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Four-day school week: Research suggests impacts of a condensed schedule vary by student group, school type

To help recruit teachers, many U.S. schools have moved to a four-day schedule. We look at research on its effect on students and schools.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource July 15, 2024

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, on July 15, 2023 to include new research and other information.

More than 2,100 public schools in 25 states have switched to a four-day school week, often in hopes of recruiting teachers, saving money and boosting student attendance, researchers estimate.

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

In some places where schools made the change, school district leaders have marveled at the resulting spikes in job applications from teachers and other job seekers. Teacher shortages, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, have plagued public schools nationwide for decades.

“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 late last year.

The impact on students, however, has not been as positive. Although peer-reviewed research on the topic is limited, focusing only on a single state or small group of states, there is evidence that some groups of students learn less on a four-day schedule than on a five-day schedule.

A new analysis of student performance in six states — Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming — finds that students who went to class four days a week, as a whole, made less progress in reading during the academic year than students who went five days a week. Kids on a four-day schedule earned lower reading scores on a spring assessment known as the Measures of Academic Progress Growth, on average.

However, the authors of the paper, published last month, also found that the condensed schedule had little to no effect on the rural students they studied, on average. Schools located in towns and suburbs, on the other hand, saw student performance drop considerably after adopting a four-day week.

The authors also discovered differences among student groups. For example, Hispanic students going to class four days a week made less progress in math during the school year than white students on the same schedule. White students made less progress in math than Native American students during the 11-year study.

“For policymakers and practitioners, this study addresses previous ambiguity about the effects of four-day school weeks on academic outcomes and provides evidence supporting concerns about four-day school week effects on student achievement and growth, particularly for those implemented in non-rural areas,” write the authors, Emily Morton , Paul Thompson and Megan Kuhfeld .

In the spring before the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 662 public school districts used the schedule — up more than 600% since 1999, Thompson and Morton write in a 2021 essay for the Brookings Institution. That number climbed to 876 during the 2022-23 academic year, they told The Journalist’s Resource in email messages.

In addition to studying the schedule’s effect on student achievement, researchers are also investigating its impact on other aspects of school operations, including education spending, student discipline and employee morale. To make the research easier to find, the University of Oregon’s HEDCO Institute for Evidence-Based Educational Practice has created the Four-Day School Week Research Database .

Anyone can use the interactive platform to sift through research completed as of May 2023. It’s worth noting that most research in the database is not peer-reviewed journal articles. Seventy of the more than 100 papers are student dissertations, theses and other papers.

If you keep reading, you’ll find that we have gathered and summarized several relevant journal articles below. To date, the scholarly literature indicates:

Some schools cut instructional time when they adopt a four-day schedule.
The impact of a four-day school week differs depending on a range of factors, including the number of hours per week a school operates, how the school structures its daily schedule and the race and ethnicity of students.
The condensed schedule does not save much money, 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 one day.
Staff morale improves under a four-day school week.
Fighting and bullying decline at high schools.

Both Thompson and Morton urged journalists to explain that the amount of time schools dedicate to student learning during four-day weeks makes a big difference.

“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,” Morton, a researcher at the American Institutes of Research, wrote to JR in late 2023.

In a follow-up conversation with JR in July 2024, Morton pointed out that parents like the four-day schedule despite concerns raised by education scholars. In interviews with researchers, she wrote, “parents mention that they appreciate the additional family time and perceive other benefits of the schedule for their children, and they overwhelmingly indicate that they would choose to keep a four-day schedule over switching back to a five-day schedule.”

Morton would not recommend schools adopt a four-day schedule if their main aim is saving money, boosting student attendance or recruiting and retaining teachers. Research findings “do not provide much support for the argument that four-day school weeks are delivering the intended benefits,” she wrote to JR.

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

——————–

A Multi-State, Student-Level Analysis of the Effects of the Four-Day School Week On Student Achievement and Growth Emily Morton, Paul N. Thompson and Megan Kuhfeld. Economics of Education Review, June 2024.

Summary: This study looks at how switching to a four-day school week affects student achievement over the course of the school year in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. A key takeaway: On average, across those six states, students on a four-day schedule learned less during the school year than students who went to class five days a week. However, students in rural areas fared better on that schedule than students in “non-rural” areas.

Researchers studied the scores that students in grades 3-8 earned on an assessment called the Measures of Academic Progress Growth, administered each fall and spring to gauge how much kids learned over the course of the school year. The analysis uses 11 years of test score data in reading and math, collected from the 2008-09 to the 2018-19 academic year.

Researchers found that students who went to school four days a week, as a whole, made smaller gains in reading during the academic year than students who went five days a week. They also earned lower scores in reading on the spring assessment, on average.

When researchers looked at the data more closely, however, they found differences between students attending rural schools and students attending schools located in towns and suburbs — communities the researchers dubbed “non-rural.”

Although adopting a four-day schedule had little to no impact on kids at rural schools, student performance fell considerably at schools in non-rural areas. Those children, as a whole, made less progress in reading and math during the academic year than children attending non-rural schools that operated five days a week. They also earned lower scores in both reading and math on the spring exam.

