More rural school districts are adopting four-day weeks. But is it good for students?

On July 27, 2021, California Congressman Mark Takano introduced legislation to shorten the standard American workweek from five to four days. Citing findings from pilot studies across three continents showing the positive effects of a shorter work week on productivity and work-life balance, Rep. Takano explained, “At a time when the nature of work is rapidly changing, it’s incumbent upon us to explore all possible means of ensuring our modern business model prioritizes productivity, fair pay, and an improved quality of life for workers.” In the world of public education, nontraditional school calendars have become common amid the COVID-19 pandemic as schools have altered their customary schedules to accommodate public health precautions and to account for inconsistent teacher and staff availability. Districts have shortened their school days, had students attend on alternating days, or otherwise altered their schedules in ways that disrupt the long-held five-day school week routine.

Even before the pandemic, an increasingly large subset of the nation’s rural school districts had begun to eschew traditional five-day schedules in favor of offering only four days of instruction. Might the pandemic lead even more districts to take this step? Given this possibility, it’s important to understand why schools, especially rural schools, might consider this schedule and to assess the effects of doing so.

In 2003, the annual PDK Poll (Rose & Gallup, 2003) asked a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults whether they would favor moving toward a four-day school week consisting of longer school days. Support for the four-day school week (4DSW) was underwhelming: Only 25% responded favorably, and the responses varied little by where people lived or whether they had children in school. Despite this tepid response from the public, the 4DSW proliferated rapidly in subsequent years, growing from fewer than 300 public schools in approximately 100 school districts at the end of the 20th century to 1,600 schools in 600 school districts today. The 4DSW now has been adopted by schools in more than half of U.S. states, almost all of them west of the Mississippi River.

Though 4DSW districts typically require longer instructional days than traditional five-day districts, they average 85 fewer hours of instruction per year (Thompson et al., 2020). A third of the districts are known to offer remedial education, professional development, or other opportunities for students and staff on the fifth day (Thompson et al., 2020), but it is unclear whether such opportunities are offered in the remaining districts. Further, little is known about the spillover effects the 4DSW may exert on families and communities, either positive (e.g., giving students more time to pursue extracurricular opportunities and work outside of school) or negative (e.g., disrupting childcare arrangements). Scholarship examining these effects has only just begun to emerge, providing long-awaited data that can help inform rural districts that have adopted the 4DSW or are considering it.

Why have districts chosen the four-day school week?

More than nine in 10 4DSW districts are located in rural locales, thus placing the 4DSW at the heart of contemporary debates about rural education policy. According to survey data, district leaders most commonly view the shorter week as a cost-saving measure (Thompson et al., 2020). And that rings true, given that the shift to a four-day week accelerated following the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when state and district budgets declined sharply. Indeed, the shorter week appears to be modestly effective in that regard: 4DSW districts tend to reduce their expenditures by 1 % to 2% following policy adoption, mainly because they spend less on student support services (Thompson, 2021a).

According to survey data, district leaders most commonly view the shorter week as a cost-saving measure.

Among district leaders who’ve adopted a 4DSW, roughly one-third said that another primary motivation for the change was to increase teacher retention, which might also save money insofar as it leads to reduced spending on recruitment and hiring (Thompson et al., 2020). Presumably, if rural districts cannot afford to increase teacher pay, then perhaps they can attract and retain teachers by offering them non-financial benefits, such as the chance to earn the same salary while providing only four days of instruction (Rhinesmith et al., 2020). As yet, though, few researchers have evaluated the effect of 4DSW policies on teacher recruitment and retention. Preliminary evidence from Oklahoma suggests that shifting to a shorter workweek has had no significant impact on retention (Maiden, Crowson, & Beyerly, 2020), but other studies are still in progress.

How do four-day school weeks affect students?

