 school districts nationwide . Initially seen as a way to cut costs, rural districts in particular have lauded the model as a way to draw in teachers and students looking for more-flexible schedules.

However, implementation of the four-day schedules has varied significantly, and in recent years, the model has sparked heated debates over whether it is consistent with efforts to regain academic ground lost during the pandemic.

In Oklahoma, for example, districts can schedule fewer than 180 days in a school year, as long as they continue to provide 1,080 instructional hours, maintain student academic achievement, and show cost savings—criteria most districts have been unable to meet since the pandemic. That’s led to fights between state lawmakers who want to do away with the shortened weeks and rural education leaders who back them.

As educators and policymakers continue to debate the use of shortened school weeks, here are four studies to know about how they can affect students and schools.

1. Maintaining instructional time is critical

At first blush, a 2022 study of the effects of shortened school schedules in 12 states seems pretty bleak. Nationwide, researchers found significantly lower math and English/language arts achievement at schools using four-day weeks during the time period from 2009-2018 than in schools using a traditional schedule. However, when study author Paul Thompson, a public policy research professor at Oregon State University, and his colleagues dug deeper, they found instructional time made the difference for student achievement. They found no significant differences in academic achievement between districts that used five-day schedules and those that used four-day schedules, as long as the districts with shorter weeks maintained a high or medium amount of instructional time for students.

The significant drops in math and reading achievement were concentrated in districts that had the least instructional time after moving from a five-day to four-day weekly schedule.

“Low time in school in conjunction with the four-day school week appears to be extremely problematic for academic achievement and school districts and states should be cognizant of these negative consequences,” Thompson concluded.

He suggested that schools could experiment with carving out more teaching time through limiting recess, lunch, or study periods, but should be careful to also track how these types of schedule changes affect student engagement and achievement.

2. Cost savings may be in the details rather than the bottom line

While some rural districts have been using shortened schedules for decades, the biggest momentum for the model came following the 2008 recession, when cash-strapped rural districts were looking for ways to cut costs.

That’s still one of the main reasons districts cite for moving to a four-day week, but a nationwide study by the Education Commission of the States suggests education leaders should not hope for a budget miracle from schedule changes. The ECS found that districts using shortened weeks trimmed on average .4 percent to 2.5 percent off their budgets.

A more recent study of Oklahoma districts specifically found those that moved to four-day weeks saved about 2 percent of their budgets, driven by savings in noninstructional costs such as operations, transportation, and food services.

3. Shortened schedules may equal calmer schools

Shortened school weeks may have made Oklahoma middle and high schools calmer and safer, though the model has done nothing to improve students’ attendance or academic achievement.

A study , in the journal of Educational Research and Policy Analysis, tracked student performance over a dozen years and attendance and discipline over nine years, as 411 districts across the state adopted the four-day model for at least some of their schools.

After moving to shortened weeks, schools saw on average a 39 percent drop in bullying and a 31 percent decline in the number of fights and assaults on campus. To put that into perspective, that’s a nearly twice as large an effect as the average 20 percent drop in bullying behaviors seen for common school-based anti-bullying programs.

“You hear over and over again, from students, from teachers, that kids are happier, that there’s increased morale, there’s improved school climate, there’s positive effects on school discipline,” said Emily Morton, a research scientist at the Center for School and Student Progress at NWEA and the author of the study.

However, shortened schedules had no effect on discipline problems related to drugs or alcohol, vandalism, truancy, school bus misbehavior, or bringing weapons to school. Likewise, the study found no significant difference in SAT scores, attendance rates and truancy, or disciplinary infractions for vandalism for high school students who attended under shortened weeks.

4. Urban districts may take a hit

While many rural districts have favored shortened weeks, one of the first urban school districts to adopt the model—School District 27J outside Denver—saw academic and community downsides .

A study released in January found that two years after making the schedule change, the district’s implementation costs outweighed its cost savings, while student academic achievement fell significantly. Moreover, retention was 3 percentage points lower for teachers—and 5 percentage points lower for veteran teachers of 15 years or more—in schools with four-day weeks than in similar ones with traditional five-day weeks.

“This finding does not necessarily mean that teachers do not value a [four-day week]. Instead, it suggests that the teachers that [left the district] were unwilling to trade off the higher salaries offered by outside opportunities for the benefits offered by a [four-day week schedule],” researchers concluded.

The researchers found local home values dropped 4 percent in the communities with four-day school weeks compared to those just over the border in a different district with traditional schedules. As a result, homeowners paid $700 to $6,000 more than they would have in property taxes.

Takeaways for administrators

The emerging research suggests school and district leaders should think carefully if they choose to implement shortened school weeks, said Morton of NWEA. She recommended that leaders:

  • Get community buy-in for the four-day schedule and communicate regularly with both parent and business stakeholders to identify the supports needed. “If parents aren’t gonna be able to support their kids on that extra day, it’s going to be a huge financial hardship for families,” she said.
  • Audit instructional minutes for each subject and commit to maintaining or increasing instructional time even with fewer days. “Superintendents need to know that on average we do see negative effects of this schedule,” she said, “so make sure that you are not shortchanging your kids on the amount of time that they’re getting in those subjects.”
  • Closely monitor student achievement and engagement and compare the data both to prior district data and those of surrounding districts. “We’ve seen some evidence suggesting negative effects may compound over time, ... so district leaders need to be very attentive to their own students and, if there’s evidence that this is negatively impacting students, ... switch back,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in the March 08, 2023 edition of Education Week as Four Studies to Know About 4-Day School Schedules

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The rise of the four-day school week

Sarah Gonzalez, photographed for NPR, 2 August 2022, in New York, NY. Photo by Mamadi Doumbouya for NPR.