“The estimated effects on math and reading achievement in non-rural four-day week schools are ‘medium’ and meaningful,” the researchers write, adding that the difference is roughly equivalent to a quarter of a school year worth of learning in the fifth grade.

Researchers also discovered that student performance at schools with four-day schedules varied by gender and race. At schools using a four-day-a-week schedule, girls made smaller gains in reading and math than boys, on average. Hispanic students made less progress in math than white students, who made less progress in math than Native American students.

“The estimated effects on math and reading gains during the school year are not ‘large’ by the developing standards used to interpret effect sizes of education interventions, but they are also not trivial,” the researchers write. “For the many districts and communities who have become very fond of the schedule, the evidence presented in this study suggests that how the four-day school week is implemented may be an important factor in its effects on students.”

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.

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

Denise-Marie Ordway

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What the research tells us about four-day school weeks

For many communities across America, a school calendar with four-day weeks is unheard of. And in many of these communities, such a proposal would garner little support. Indeed, there isn’t a single urban district that has adopted the schedule, and it’s rare to find a suburban district that has made the switch. But the story is very different in parts of rural America, where four-day school weeks are well-liked and gaining traction.

The most recent survey , taken during the 2018–2019 school year, found that 650 districts, or about 1,600 schools, in 24 states had adopted a four-day schedule. That’s up significantly from two decades ago, and those numbers appear to be climbing. Communities backing the trend cite benefits for teacher recruitment and retention, cost savings, community support for the schedule, and more.

How is the schedule different from a typical five-day week?

Most districts that adopt a four-day week close on Fridays, though some opt to have Mondays off. The districts then redistribute the time from the day they are closed to the rest of the week, starting school earlier and ending school later than their five-day week counterparts. How much earlier they start and how much later they end varies, but on average they add about 50 minutes to each school day.

An extra 50 minutes in a day could equate to adding 10 minutes to five different classes. So, in theory, it’s not impossible that students could be receiving the same amount of seat time in five subjects (e.g., math, English, social studies, science, and an elective) on a four-day week.

But the differences between a four-day and five-day week are not as simple as a choice between four 50-minute classes per week in each subject versus five 40-minute classes. Students may benefit from non-core academic time at school each day, such as morning meetings, recess, passing time between classes, advisory periods, and lunch. And they’d get less of that in a four-day week since, overall, districts with four-day weeks have 31 fewer days of school than other schools: typically, they’re open 148 days a year, compared to 179.

Because they spend less time at school, students on a four-day week schedule have more free time outside of school. Students tend to spend their extra time on a variety of activities, but they also spend substantially more time on chores and work (for their family or at a job) over the course of a week than students at similar five-day week districts, according to research by the RAND Corporation .

Where and why do districts switch to four-day weeks?

Four-day weeks have generally been most popular in rural areas in states west of the Mississippi River. The approach is particularly growing in Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. However, some policymakers are pushing back against the trend. In Oklahoma, for example, lawmakers have made it harder for districts to operate four-day weeks, establishing challenging accountability standards and requiring districts to apply for a calendar waiver.

About 90 percent of districts operating four-day weeks are located in rural areas. Leaders in those communities cite teacher recruitment and retention, cost savings, and community support among the reasons they’ve opted for the shortened week.

Childcare is often raised as a concern related to four-day weeks. However, families and school leaders at the school districts that have adopted the schedule have said that childcare is not an issue for the majority of the community . In some cases, this is because the school district is a major employer in the community, so many adults have the day off when schools are closed. In other cases, rural adults work from home in farming or ranching, and the extra day off school allows younger children to both be cared for and engage in those family responsibilities. It is also common to have multi-generational and extended family networks in the community who might help provide childcare support when needed.

What are the impacts?

The research is mixed on the impact of four-day weeks on student achievement, but most studies find small to medium negative impacts on achievement on average. These negative effects are roughly equivalent to a student being two to seven weeks behind where they would have been if they had stayed on a five-day week.

But local context and implementation matter a lot. Notably, in one recent multi-state study , researchers found that the negative impacts were concentrated among districts with the shortest school days on the four-day schedule. In particular, districts operating with fewer than 30 hours per week drove the negative effects in the study, whereas there were no significant impacts of the schedule on student achievement at districts operating 32 hours or more per week.

The existing research also shares the impacts of the schedule on cost savings, student behavior, and attendance. Cost savings, despite being a primary motivation for adopting the schedule in many districts, are only about two percent, on average . Some district leaders maintain that these small savings, equivalent to about $57,000 per district, are meaningful in their district . Others acknowledge that the schedule saves them less than they originally anticipated, but they continued to use a four-day week schedule for other reasons.

Proponents of the schedule claim that it improves school climate and student behavior, but the evidence is mixed. In support of the claim, research shows the four-day week significantly reduces high school bullying and fighting incident rates and increases the amount of sleep elementary students get. However, surveys of four-day week and five-day week students and families found no differences in their ratings of school climate.