Over the past few years, the empirical literature on the effects of the 4DSW has expanded significantly, but the research has not produced a unified narrative. First, the empirical evidence about the effects on student achievement has been decidedly mixed — research in Colorado showed that shifting to a shorter week had positive effects on achievement in that state (Anderson & Walker, 2015), but research in Oklahoma found no significant effects (Morton, 2021a, 2021b), and research in Oregon found negative effects on achievement (Thompson, 2021b). Further, according to a recent study of 12 states where the 4DSW is common, the shorter week appears to be having a negative impact on student achievement overall, mainly because some districts are providing less instructional time, rather than fully making up for the canceled day by commensurately increasing instructional time on the other days (Thompson & Ward, 2021). Recent evidence from 36 4DSW districts across the country indicates the policy has had little or no effect on several additional student outcomes including attendance, physical activity, and behavioral and emotional well-being (Kilburn et al., 2021). In sum, based on the available evidence, it’s hard to make the case that a four-day week leads to improved student outcomes, but it’s also premature to conclude that it is consistently harmful to students.

No doubt, such a significant departure from the standard five-day week is likely to have effects that reverberate throughout communities, and district leaders should consider how this shift might affect school staffing, family childcare arrangements, and other areas of concern. However, the research into these effects is minimal. As yet, researchers have found that petty criminal activity has increased among students in districts that have shifted to the shorter week (Fischer & Argyle, 2018), and mothers living in those districts have decreased their participation in the workforce (Ward, 2019).

Because the pandemic has had profound impacts on all kinds of school outcomes, it will be difficult to tease out the effects of recent decisions to shift to a four-day week, and it may be a while before researchers can generate the kinds of clear and consistent findings that policy makers like to see. Still, despite the relative tumult of the past two school years, and even without robust evidence to guide them, many school districts and states continue to press on with the decision to adopt a four-day school week.

What can districts and states do now?

Missouri and Oklahoma provide contrasting examples of how states might respond to the lack of clear evidence about the effects of shifting to a four-day school week. In Missouri, 116 districts, or 22.5% of the state’s traditional public school districts, have adopted the 4DSW since 2010, the first year it was permitted by state law. Much of the growth has occurred in the last two years, with 11 districts switching to a 4DSW in 2021-22 and 44 in 2020-21 (representing a 44% increase over the two-year period). The policy decisions for the 2020-21 school year likely were made prior to the onset of the pandemic, and by 2021-22 policy adoption had slowed. Similarly, 4DSW policies in Oklahoma became permissible in 2009, and approximately 20% of the state’s districts have adopted the policy, though the vast majority occurred by 2016-17 (Morton, 2021a). Whether the pandemic will fuel future growth in 4DSW policy adoption remains an important open question, particularly for the rural areas in which the vast majority of 4DSW districts are located.

It’s hard to make the case that a four-day week leads to improved student outcomes, but it’s also premature to conclude that it is consistently harmful to students.

Policy makers in the two states have recently diverged in their approach to the 4DSW. In 2020, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt issued an executive order that threatens the continued use of the four-day schedule. Districts that do not meet state standards — related to student academic growth, high school graduation rates, postsecondary engagement, and more — may be forced to revert to a five-day week (Morton, 2021a). Missouri, on the other hand, has eased restrictions, repealing its original requirement that 4DSW districts revert to a traditional calendar if their performance on two or more state accountability measures declined for two consecutive years. The state repealed this condition in 2018, and 4DSW policy adoption has expanded significantly since then. In both cases, the change was made despite a lack of evidence as to the effects of the four-day week on academic achievement or other outcomes.

But even as they wait for more substantive research into the effects of a four-day school week, 4DSW districts and their states can take a few steps to support student growth. For example, they can offer expanded online learning activities on the fifth day of the week (although this would likely require significant state or federal investment in rural broadband capacities; Tomer, Kneebone, & Shivaram, 2017). They can also use the fifth day to offer on-site remedial and enrichment activities. For example, Missouri’s Strasburg C-3 school district recently announced that, beginning in 2022, it will provide remedial math and reading instruction on approximately half of its fifth days to a subset of its students deemed to be struggling (Mayfield, 2021).