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Mary Childs, photographed for NPR, 2 August 2022, in New York, NY. Photo by Mamadi Doumbouya for NPR.

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Molly Messick

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Sam Yellowhorse Kesler

An empty classroom is seen at Hollywood High School.

Right now, a lot of school districts across the country are making a pretty giant change to the way public education usually works. Facing teacher shortages and struggling to fill vacant spots, they are finding a new recruitment tool: the four-day school week.

Those districts are saying to teachers, "You can have three-day weekends all the time, and we won't cut your pay." As of this fall, around 900 school districts – that's about 7% of all districts in the U.S. – now have school weeks that are just four days long.

And this isn't the first time a bunch of schools have scaled back to four days, so there is a lot of data to lean on to figure out how well it works.

In this episode, teachers love the four-day school week, and it turns out even parents love it, too. But is it good for students?

This episode was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler with help from Willa Rubin. It was edited by Molly Messick and engineered by Maggie Luthar. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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What a difference a day makes: the argument for a four-day school week

A study suggests giving students an extra day off improves learning. It could also be a step in the right direction for teacher workloads

The call for a four-day working week is not new. At a time when more and more people say they feel overworked, and increasing numbers are making the switch to part-time hours, the idea has been proposed as a means of tackling both stress and unemployment .

But schools have largely been left out of the debate so far. The idea of students only coming in four days a week rings alarm bells for many who fear a drop in academic performance.

As a former teacher, I was intrigued by a study published this summer, which suggests that pupils’ grades could actually improve with a shorter school week.

The research, conducted by D Mark Anderson of Montana State University and Mary Beth Walker of Georgia State University, looks at the reading and maths results of students in the fourth and fifth grade (years 5 and 6). The schools in question rearranged the week by cutting one day – typically a Monday or Friday – and adding the extra hours to the other four. Teachers’ total working time (and salaries) remained the same.

The four-day school week for students in Colorado was introduced as a cost-saving measure, and the improvements in academic results were the opposite of what had been anticipated, Walker explains.

“We thought that especially for the younger, elementary school kids, longer days on a shorter school week would hurt their academic performance because their attention spans are shorter,” she says.

“We also thought a longer weekend would give them more of an opportunity to forget what they had learned.”

But the results show that, even for these young students, a four-day school week had a statistically significant positive impact on maths scores (around 7% extra on average), and a possible positive impact on reading scores (although this was not deemed statistically significant by the study’s testing standards).

Walker offers a number of possible explanations, including the idea that longer days might give teachers an opportunity to explore different instructional processes. The study also speculates that a four-day week could lower absenteeism, so that students who have dental appointments, for example, might be able to put them off until Friday and not miss school.

The study’s results are yet to be replicated and critics have raised concerns – particularly about how much subject knowledge students will be able to retain and how well they will be able to concentrate over longer days.

But as someone who taught for 10 years, I can certainly see the potential benefits. It would give young people some much-needed breathing space and, in schools where the fifth day was used for extracurricular activities, students wouldn’t have to choose between academic study and other pursuits.

There is one clear drawback, however: the increased difficulty for parents dealing with the logistics and costs of childcare. This would need to be taken into consideration, but if working weeks were shortened for everyone, then families would actually get to spend more time together.

The benefits for teachers should not be overlooked either. Those who took part in the study reported greater efficiency and better collaboration when they used the fifth day to plan together, with some schools even finding that staff turnover was reduced.

As a teacher who worked part-time (three and four days a week) and full-time, I can see the advantages of having a day free from student contact. Having greater flexibility for personal appointments and meetings would certainly have made my life as a middle manager much easier.

Perhaps most exciting is the potential to use the fifth day to provide good-quality continued professional development and support for teachers where it is (sometimes desperately) needed. Of course, schools would need to be careful that the fifth day didn’t simply become filled with bureaucracy, but it should be possible to prevent that through open discussion with senior management.

The current education system is made up of long stretches of intense work, interspersed with periods of what is laughingly called holiday. A shortened week could improve teachers’ work-life balance by allowing more time for marking, planning and preparation, meaning that holidays and weekends could be times of real rest.

Although workload still needs to be given serious thought, a four-day week could be a step in the right direction for teachers and, the evidence suggests, for their students too.

Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach . Join the Guardian Teacher Network for lesson resources, comment and job opportunities , direct to your inbox.

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PROOF POINTS: Seven new studies on the impact of a four-day school week

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4 day school week essay

Is a four-day school week a bad idea?

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The answer matters because hundreds of thousands of students at more than 1,600 schools across 24 states were heading to school only four times a week by the spring of 2019, according to one estimate . The number of four-day schools had exploded by more than 600 percent from 20 years earlier in 1999, when only about 250 schools had four-day weeks. That tally could be even larger today because more schools switched to a four-day schedule during the pandemic. 

Although the switch was initially seen as a cost-saving measure, educators have quickly learned that longer weekends are immensely popular with families, especially in rural communities where the truncated school week is most common.

“We know that kids love it and so do parents and teachers,” said Emily Morton, a researcher at NWEA, a nonprofit assessment company, who has studied four-day school weeks around the country. “There are crazy high approval ratings for this policy.”  Eighty-five percent of parents and, perhaps unsurprisingly, 95 percent of kids said they would choose to stay on a four-day school week, according to a RAND survey published in 2021 .