Another argument for four-day school weeks is that they improve attendance, allowing students to travel for appointments and extracurricular activities that can be far away on their day off. But the evidence provides little support for that argument, as studies have not found any effect of four-day weeks on attendance rates .

Despite this mixed evidence on the schedule’s effects, communities’ satisfaction with the schedule is clear. Survey data shows 84 percent of families and 95 percent of students in four-day week districts would continue to choose a four-day week over a five-day week. Families noted a range of reasons they preferred the four-day week, with some of the most common reasons being increased time with family, reduced stress, and flexibility for appointments.

More research is needed to investigate the impacts of the schedule on other important outcomes, such as teacher recruitment and retention, efficiency of class time, rates of food insecurity, student safety and mental health, and family income and resources.

Policies to consider

For any community thinking about switching to or continuing on a four-day week, it’s important to consider the benefits and drawbacks of the schedule. The local context and proposed implementation of the schedule are critical components of the decision.

For districts using the schedule, there are policies education leaders can adopt to minimize any negative impacts. Among the most important is ensuring schools maintain or increase the total time spent on academic learning.

School and system leaders should closely audit instructional minutes to see how the change is impacting teaching and learning. For example, students and teachers may have 50-minute class blocks on the four-day schedule instead of 40-minute blocks. School leaders should collaborate with and support educators to restructure curriculum and lesson plans as needed to ensure students get the instruction they need and educators have the time to teach all the required material.

Another important policy decision is what, if any, services the district provides on the day off. Additional time at home is of particular concern for students whose lives outside of school are unsafe or for those lacking access to resources, such as food or a caring adult. School leaders considering a four-day week need to be particularly thoughtful about how to design the schedule and provide wraparound supports (e.g., backpack lunch programs, enrichment opportunities on the day off) for these students and families.

Monitoring and evaluating the policy

The use of data is essential for monitoring and evaluating this kind of complex change. Schools need to closely monitor students’ academic growth, teacher recruitment and retention, and other metrics, before and after the transition, and compare their own progress to that of similar five-day week schools.

Pursuing research partnerships may be an especially promising strategy for districts interested in evaluation support. Our research team is actively recruiting district partners to study the implementation and impacts of four-day school weeks. Consider collaborating with us. Or, if your school community has moved to a four-day week, we’d love to hear how it’s going. We are @NWEAPolicy on Twitter.

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

Jill Barshay SENIOR REPORTER

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Letters to the Editor

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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 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 emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea.

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.

4 Studies to Know on 4-Day School Weeks

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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Researchers create online tool to research the four-day school week

by Joe Golfen, University of Oregon

Growing adoption of a four-day school week in many communities across the United States is raising questions about this trend in education.

A team of researchers at the University of Oregon HEDCO Institute has created an interactive dashboard to help educators, policymakers and journalists sift through more than 100 studies on the topic.

The interactive dashboard can be filtered by state, grade or other student demographics. More information about the interactive tool is available in a HEDCO blog post. In the coming months, the HEDCO Institute will release a review examining the impact of the four-day school week on student and school outcomes.

To produce the interactive dashboard, the HEDCO team conducted the first comprehensive meta analysis of the available research on four-day school weeks at K-12 schools in the U.S. A meta analysis involves reviewing the findings of multiple studies and combining the information for a more holistic view of the results.

Although nearly 900 districts in 26 states are on a four-day school week schedule, no one had conducted a comprehensive review, known as a scoping review, of the available research.

The scoping review included 111 studies, as well as interviews with three superintendents with experience in decision-making around the four-day school week.

"Scoping reviews are a great first step for getting a 'lay of the land' on a research topic," said Elizabeth Day, a research assistant professor at the HEDCO Institute. "Since four-day school weeks are a newer research area, we hope our findings and our data dashboard can provide decision-makers with easy access to the research that does exist and provide researchers with concrete ideas for what we still need to study."

Key points:

Most studies examined the four-day school week in rural communities (82 studies) and in the states of Missouri (33 studies), Colorado (26 studies), Oklahoma (18 studies) and Oregon (17 studies).
Researchers focused on how the four-day school week affected students' educational achievement (50 studies) and attendance (22 studies). Studies assessing differences in outcomes by student and school characteristics mostly examined differences by student age or grade level (28 studies).
Researchers often did not report key contextual considerations relevant for decision-makers seeking to apply findings to their own districts. The majority of studies (67) did not report students' race or ethnicity. Over half of studies (60) did not report what schools in their sample actually did on the fifth day.
Across the 51 studies that did report what schools in their sample did on the fifth day, some of the more commonly reported activities included the school being closed and offering teacher in-service opportunities.

Provided by University of Oregon

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Hedco institute menu, hedco institute, four-day school week research database.

This interactive tool is a comprehensive collection of all empirical research that has been done on the four-day school week as of May 2023. The literature was compiled as part of a scoping review, which involves an exhaustive search of the literature base on a topic to explore what areas have been studied and what work still needs to be done to better understand the topic.

This tool can help you answer the question: what empirical research has been done on the four-day school week for my population of interest.