Still, the most important takeaway from the research, to date, is that we don’t yet know whether shifting to a four-day week has beneficial, harmful, or neutral effects on students and their communities. From the policy makers’ perspective, it might seem like a great victory to reduce costs while having no clear impact on student outcomes. But it remains premature to assume that this policy has no significant downsides. As more students attend districts with a four-day week, the scholarship must expand to consider a wider range of outcomes, both in and out of school, and the degree to which those outcomes depend on other factors (such as whether the overall amount of instructional time remains the same, whether the district provides extra services and learning opportunities on the fifth day, the size of the district, how long ago the policy was adopted, and so on). And as state and local leaders seek to enact policies to support student achievement both during the pandemic and beyond, they must weigh all of the potential implications for the many stakeholders who are likely to be affected, never forgetting to keep students at the center.

References

Anderson, D.M. & Walker, M. B. (2015). Does shortening the school week impact student performance? Evidence from the four-day school week. Education Finance and Policy, 10 (3), 314-349.

Anglum, J.C. & Park, A. (2021) Keeping up with the Joneses: District adoption of the 4-day school week in rural Missouri. AERA Open.

Fischer, S.  & Argyle, D. (2018). Juvenile crime and the four-day school week. Economics of Education Review, 64, 31-39.

Kilburn, M.R., Phillips, A., Gomez, C.J., Mariano, L.T., Doss, C.J. Troxel, W.M., . . . & Estes, K. (2021). Does four equal five? Implementation and outcomes of the four-day school week. RAND Corporation.

Maiden, J., Crowson, H.M., & Byerly, C. (2020). The influence of the adoption of a school district four day instructional week on teacher retention. Journal of Education Finance, 46 (2), 117-139.

Mayfield, C. (2021, March 19). [Letter to Strasburg families]. http://strasburg.k12.mo.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/4-Day-School-Week.pdf

Morton, E. (2021a). Effects of four-day school weeks on adolescents: Examining impacts of the schedule on academic achievement, attendance, and behavior in high school (EdWorkingPaper: 21-416). Annenberg Institute at Brown University.

Morton, E. (2021b). Effects of four-day school weeks on school finance and achievement: Evidence from Oklahoma. Educational Researcher, 50 (1), 30-40.

Rhinesmith, E., Anglum, J.C., Park, A., & Burrola, A. (2020) Policy approaches to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers in rural schools: A systematic review [Unpublished manuscript]. Saint Louis University.

Rose, L.C. & Gallup, A.M. (2003). The 35th annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of the public’s attitudes toward the public schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 82 (1), 41-58.

Takano, M. (2021, July 27). Rep. Takano introduces legislation to reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours [Press release]. https://takano.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep-takano-introduces-legislation-to-reduce-the-standard-workweek-to-32-hours

Thompson, P.N. (2021a). Does a day lost equal dollars saved? The effects of four-day school weeks on school district expenditures. National Tax Journal, 74 (1), 147-183.

Thompson, P.N. (2021b). Is four less than five? Effects of four-day school weeks on student achievement in Oregon. Journal of Public Economics, 193.

Thompson, P.N., Gunter, K., Schuna Jr., J.M., & Tomayko, E.J. (2020). Are all four-day school weeks created equal? A national assessment of four-day school week policy adoption and implementation. Education Finance and Policy, 1-50.

Thompson, P.N. & Ward, J. (2021, June). Only a matter of time? The role of time in school on four-day school week achievement impacts (IZA DP No. 14461). Institute of Labor Economics.

Tomer, A., Kneebone, E., & Shivaram, R. (2017). Signs of digital distress: Mapping broadband availability and subscription in American neighborhoods. Brookings Institution.

Ward, J. (2019). The four-day school week and parental labor supply. SSRN.

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This article appears in the December 2021/January 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 4, pp. 19-23.