But over the course of a typical 36-week school year, a four-day week means 36 fewer days of school. Many policymakers lament the downsizing of education, worried that students may learn less. Legislators in New Mexico are debating whether to crackdown on the schedule switch. Oklahoma passed a law to restrain the move to four-day weeks but delayed putting it into effect. Today, when many education advocates want to expand learning time to help kids recover academically from the pandemic, the four-day week would seem to be a move in the wrong direction.

The research evidence isn’t clear. The first empirical study, published in 2015, found that Colorado students in four-day schools did a lot better . The number of fifth grade students who were proficient in math rose by more than 7 percentage points. The number of fourth grade students who were proficient in reading rose by nearly 4 percentage points. Those results seemed to defy logic. 

But now seven newer studies generally find negative results  – some tiny and some more substantial. One 2021 study in Oregon , for example, calculated that the four-day week shaved off one-sixth of the usual gains that a fifth grader makes in math, equal to about five to six weeks of school. Over many years, those losses can add up for students.

The most recent of the seven studies, a preliminary paper posted on the website of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University in August 2022, is a large multi-state analysis and it found four-day weeks harmed some students more than others. 

Researchers at NWEA, led by Morton, and at Oregon State University began by analyzing the test scores of 12,000 students at 35 schools that had adopted four-day weeks in six states: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Like the more recent crop of studies, they found that four-day weeks weren’t great for academic achievement on average . The test scores of four-day students in grades three through eight grew slightly less during the school year compared to hundreds of thousands of students in those six states who continued to go to school five days a week. (City students were excluded from the analysis because no city schools had adopted four-day weeks. Only rural, small town and suburban students were included.)

The switch seemed to hurt reading achievement more than math achievement. That was surprising. Reading is easier to do at home while math is a subject that students primarily learn and practice in school. During pandemic school closures and remote learning, for example, math achievement generally suffered more than reading.

The researchers focused on rural students. Rural schools accounted for seven out of 10 schools on the four-day schedule in this study. The types of students in rural communities were also different. They tended to be poorer than in small towns and suburbs and the rural students’ test scores were lower. In the six midwestern and western states in this study, the share of Native American and Hispanic students was higher in rural areas than in small towns and suburbs. 

When researchers compared rural students who attended four-day schools with rural students who attended traditional five-day schools, ignoring small town and suburban students altogether, the results suddenly changed. Rural four-day students generally learned as much as rural five-day day students. Statistically, both groups’ test scores rose by about the same amount every year. 

By contrast, small town and suburban students who switched to four-day weeks were far worse off than other students in the state. Though it’s less common for small town and suburban schools to switch to four-days –  they constitute only 30 percent of the four-day schools – their students really seemed to be harmed. For example, a quarter of the usual achievement gains that fifth graders typically make in a year disappeared. 

The distinctions that the U.S. Census Bureau makes between a rural area and a small town are quite technical. I think of a small town as far from a metropolitan area, but with a bit of commerce and more people than a rural area would have. 

This quantitative study of test scores does not explain why students at rural schools are faring better with only four days than students in small towns. NWEA’s Morton, the lead author, has long been studying four-day school weeks and conducted an earlier 2022 study in rural Oklahoma , where she found no academic penalty for the shorter week. 

One possible explanation, Morton says, is sports. Many rural athletes and young student fans leave school early on Fridays or skip school altogether because of the great distances to travel to away games. In effect, many five-day students are only getting four-days of instruction in rural America. 

“One district we talked to, half the kids would be out on Friday for football,” said Morton. “They would not really have math on Friday, because how can you teach with only half the classroom? So it’s affecting everyone.”

Absences for football games, considered to be part of school, are often “excused.”  Official records don’t reveal that attendance rates are any better at four-day schools because many of the Friday classes that five-day students skip aren’t documented in the attendance data. 

Another possible explanation is teaching. The four-day work week is an attractive work perk in rural America that may lure better teachers. 

“It is harder for rural districts to get teachers that are highly qualified or honestly, sometimes to get teachers period, into their buildings and to retain them than it is for town or suburban districts,” said Morton. “All of this is anecdotal, but they’re saying in interviews that teachers are happier. They like spending more time with their own children. It gives them time to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.”

By this theory, four-day schools may make it easier to hire better teachers, who could accomplish in four days what a less skilled teacher accomplishes in five days.

Four-day weeks are not necessarily better, but five-day weeks have their own drawbacks in rural America: hidden absences, skipped lessons and lower quality teachers.

So what to make of it all? Morton says there are reasons to think that four-day weeks are working better in rural America than elsewhere, but she wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it. Hispanic students, who accounted for one out of every six rural students in this study, suffered much more from four-day weeks than white students did. (Native American students, who made up one of every 10 rural students, did relatively better with the four-day week.) 

Morton is also worried that rural students may be ultimately harmed academically from the shorter week. In her calculations, she detected hints that even four-day students in rural schools might be learning slightly less than five-day students, but the difference was not statistically significant. A downside to a four-day education could be detected in a larger study with more students.

“We don’t want to say ‘it doesn’t hurt kids’ when it might actually be hurting kids a little bit,” said Morton. “Another thing that could be happening is it could hurt kids more over time. It could be that we haven’t observed it for long enough.” 