Using the tool:

Using the filters, you can select a variety of characteristics – location, student demographics, outcomes, and others – and the table will auto-populate all the studies that included schools or students that meet those criteria.
A complete list of definitions for each filter option can be found in the Glossary.
The map offers a quick way to filter by state. Click on the state of interest and the table will only present studies that include that state.
To switch to another state, re-click the state or click the Reset Filter button.

Table Information

The table includes a link to the research publication, as well as webpage information for the corresponding author (when available). If you have questions regarding a study, please contact the corresponding author directly. Many researchers are happy to discuss their work and answer questions you might have regarding their research.
Selecting the Glossary tab provides descriptions of terms in the table.
Selecting the Summary Statistics tab will provide you with frequency tables of characteristics from studies meeting your criteria based on the filters you have selected.

Missing Data

Many researchers did not report key information, such as student race/ethnicity or what schools did on the fifth day of the week. Please note that if your filters do not return any studies researchers have not studied those populations OR simply did not report if they did.
54% of studies did not report anything about what schools did on the fifth day.
60% of studies did not report student race/ethnicity.

Learn more about using this tool

Learn more about our scoping review of four-day school week research .

Recommended researchers to contact:

Most studies we identified were student papers (n = 70, 63%; dissertations, theses, and undergraduate papers). These can still offer useful information given your population of interest, but many of these authors may no longer be in a research role. Below is a table of researchers who led the most articles and are still actively involved in studying the four-day school week.

We recommend you contact these authors first for further information regarding their research on the four-day school week.

Emily Morton

Paul Thompson

Emily Tomayko

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What the research says about 4-day school weeks

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School bus going down a rural road on a foggy day.

Is a four-day school week a bad idea?

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

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.

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

Doing Less with Less: How a four-day school week affects student learning and the teacher workforce

In “Doing Less with Less: How a four-day school week affects student learning and the teacher workforce,” Keystone Policy Center provides both a quantitative and qualitative examination of Colorado’s four-day school week phenomenon.

The first four-day districts came online in Colorado in the early 1980s, after the state legislature passed a law allowing more calendar flexibility for public schools. Since then, the phenomenon has grown steadily, mostly in small, rural districts. Some districts have added hours to each school day to meet state minimum requirements of 1,080 hours in school per year. Others have pared down school time to be closer to that annual minimum.

The four-day trend shows signs of spreading to larger districts as well. Pueblo City 60, a district of 15,000 kids, went to a four-day week in 2018-19. And starting with that same school year, Brighton 27J, just northeast of Denver, with just over 23,000 students, became the largest school district in the country to switch to a four-day week.

In interviews with superintendents across Colorado, recruiting and retaining teachers emerged as far and away the biggest factor for switching to a four-day week. Almost no one said the change was necessarily in the academic interest of students. Some argued that the effect on academic achievement has been negligible, and said that the positive impact on student mental health has outweighed any academic concerns. Initial hopes that cutting the number of days would result in budget savings proved to be a chimera.

The report gives a brief review of national research on the four-day school week movement. Next, using Colorado Department of Education data, it delves into the impacts on student achievement, teacher talent, and enrollment. It then explores how the four-day school week has affected districts in rural southwestern Colorado and in the Denver metro area, focused on Brighton 27J and its neighbor to the west, Adams 12.

Finally, the report discusses policy implications of the findings, as well as some recommendations. The four-day school week has strong proponents and detractors, and (spoiler alert) the data in Colorado gives neither side a clear upper hand (although national research is more conclusive).

Summary of Recommendations

Doing Less with Less provides some useful recommendations for examining the practice of a four-day school week:

The Colorado Department of Education should create a panel composed of experts and stakeholders to investigate and provide recommendations around the four-day school week. The panel’s work would be to ensure that all students whether in four-day or five-day school districts are receiving the support necessary to enable them to meet the state’s education standards.
Create a rigorous process for state approval of four-day school weeks, with the core question being whether this change will improve student outcomes. The process should not, as is currently the case, be a rubber stamp without a review of the impacts on student learning.
Study how instructional time is used to enable students to reach state standards in four- and five-day instructional settings. Are there best practices for use of instructional time for different grades and content in four-and five-day contexts? ? What are these and how are Colorado school districts using them?
Provide examples of best practices and support in fifth-day programming for districts using a four-day week. Should districts be required to provide programming on the fifth day and should it be educational? If so, what are the standards for this programming?

Interactive Map

Keystone has also published an interactive data map, in partnership with the Colorado Sun, to accompany this report. The map details the academic performance, enrollment, CMAS scores, average teacher salary, and teacher turnover throughout the state. The map also highlights which districts utilize a four- or five-day school week. Click the image below to access the map.

Michael S. Regan was sworn in as the 16th Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency on March 11, 2021, becoming the first Black man and second person of color to lead the U.S. EPA.

Administrator Regan is a native of Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he developed a passion for the environment while hunting and fishing with his father and grandfather, and exploring the vast lands, waters, and inner Coastal Plain of North Carolina.

As the son of two public servants – his mother, a nurse for nearly 30 years, and his father, a retired Colonel with the North Carolina National Guard, Vietnam veteran, and former agricultural extension agent – Michael Regan went on to follow in his parents’ footsteps and pursue a life of public service.

Prior to his nomination as EPA Administrator, Michael Regan served as the Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

As Secretary, he spearheaded the development and implementation of North Carolina’s seminal plan to address climate change and transition the state to a clean energy economy. Under his leadership, he secured the largest coal ash clean-up in United States history. He led complex negotiations regarding the clean-up of the Cape Fear River, which had been contaminated for years by the toxic chemicals per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS). In addition, he established North Carolina’s first-of-its-kind Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory board to better align social inequities, environmental protection, and community empowerment.

Previously, Administrator Regan served as Associate Vice President of U.S. Climate and Energy, and as Southeast Regional Director of the Environmental Defense Fund where he convened energy companies, business leaders, environmental and industry groups, and elected officials across the country to achieve pragmatic solutions to the climate crisis.

He began his career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, eventually becoming a national program manager responsible for designing strategic solutions with industry and corporate stakeholders to reduce air pollution, improve energy efficiency and address climate change.

Throughout his career, he has been guided by a belief in forming consensus, fostering an open dialogue rooted in respect for science and the law, and an understanding that environmental protection and economic prosperity go hand in hand.

Administrator Regan is a graduate of the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, making him the first EPA Administrator to have graduated from a Historically Black College and University. He earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from The George Washington University.

He and his wife Melvina are proud parents to their son, Matthew.

From 2021 to 2022, Pershing supported Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry in advancing various international commitments over the past year. These include the conclusion of the Glasgow Climate Pact at the UN Climate Convention, adoption of a Global Methane Pledge by over 100 countries, a joint declaration between China and the U.S. on enhancing climate action, and a commitment by nations representing over half of the world’s economy to reduce their emissions to levels that will keep the warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next decade.

Previously, Jonathan served as Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. Department of State and lead U.S. negotiator to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Jonathan played a key role in successfully negotiating landmark climate change deals with nations such as China, India, the European Union, Canada and Mexico. In this capacity—as well as in his earlier capacity as Deputy Special Envoy—he was instrumental in securing the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and subsequently, as senior international climate advisor to the White House and Secretary of State, was charged with overseeing its early implementation.

Prior to that, Jonathan served as the Senior Climate Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy and the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis at the Department of Energy. He was a key architect of the “Mission Innovation” commitment to double climate and clean energy research and development budgets around the world, and a major contributor to the first ever “Quadrennial Energy Review,” a deep assessment of U.S. energy policy.

Jonathan spent six years as the director of the Climate, Energy and Pollution Program at the World Resources Institute; five years as the Head of the Environment Division at the International Energy Agency in Paris; and for nearly a decade in the 1990s, he served the Science Advisor and Deputy Director of the Office of Global Change in the U.S. Department of State.

He holds a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from the University of Minnesota. A scientist by training, he served as a lead author, review editor and contributor for reports of the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has taught at the University of Minnesota and at American University, and he has published and lectured widely on climate and energy issues. In addition, he lived and worked for several years in Alaska in the energy and mining industry.

Since 2007, Griffin has reported daily from the Pentagon where she questions senior military leaders, travels to war zones with the Joint Chiefs and Secretaries of Defense, and reports on all aspects of the military and the current wars against ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Most recently, Griffin reported on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war live from the Pentagon. She extensively covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reporting live from Lviv and Kyiv, Ukraine, where she presented an exclusive sit-down interview with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. In April of 2022, she secured an exclusive interview with United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, which took place at Ramstein Air Base in Germany following his meeting with dozens of defense ministers on the war in Ukraine. Prior to traveling to Europe, Griffin spearheaded FNC’s Ukrainian war coverage stateside with around the clock updates from the Pentagon. In 2021, she led reporting surrounding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, notably grilling Pentagon Officials over their handling of the evacuation. Additionally, she covered the terror attack at Abbey Gate, including securing an interview with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.

Additionally, Griffin covered the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, and the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. She has secured major interviews with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Baghdad on the day the Iraq War ended in December 2011, an exclusive interview with General David Petraeus in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2010 when he took over as the top US commander there. Griffin also traveled with former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on multiple trips overseas from 2007 – 2011. She began her work at the Pentagon at the start of the “surge.”

During Griffin’s tenure at FNC, she has provided coverage from Israel. She provided on scene coverage of the Palestinian Intifada from 2000 – 2007 and was among the first reporters to arrive in the wake of the South-East Asia tsunami tragedy, reporting from Phuket and Khao Lak, Thailand. While based in Jerusalem, she reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, countless suicide bombings, military incursions, and failed peace deals. In 2000, she provided on-site coverage of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, its withdrawal from the Gaza strip in 2005 and Yasser Arafat’s funeral. Also, Griffin is credited with conducting a rare and extensive interview with former Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon on his farm in 2009 before he lapsed into a coma.

Prior to joining FNC, Griffin covered the Middle East region for several American media organizations including National Public Radio and U.S. News & World Report. Previously, she reported for The Sowetan newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she covered Nelson Mandela’s prison release and numerous other historic moments in South Africa’s transition away from the apartheid regime.