For schools that are considering a four-day week, the schedule matters. Some schools have been better at preserving instructional time, reallocating the hours across four longer days, Morton told me. Others have struggled to protect every minute of math and reading instruction. Longer hours can also tax young children’s attention spans. It’s a tradeoff.

Historically, schools have shortened school weeks for cost savings. That’s been especially needed in rural communities, which were not only hit with declining tax revenues after the 2008 recession, but continued to suffer education budget cuts because of depopulation and declining student enrollment. 

However, the biggest surprise to me in this review of the research is how tiny the cost savings are: 1 to 2 percent .  It does save some money not to run the heat or buses one day a week, but the largest expenses, teacher salaries, stay the same.

The four-day week may ultimately be a popular policy, but not one that’s particularly great for public coffers or learning. 

This story about a  four-day school week was written by Jill Barshay and produced by  The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the  Hechinger newsletter .

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HI Ms. Barshay, Do you have any information on what a 4-day school week would do for poor and/or homeless students? Or how underperforming school districts can make real impacts to these students’ learning in a 4-day school week as they lose a day of consistent instruction? Whether rural or urban?

Hi! My group is debating whether 4-day or 5-day weeks are better do you know if 5-day is better, or 4-day.

Hi, my group is also debating on this topic. Im in the 10th grade and go to sycamore high school in BlueAsh, Ohio on Cornell road. I wanted to know how does this effect the to not have a day of school but longer days? Would this harm the sleep schedule or Increase their intelligent and chances for higher test scores?

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4 day school week essay

Four Day School Week Essay Example

Many districts who have alternated to a four day week may have not realized the disadvantages of having a shorter week. A four day week school schedule is not anymore helpful for teachers, students, or the district due to the long days, how tired kids might be, and the amount of money being spent then it would be on a five day week. It actually can be less adequate. Some people may disagree with this and say that children are more likely to succeed on a four day week schedule or they may even say that a four day week saves the district money on bills. A four day week in schools may throw kids off with the change of having several days off then going to school for a long day, the longer days make it more likely for kids to forget the material they have already been taught and the bills for this schedule will stay the same as on a five day week schedule or may even be higher.

Kids might be tired during the school day because of the extra long days to make up for that  day that is being taken from the week and the longer school days aren't benefiting the academic scores of schoolwork or tests, students often might even forget what they learned. According to the video, Academic scores didn't really make a substantial change when changing to the four day week. Longer days pushed into a shorter school week isn't actually too beneficial because most children don't have a long enough attention span for that  and they have “academic loss’’ over the weekend which is forgetting what they have learned during the weeks prior then teachers are obligated to reteach the material(source 4).This evidence supports the claim of a four day week not being suitable because as stated above there are not any advantages at all, only disadvantages. A four day week again isn't benefiting kids whatsoever. Grades are not being improved or increasing, attention spans aren't as long as the school day so children aren't focusing, and when kids go on their three day weekend they are forgetting the material they have already learned. When they forget this and the teachers have to reteach it, it then makes it so that the kids aren't even getting the knowledge they were supposed to get in those weeks worth of reteaching. This clearly makes it so kids are going to be behind all the time in the standards of what they are required to have knowledge of. In the video “why school should only be 4 days a week,” the reporter says that experts worry about how tired kids are on the regular school days because of how long they are ,so in France they have added the fifth day back and shortened the days all back to normal(source 4).When there is a four day school week kids get tired due to the extra long eight hour days which results in not being benefited by whatever lesson the teacher is teaching. When they are tired they will doze off and not pay attention to the instructor nor the instruction given. When not paying attention they will not know what to do and it puts the child at a disadvantage. Without the four day week the child would never have to be put at this disadvantage. France going to the extent to change back to the five day week just shows how much a four day week is not helpful. With all of these drawbacks of a four day week stated above, it is obvious that a four day week is not at all needed or a good idea. 

Many people may disagree with the idea that a four day week is not the greatest idea and might say shorter weeks save money and give more opportunity to participate in other activities such as sports. The article states, “The reason is to bring down costs and enrich the learning environment with extracurricular development for pupils” (source 1). What is being said here is that with a four day week the school bills will be lower and there will be more opportunity for sports and different activities other than just school. It is understanding how others have this theory, however longer days add up to the same amount of hours or even more of a regular five day week so it won't bring down the costs of bills since the electricity and all else will still be being used for the same amount of time as in a five day week. Also, in five day school week, the days are shorter so it gives time for extracurricular activities after the school day and gives time for homework. The article says, “ Education experts theorize that the shorter weeks have no positive financial effect on the districts that implement them” (source 1). This evidence supports the refutation because it is directly shooting down the theory and proving it wrong by saying that shorter weeks do not save money or help out financially. It is pure common sense that when you lengthen each day and take a day away, you are still in school for the same amount of time as you would in a five day week. All in all, the utilities have equivalent usages and no money is going to be saved by transforming to a four day week.

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A Systematic Literature Review of the Four-day School Week

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The four-day school week has become increasingly popular in Missouri in recent years. As of fall 2023, approximately 28 percent of all Missouri public school districts have adopted this schedule. But how much do we know about its impact on student achievement, district finances, teacher recruitment and retention, or parental satisfaction? The short answer is: not as much as you might expect.

This paper presents a systematic look at research on the four-day school week, focusing specifically on studies that met a clearly defined set of search criteria. Click here to read the full report.

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Indiana school becomes first in state to move to 4-day school week

The lafayette school corporation announced last week that the board of trustees voted last week to approve a four-day week for vinton elementary beginning in the 2024-25 school year, by alexandria fisher • published april 22, 2024 • updated on april 23, 2024 at 11:58 am.