A graduate of Harvard University in 1992, Griffin received a B.A. in comparative politics. Griffin played an integral role in the rescue of FNC’s state department correspondent Benjamin Hall. Her efforts were documented in Hall’s New York Times bestseller “Saved: A Reporter’s Mission to Make it Home.” In September 2022, Griffin received the Transatlantic Leadership Network’s “Freedom of the Media” Gold Medal for Public Service award. She is the co-author of the book, “This Burning Land: Lessons from the Frontlines of the Transformed Israeli- Palestinian Conflict,” which she wrote with her husband, Greg Myre, regarding their experience in Israel.

Rob joined Anterix’s predecessor, pdvWireless, as Chief Strategy Officer in 2015, where, together with Executive Chairman Morgan O’Brien, he helped to conceive and lead the execution of Anterix’s vision of transformative broadband connectivity for the modern grid. Throughout his tenure with the company—becoming Chief Operating Officer and later President, CEO, and Director in 2020—Rob has progressively shaped Anterix into a creator of utility-first solutions for the industry’s most pressing energy challenges, leveraging 900 MHz private wireless broadband networks.

At Anterix, Rob, with his team, has created a track record of strategic achievements. These include securing the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to enable broadband development in the 900 MHz band; developing Anterix’s innovative, scalable business model; building industry-wide partnerships and harnessing momentum to bring together pioneering utilities and more than 100 leading technology companies driving solutions that leverage 900 MHz broadband; and developing a game-winning leadership team to accomplish the company’s transformative broadband mission. Rob also pioneered the founding of the Utility Broadband Alliance, the industry-leading utility-led organization championing private broadband networks as a key enabler of the energy transformation.

Prior to joining Anterix, Rob served in key leadership roles where he helped to build breakthrough telecommunications and technology companies, including Unison Site Management, IDT Telecom, The Associated Group, and Nextel. Rob serves as a board member of the Keystone Energy Board and the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater MetroWest NJ. He is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and The George Washington University School of Government & Business Administration.

Among his honors, Rob was shortlisted for the New Jersey Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2023 and is a recipient of the 2022 New Jersey Biz Digi-Tech Innovator Award.

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Is the Four Day School Week Worth It? What the Research Says

Written by Jeanne Sager

The pandemic has changed plenty about education, and it has leaders going back to some old ideas too. We’ve been hearing talk of the four-day school week for decades, and remote and hybrid schooling practices, as well as discussions of the four-day work week, have put the topic back on the table.

So what’s the latest? The teacher on the teacher team at Teach Starter (they’re the ones creating and curating resources for elementary school teachers to use in the classroom), did a deep dive into the good, the bad, and everything in between.

Here’s what the newest research says about the pros and cons of a four-day school week.

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Who Has a Four-Day School Week?

COVID sent many districts in the country into a four-day system with kids at home at least one day of the week for the janitorial staff to disinfect classrooms between cohorts of students. But even before coronavirus hit the United States, the four-day school week had begun to take hold. According to data from 2019 — before the pandemic began — some 1,600 schools have adopted the model in districts spread across 24 states from Oklahoma to Idaho.

In states like Colorado, the four-day school week is now in use at more than half of all districts, and it represents the amount of in-school time for 40 percent of the districts in New Mexico and Oregon. The research shows the bulk of districts that have adopted the altered schedule are smaller and more rural in nature.

Typically to make it work, districts close their doors to students on Fridays but extend the school days Monday through Thursday to ensure instructional time isn’t lost. Rather than the 180 days of education (give or take) mandated in most states, students in four-day-a-week schools typically attend 148 days in all.

Curious which country has the longest school day or the shortest? Check out school schedules around the world !

Reasons for the 4-Day School Week

While reasons vary from district to district, there are three main reasons schools have for making a move from five days to four:

Cost-cutting
Teacher recruitment
Reducing student absenteeism

Benefits of a Four-Day School Week

Although studies of the four-day week have been done over the years, 2021 saw the release of data from the widest-reaching analysis of four-day school weeks ever done (a PDF download is required, however, it is free). Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and undertaken by researchers at the RAND Corporation, the analysis offers a look at the drawbacks and benefits of a four-day school week.

In addition to analyzing student test scores from four- and five-day districts in six different states over the course of nearly a decade, the researchers administered thousands of surveys to secondary students and the parents of elementary schoolers in 36 districts, half who have a four-day schedule and half with a traditional five-day week. Finally, researchers interviewed more than 400 teachers, administrators, parents, and students in three states where a significant number of districts have a four-day school week.

Among the benefits of a four-day school week that they found:

Parents and students were largely happy with the four-day week and valued the extra day of time spent together and increased flexibility. The four-day week got a thumbs up from 69 percent of parents and 85 percent of kids.
Students in four-day week schools had more free time overall than their peers at five-day week schools, even with the increased hours four days a week. The four-day-a-week kids had more time for sports, chores, and hobbies, as well as spending more time on homework than their peers.
Elementary schoolers in four-day week schools got more sleep than their peers. This increased sleep time did not carry over into middle and high school.
Districts realized cost savings — albeit small ones — which could be used to maintain the level of instructional expenses in the face of revenue shortages.
Most teachers in the four-day week schools saw the schedule as a “job perk.”
Administrators said the four-day week was useful in teacher recruitment.

The Robert Wood Johnson and RAND study isn’t the only one to take a look at the four-day week and come up with benefits. Other studies have found:

Improved morale among school staff members

Drawbacks of a Four-Day School Week

So does all this mean the four-day school week is the way of the future? Not so fast. While it’s well-received in some districts, the Robert Wood Johnson and RAND analysis found it’s not perfect. There are drawbacks to kids attending school just four days a week, including:

Despite student absenteeism being a reason use for switching to a four-day week at some schools, the schedule change had no effect on absenteeism.
Student achievement in schools that switched to a four-day week did not grow as quickly as it did in schools that maintained a five-day week.
A comparison of English language arts and math test scores showed that students on the four-day school week have lower scores, over time, when compared with peers on a five-day schedule.

And the new study isn’t the only one to find cracks in the surface of this system. Other studies have found:

Mothers of children are often forced out of the workplace to care for their children on the day off from school — something we saw amplified by the pandemic.
An increase in juvenile crime is realized in some areas when kids are out of school for an extra day.

The Future of the Four-Day School Week

Will more schools move to the four-day school week? With increasing staff shortages, it’s certainly possible. We’re already seeing an increase in schools opting for virtual instruction one day a week to keep up.

What does the schedule look like where you are? Are four-day weeks being discussed?

Get fresh ideas for classroom management with resources designed for teachers by teachers.

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Four day week is a great idea particularly from the point of view of teachers as far as planning, meetings and professional developments are concerned. However there are countries and cities that have heavy traffic and longer working hours means more travel time due to traffic congestion. This is a huge challenge

Hi Padma, Thanks for your comment. You make a very valid point! I don't think there will ever be a way to run a four day week without some downsides. It's definitely food for thought! Kind regards, Emma

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Four-Day School Week Linked to Better Academic Performance, Study Finds

As long as school has existed, students have wanted to spend less time there. But for the first time, a study in the US has shown that giving primary school kids a three-day weekend doesn't appear to have a negative impact on academic performance - in fact, the results suggest it can even boost some test scores.

The study looked at the effect of the four-day school week on the reading and maths scores of children in years 4 and 5 in Colorado. While the shortened week wasn't associated with a change in reading ability, maths test scores were significantly higher among children who went to school one day less a week.

The research comes at a time when a large number of schools in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming have already cut back their weeks to four long days, and other states are considering following their lead to reduce costs. To be clear, the four-day school week contains the same amount of hours as a traditional school week, but they're just condensed into four days rather than five.

"What interested me about our results is they were completely opposite to what we anticipated," Mary Beth Walker, one of the researchers from Georgia State University, said in a press release . "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. Also, a longer weekend would give them more opportunity to forget what they had learned."

But the results showed the opposite. The study looked at the number of students in each school that scored "proficient or advanced" on state-wide maths and reading tests, both before and after the school changed to a four-day week.

On average 55.5 percent of a school's students were achieving these top scores in their maths tests the year before they switched to a four-day week, but after changing, 63.1 percent were getting those results .

This improvement increased over time, with an average of 72 percent of students scoring "proficient or advanced" on their maths tests two years after they'd switched to a four-day school week.

Obviously the study only shows a correlation between the four-day school week and better academic performance, and doesn't prove that the reduced days in class directly impacted test scores. The researchers also admit that they can't yet explain exactly how having a three-day weekend would benefit the kids' scores. But they do have some suspicions.

"My own personal hypothesis is teachers liked it so much - they were so enthusiastic about the four-day week - they did a better job," said Walker . "There's some evidence in other labour studies that four-day work weeks enhance productivity."

This initial study was only conducted in rural school districts, and further research is needed to show whether the four-day school week can also benefit those living in big cities, as well as to provide some insight into exactly why they work.

But for now the early evidence would suggest that cutting a day off the school week doesn't negatively impact academic performance. And if it helps schools save money, and potentially also helps students and teachers get more engaged in education, then it could be a very good thing.

We just hope that once schools begin to catch on to the benefits of the three-day weekend, workplaces might begin to do the same. Because honestly, who couldn't handle working a few longer hours Monday to Thursday to get Fridays off?

The research has been published in the journal Education, Finance and Policy.

Update 31 August 2015: We had previously listed the improvement in reading test scores, but as the change wasn't stastically significant we've removed this from the article.

Cardinal CSD sees improvement from students and teachers from four-day school week

by John Redfield - KTVO

Cardinal CSD sees improvement from students and teachers from 4-day school week (John Redfield/KTVO){ }

ELDON, Iowa — Since switching from a five-day to a four-day school week three years ago, the Cardinal Community School District has seen notable improvements in several key areas.

Superintendent James Craig emphasizes that the change has resulted in increased student engagement and teacher retention.