A suburban Indianapolis school has become the first in the state of Indiana to announce plans to move to a four-day school week.

The Lafayette School Corporation announced last week that the Board of Trustees voted last week to approve a four-day week for Vinton Elementary beginning in the 2024-25 school year.

"We are pleased to offer learning options that meet all students' and families' needs," the corporation wrote in its anouncement.

According to NBC Chicago affiliate station WTHR , the change means the elementary school will run from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with six "professional development days" slated to take place on Fridays throughout the school year.

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In total, that means school will be in session for 151 days, with more than 64,000 minutes of instruction, WTHR reported, more than 10,000 minutes above Indiana's minimum requirement.

Parents are being urged to attend one of a series of informational meetings about the change.

The announcement has been met with both praise and criticism, with some on Facebook supporting the decision to offer parents "choices" and others questioning the potential impacts on children who rely on school days for basic needs like food.

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“People implement four-day weeks for various reasons, but for us here at Lafayette School Corporation, it was more about offering a choice,” district associate superintendent Dr. Alicia Clevenger told WTHR.

The debate over a four-day school week is nothing new.

In 2010, Illinois  lawmakers pushed to give local school boards the option to shrink the school week to four days, but not everyone is happy about it.

In 2018, a Colorado school district implemented a four-day school week and canceled school on Mondays to save money.

27J Schools was the largest district to make the change, and at the end of the experiment's first year, kids and parents have relished having three-day weekends while parents worried about child care for younger students and unstructured free time for older ones.

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4 day school week essay

4 day school week essay

Another Idaho school district moves to a four-day week next year. Here’s why

S tudents in the Nampa School District will move to a four-day school week beginning next school year, joining a growing number of districts across Idaho that have made the same switch to retain educators and save money.

After a three-hour discussion, the Nampa school board Tuesday night voted 3-2 to move forward with the new schedule, despite concerns over how the move would impact families who rely on schools for food, child care and resources five days a week.

Nampa officials said the recommendation wasn’t made for financial reasons, but that the move could help keep qualified teachers, give students longer time in class periods and potentially increase attendance.

“Teachers are the No. 1 impact of student achievement,” Superintendent Gregg Russell said during the meeting. “If this helps us get the best teachers we absolutely can, then for me as an administrator, I think that’s really important.”

Nampa trustees wary of more changes

The move will mark another change for the district after the board voted in December to close four of its schools beginning next school year because of decreasing enrollment and deteriorating facilities that would require money to fix, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting. Some of those buildings will be repurposed for other programs. The district is also moving to a trimester class schedule for high school students, in part for financial reasons.

The decision to move to the four-day week also comes after the Idaho Legislature passed a $2 billion bill on funding school facilities that will require districts to meet a minimum amount of instructional time to receive millions of dollars to repair their schools. The State Board of Education must adopt standards on the minimum required instructional days and hours by Aug. 1.

Trustee Jeff Kirkman, who voted against the four-day week, said the district should wait to see how the other changes they’re navigating work before making another drastic shift.

“I don’t think this is going to be a soft landing for our community, for those students who need that extra day of school, for the parents who have to work,” Kirkman said. “We’re throwing a lot at them.”

Russell said none of the districts Nampa administrators talked with said the move to a four-day week was a poor decision.

“If I felt it was going to really hurt our school district,” he said, “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

‘This is about student success’

Still, some trustees raised concerns about how the decision would affect the community and questioned why the district wanted to move forward with it now.

Some trustees said they worried about kids being in school for longer days than they’re used to. The suggested schedule would have elementary students in school for 7.5 hours per day, and would release them at 4:21 p.m., while secondary students would be in school for slightly over eight hours per day and get out at 3:36 p.m. Both times are about an hour later than when students are released now.

Others were concerned about how children would get food if they weren’t in school one day per week and what child care options were available to parents who work full-time. The district said there were a number of services in the area that could help provide resources and child care to families, including the Boys & Girls Club and the Y.

Trustee Stephanie Binns said she’s particularly worried about the “kids on the edge” whose families might not qualify for other benefits but rely on schools to provide meals during the week. “It’s those kids on the edge … that weigh heavily on my heart,” she said.

Trustees who voted in favor of the change said it would be beneficial for students and teachers, and it was something the community wanted.

Before the vote, the Nampa School District surveyed the community and found a majority of parents, students and teachers supported eliminating the fifth day of the week. Nearly three-quarters of the more than 900 staff members and a majority of the parents who responded said they’d support the change. Half of the 925 students wanted to move to the four-day week.

Board Chair Brook Taylor said the change will give teachers more time to prepare and plan for their classes. Other districts that have moved to four-day weeks have had success, she said. Superintendents across the state have told lawmakers that moving to a four-day week has been beneficial and widely supported in their communities.

“To me, this is about student success,” Taylor said. “Everything that I could find, there is not one district that’s made this choice that’s gone back.”

©2024 The Idaho Statesman. Visit idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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What It’s Really Like to Have a 4-Day Workweek

T o many people in corporate America, working five days a week—Monday to Friday, 9 to 5—feels as habitual as brushing their teeth. But it wasn’t always that way. In the late 1800s, a full-time manufacturing worker could easily spend 100 hours per week on the job . It wasn’t until around 1940, after a concerted push from labor unions , that the 40-hour workweek became standard in the U.S.

Now, almost a century later, there’s growing momentum for an even more condensed schedule , with major companies—including Panasonic, Kickstarter, and the online thrift store ThredUp—trying out four-day workweeks. “We’ve all been working far too hard, and we’re missing out on life,” says Charlotte Lockhart, co-founder of 4 Day Week Global, a group pushing for shorter workweeks worldwide. “It’s affecting our health and our planet and our communities.”

Lockhart’s group advocates for what she calls the “100-80-100 rule”: workers hit 100% of their productivity targets in 80% as many hours, while earning 100% of their regular pay. For some companies, getting there is as simple as canceling some meetings and making better use of technology to free up time, while others need to completely overhaul their workflows and scheduling systems. But, Lockhart says, employers in fields ranging from hospitality to law enforcement have seen success with shortened schedules.

Read More : I Tried to Cure My Burnout. Here’s What Happened

Pilot studies in countries including the U.K., Spain, Portugal, and South Africa suggest that shorter workweeks can help employees reduce burnout, manage stress , get more sleep and exercise, spend additional quality time with loved ones, and feel all-around happier and healthier. Employers see perks, too, including lower rates of turnover and absenteeism. The study in Spain even tracked a drop in fuel emissions due to fewer commuting trips.

Additional trials are underway in countries including Germany, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. Much of the research on shorter workweeks, however, has been done by advocacy groups like Lockhart’s. Independent surveys, like one conducted by Gallup in 2022 , sometimes show a more complex picture.

In the Gallup survey, people who worked four days a week were slightly more likely to report feeling burned out, compared to those with traditional schedules—potentially because they had to cram the same amount of work into less time. That result is in direct conflict with the results of pilot studies run by groups like 4 Day Week Global; in fact, Lockhart identified burnout reduction as one of the largest benefits of a condensed schedule.

Lawmakers in states including Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and California seem to be focusing on the positive, introducing bills that would encourage four-day workweeks or at least enable further research on them. Bernie Sanders, chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, has pushed for four-day weeks as well .

Read More : Ambition Is Out

It’s hardly a new phenomenon for people to want to work less , says Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College who studies working hours. But with growing support from employers and lawmakers, she believes a sea change is coming. “Pre-pandemic, it felt like something that would be great but was unrealistic,” Schor says. “Once the pandemic came, the thinking switched because people felt so beleaguered and stressed and burned out. It became common sense that we should do this.”

Companies that have already gotten on board have taken different approaches to implementing a shorter workweek. Some achieve the full 100-80-100 system, while others take more modest steps, such as asking employees to clock in for four 10-hour shifts per week or giving half days off. TIME spoke with employees at four companies trying out these schedules to learn more about the real-world effects of a shorter workweek—and if they’re as life-changing as the hype suggests.

4 day school week essay

Name : Ashya Majied Age : 37 Location : Cleveland, Ohio Job : Brand and marketing lead at Be Equitable, a company that partners with organizations to advance equity and inclusion in workplaces. Schedule : Monday to Thursday, with Fridays off for the entire company.

That very first Friday that we had off, I woke up and moseyed downstairs to make myself some tea. It happened to be a sunny day. I looked out the window, smiled, and thought, ‘I’m so happy. This is what the research was talking about. I get why this works.’ It makes me want to go harder the other days of the week to have this feeling on Friday.

Do I have to be really intentional about my time during the week? Yes. But everything can get done in four days. It always could.

Having a weekday to handle your business—to call the doctor’s office, to call the mortgage company, to clean the house—has been huge. This Friday, I’m going to get my nails done in the morning. Before, I would try to squeeze it in at lunch, because my nail tech only works during the week. Now, I don’t have to have that guilty feeling or work late to make up the time; I just schedule my appointments on Fridays. That peace of mind is priceless. I’m also Muslim, and the day we go to the mosque is Friday. The other major religions in our country are off on their important days, and now I am, too. Fridays off means I can better support my spiritual well-being, and I love that for me.

I really feel like I needed an extra day to rest. The state of the world, to me, feels like the weight of the world, and it takes a toll on me. The four-day workweek takes just a little of that weight off. It gives me a little bit of energy, a nice little boost in a world that is suffering.

I wouldn’t want to go back to working five days a week, but I would if I had to. To any role that you have, there are pros and cons. This is a really big pro.

4 day school week essay

Names : Greg and Kelsey Brown Ages : 36 and 33, respectively Location : Missoula, Mont. Jobs : Greg is the vice president of operations at Linehaul Logistics, a freight brokerage. Kelsey is a counselor at a public school. Schedules : The Browns, a married couple, both have four-day workweeks. At Greg’s company, employees have different days off (Greg’s is Friday) and work 10-hour shifts on the days they are scheduled. Kelsey’s school has a Monday to Thursday schedule for students, faculty, and staff. She works nine-hour shifts.

Kelsey : As mundane as it sounds, it’s nice that we get chores done on a Friday so we can enjoy the weekend fully. I also really look forward to working out for an hour on Fridays. I go to classes at Orangetheory Fitness. That small piece alone has helped my overall health and well-being. I also use my three-day weekends to catch up on sleep, because I have to get up at 5:30 a.m. to get to school on time when I’m working. Sometimes I think, ‘Man, it would be nice if I didn’t have to be at work until 8 or 8:30 a.m. like other schools,’ but I don’t think that in any way outweighs the other benefits of my schedule.

I do so much more with my personal time, compared to when I worked five days a week in previous jobs. By the end of the three days that I have off, instead of having the Sunday Scaries, I’m ready to go back because I feel refreshed and recovered. I believe it makes me better at my job, because I feel ready to go on Mondays. Before, it was like, ‘Holy smokes, where does the weekend go?’

It’s awesome that Greg and I are both on a four-day schedule, too. We spend that extra time together, or we will be spontaneous and go out of town.

Greg : It definitely helps with traveling with our daughter, too. We love to go camping, and it extends the camping weekends.

I don’t always take Fridays off because I’m a manager, and because I have to leave work early some weeks to meet my daughter at the bus stop after school. I feel bad taking the four days when I have to leave early, because I’m not doing my full 10-hour shifts.

When it’s someone’s day to be off, someone else has to cover for them. That’s hard, because you’re doing two jobs. It can be kind of stressful to be out, too, handing that baton off and making sure that when you get back it’s not all dented or destroyed. But when I can do it, taking Friday off gives me that extra time to decompress. It’s very common to work long hours and weekends in this industry, so having that extra time to myself 100% helps me manage stress.

As a manager, I’ve seen how this schedule helps my employees, too. I know that we’ve seen less turnover because of it. It’s easier to hire as well. We do have one person that does the five-day workweek voluntarily because she didn’t like a four-day schedule, but that is an outlier. Every single other person would not want to go back to five days. It can be hard to implement a four-day workweek and hard to keep it going, but it is definitely worth it.

4 day school week essay

Name: Siobhan Stewart Age : 36 Location : Richmond, Va. Job : Marketing communications manager at Pixite, a company that makes creative apps. Schedule : Monday to Friday afternoon, for a 4.5-day week.

A five-day schedule honestly feels arbitrary to me. It didn’t, and doesn’t, seem balanced. You’re supposed to be on top of your steps and drinking enough water and your social life and your mental health and self-care. How do you fit that into a five-day workweek? In previous jobs, I couldn’t in a way that felt restful. I’m also a writer, and that wasn’t something I had energy for when I worked five days a week.

Now that I’m on a 4.5-days-per-week schedule, I feel lighter. I feel happier. I don't have the Sunday Scaries anymore, and I attribute that, in part, to feeling like I've had enough time to rest and recharge over the weekend. On a Friday afternoon I might read, work on my novel, journal, catch up on some chores, go on a walk with my husband, or just relax. We will do long weekends, take off and go somewhere. Even having an extra handful of hours, you feel like you have a little extra space. During the winter, getting outside for that extra daylight is also a big thing.

In general, if you are less stressed and overwhelmed and feeling better, I think you’re a better, more productive worker. That’s been the case for me. It’s hard to imagine leaving this job. Being a middle-class American means you have to trade your time for money, and when a company gives you time it's almost like an existential gift—like you're getting a chunk of your life back.

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Write to Jamie Ducharme at [email protected]

IMAGES

  1. 4-day school week in public schools

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  2. four-day school week pro con School Week, Public School, School Days

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  3. Four day school week: Is it for the students?

    4 day school week essay

  4. The Four Day School Week

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  5. The 4 Day School Week by Kaddie Tribble on Prezi

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  6. Why all Schools Should Have a Four Day School Week? Free Essay Example

    4 day school week essay

COMMENTS

  1. The four-day school week: Research shows benefits and consequences

    Some schools offer less instructional time during a four-day school week than they did during a five-day week. There's limited cost savings, considering employee salaries and benefits make up the bulk of school expenses. In a 2021 analysis, Thompson estimates schools save 1% to 2% by shortening the school week by a day.

  2. 4-Day School Weeks: New Research Examines the Benefits ...

    The four-day week is enormously popular among parents and students, the new research finds. It typically saves districts a small—but not intangible—amount of cash. And on their day out of ...

  3. 4-day school weeks: Educational innovation or detriment?

    July 12, 2021. 7 min read. Four-day school week schedules are becoming an increasingly common experience for America's rural youth. These schedules typically involve increasing the length of the ...

  4. A Four-Day School Week?

    To save money and help with teacher recruitment, numerous school districts in the United States have decided to give students and employees Fridays off. An estimated 560 districts in 25 states have allowed at least some of their schools to adopt a four-day week, with most moving to a Monday-to-Thursday schedule, according to the National ...

  5. A Four-Day School Week? Here Are the Costs and Benefits

    essay. Aug 31, 2023. Photo by Thomas Barwick/Getty Images. ... A four-day school week is exactly what it sounds like. Students typically start their school days a little earlier, and finish classes a little later—but in return, they get a three-day weekend every week. In rural areas, especially, kids often use that extra day off for chores ...

  6. 4 Studies to Know on 4-Day School Weeks

    As educators and policymakers continue to debate the use of shortened school weeks, here are four studies to know about how they can affect students and schools. 1. Maintaining instructional time ...

  7. The rise of the four-day school week

    The rise of the four-day school week. Right now, a lot of school districts across the country are making a pretty giant change to the way public education usually works. Facing teacher shortages ...

  8. The Four-Day School Week: Are the Pros Worth the Cons?

    Yet by 2019, over 1,600 schools were on a four-day schedule. There are no signs that the pace is slowing. Missouri is one of the newest states to see exponential growth in the adoption of this policy. In 2009, no district in the state had a four-day school week; but, as of the 2022-23 school year, about 25 percent are now on that schedule.

  9. What a difference a day makes: the argument for a four-day school week

    The four-day school week for students in Colorado was introduced as a cost-saving measure, and the improvements in academic results were the opposite of what had been anticipated, Walker explains.

  10. PROOF POINTS: Seven new studies on the impact of a four-day school week

    The answer matters because hundreds of thousands of students at more than 1,600 schools across 24 states were heading to school only four times a week by the spring of 2019, according to one estimate. The number of four-day schools had exploded by more than 600 percent from 20 years earlier in 1999, when only about 250 schools had four-day weeks.

  11. Four Day School Week Essay

    Four Day School Week Essay. 893 Words4 Pages. Four-day school weeks have the capability to change student lives. Every school should invest in the four-day school week plan. Implementing this routine would allow teachers more time to teach and give students the option to do their homework during class, in turn creating student success.

  12. Should the School Week Be Shorter?

    The Colorado Department of Education says switching to a four-day week can save schools 20 percent on transportation and meal costs! Now, there may be concerns about the school day getting longer, but in most four-day schools, the days are longer by about an hour—not a huge difference. Considering the myriad advantages of a shorter week, it ...

  13. Persuasive Essay Example on Four Day School Week

    A four-day week can help lessen the number of absences at school because of the appeal. According to "Educational Achievement and the Four-Day Week," "Shoemaker (2002) stated that 'Experts have documented increased attendance, improved moral, and fewer disciplinary problems in four-day schools.'" . Shoemaker was talking about both ...

  14. The Four-day School Week: Efficiencies and Implications

    In conclusion, while a four-day school week may offer some potential efficiencies, there are also significant implications to consider. Before making any decisions about changing the structure of the school week, school leaders must carefully weigh the potential benefits and drawbacks, and engage in dialogue with all stakeholders, including students, families, teachers, and community members.

  15. Four Day School Week Essay Example

    Four Day School Week Essay Example. 📌Category: Education, School: 📌Words: 843: 📌Pages: 4: 📌Published: 07 May 2021: Many districts who have alternated to a four day week may have not realized the disadvantages of having a shorter week. A four day week school schedule is not anymore helpful for teachers, students, or the district due ...

  16. Persuasive Essay: Four Day School Week

    Four Day School Week Essay 893 Words | 4 Pages. Four-day school weeks have the capability to change student lives. Every school should invest in the four-day school week plan. Implementing this routine would allow teachers more time to teach and give students the option to do their homework during class, in turn creating student success.

  17. Four Day School Week Essay

    A four-day school week may provide higher quality resources, as there are only four days to use them. It saves the school financially in times of low budgets, and that unscheduled day saves at least 1.5% more than schools who stick to the regular five-day week. The mediocre quality of supplies gradually decreases as more weeks spent as a four ...

  18. A Systematic Literature Review of the Four-day School Week

    The short answer is: not as much as you might expect. This paper presents a systematic look at research on the four-day school week, focusing specifically on studies that met a clearly defined set of search criteria. Click here to read the full report. 20231101 - Systematic Lit Review - Shuls-Frank.

  19. Four Day School Week Essay

    A four day school week would mean longer days, but a shorter week. This would give students and teachers an extra day added to their weekend. Research proves that a four day school week would be beneficial to students and teachers. A four day school week is beneficial for the schools financial gain. Research from the article, "Focus on the ...

  20. Indiana school moves to 4-day school week, first in state to do so

    The Lafayette School Corporation announced last week that the Board of Trustees voted last week to approve a four-day week for Vinton Elementary beginning in the 2024-25 school year. "We are ...

  21. Another Idaho school district moves to a four-day week next year ...

    The suggested schedule would have elementary students in school for 7.5 hours per day, and would release them at 4:21 p.m., while secondary students would be in school for slightly over eight ...

  22. high school report writing format

    Many high school essays are written in MLA or APA style. Ask your teacher what format they want you to follow if it's not specified. 3. Provide your own analysis of the evidence you find. Give relevance to the quotes of information you provide in your essay so your reader understands the point you are trying make.

  23. 21 Things to Know Before You Go to Moscow

    1: Off-kilter genius at Delicatessen: Brain pâté with kefir butter and young radishes served mezze-style, and the caviar and tartare pizza. Head for Food City. You might think that calling Food City (Фуд Сити), an agriculture depot on the outskirts of Moscow, a "city" would be some kind of hyperbole. It is not.

  24. What It's Really Like to Have a 4-Day Workweek

    April 12, 2024 11:16 AM EDT. T o many people in corporate America, working five days a week—Monday to Friday, 9 to 5—feels as habitual as brushing their teeth. But it wasn't always that way ...

  25. Office of Overseas Schools, Anglo-American School of Moscow

    The School was founded in 1949. The school year is comprised of 4 quarters. The first day of school is August 22 and the last day of the school year is June 14. During the year students have a 1-week fall break (October), 3-week holiday break (December/January), a one-week winter break (February), and a one-week spring break (April).

  26. Book Report The Ivankiad by Vladimir Voinovich

    Download this essay on Book Report The Ivankiad by Vladimir Voinovich and 90,000+ more example essays written by professionals and your peers. ... rambles on about the horses, their statistics, and other racing minutia. The Teacher never directly discusses his day job at school; his life is so consumed with the races that this omission in the ...

  27. Chaos in Dubai as UAE records heaviest rainfall in 75 years

    01:24 - Source: CNN. Dubai, UAE CNN —. Chaos ensued in the United Arab Emirates after the country witnessed the heaviest rainfall in 75 years, with some areas recording more than 250 mm (around ...