"The original reason it was put into place was to try to give us a better chance at recruiting and retaining teachers and it's done that," said Craig. "We have turned over fewer and fewer teachers each year since the calendar has been in place. Our applicant pool is growing, and the number of quality applicants we're getting, the interview is going up as well. So, it's met its intention in that respect. I don't think we get much of any complaint from students, but it is good for them to be able to have the Mondays off for their personal needs. Family appointments, family trips, whatever and then we have seen attendance go up each year."

However, the added day off on Mondays might raise concerns for parents, as they may need to spend extra money on daycare with no school in session. Craig acknowledges this concern and explains that while the district is always open to supporting families, operating a school-run daycare isn't feasible.

"As everybody knows, there is not nearly enough access to day care across the state," said Craig. "The problem with a school district operating a daycare is that it never runs in the black. So, unfortunately, it's a money concern. Right now, we run a before-school and after-school Daycare program. It's a $40,000 operation that runs $20,000 in the hole every year. So, we invest $20,000 into that daycare program but there's $40,000 of expense. So, you know, for us to run a full-blown childcare system would be unrealistic for the district and its why schools and for the vast majority don't do it."

Although running a daycare would be a challenge for the district, Craig highlights other ways they support families, such as their summer meal program, through which they distributed over 24,000 meals while school was out. Additionally, the district has taken steps to cover the cost of students' school supplies, demonstrating their commitment to helping students succeed.

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The authors provide information on the implementation and outcomes of the four-day school week using quantitative and qualitative data from a variety of sources. The authors add to the literature by providing the richest qualitative data on the four-day school week to date, analyzing the broadest set of outcomes for a variety of stakeholders, and using the most up-to-date data available.

Does Four Equal Five?

Implementation and Outcomes of the Four-Day School Week

M. Rebecca Kilburn , Andrea Phillips , Celia J. Gomez , Louis T. Mariano , Christopher Joseph Doss , Wendy M. Troxel , Emily Morton , Kevin Estes

Research Published Oct 7, 2021

Includes Appendix C

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The four-day school week (4dsw) is growing in popularity, especially in rural areas across the western United States. RAND Corporation researchers addressed knowledge gaps about the 4dsw by conducting a large-scale study of the implementation and outcomes of the 4dsw that involved the collection of original data in numerous districts across Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, as well as administrative data from these and other states. The researchers analyzed both qualitative and quantitative data to compare the 4dsw and five-day school week (5dsw). The analyses resulted in mixed findings.

Advocates of the 4dsw argue that the shorter week saves money, improves student attendance, and helps recruit and retain teachers in rural districts. Cost savings related to the four-day model were relatively small, but savings due to a 4dsw may be used to maintain the level of instructional expenses in the face of revenue shortages. There was no quantitative evidence that the 4dsw improved student attendance.

Qualitative data supported the view that the model helps attract and retain teachers. Families and students reported highly valuing the extra time that the 4dsw allowed them to spend together, and the data showed that, overall, stakeholders experienced high levels of satisfaction with the 4dsw. However, a comparison of English language arts and math test scores showed that students on the 4dsw have lower scores, over time, when compared with peers on a five-day schedule. Given these mixed findings, communities are likely to make different choices about the 4dsw depending on their goals and the local context.

Key Findings

On average, 4dsw districts had longer school days, but fewer of them and fewer instructional hours over the course of a school year.
Students on 4dsw schedules in grades K–6 and 7–12 reported having 4 hours and 3.5 hours of more free time per week, respectively, than 5dsw students.
Superintendents and school board members in districts visited by the researchers said that cost savings were the major motivation for adopting the 4dsw.
Most teachers viewed the 4dsw only as a "job perk"; other stakeholders thought it gave them a competitive advantage in teacher recruitment and retention.
School principals, teachers, parents, and students reported believing that students learned just as much or slightly more in the 4dsw than in a 5dsw, and that the difference in minutes of instructional time had no real effect on student achievement.
Student achievement did not grow as fast in the 4dsw districts after the adoption of the 4dsw policy compared with similar 5dsw districts.
Elementary students in 4dsw districts got more school-week sleep than their peers in 5dsw districts, but there was no difference in the amount of sleep that middle and high school students got during the school week in 4dsw and 5dsw districts.
Formal modeling of survey results on elementary parents indicated no significant difference in the perceived stress of 4dsw and 5dsw parents. However, focus group parents across all 4dsw districts felt it allowed more flexibility in their schedules and made it easier to spend time together as family.

Recommendations

Debates about 4dsw adoption should acknowledge that there is only weak support for the three main reasons that districts typically adopt the 4dsw: saving money, reducing student absences, and attracting and retaining teachers.
Policymakers should take into account the overwhelming popularity of the 4dsw as they engage in community discussions about 4dsw adoption or switching back from a 4dsw to a 5dsw.
School and district officials should recognize that examining a school's or district's student achievement over time is not an adequate metric for assessing the effects of the 4dsw on achievement. Data show that even though student achievement at 4dsw districts was generally trending upward over time, this growth was not as large as what the 4dsw districts would have attained with a 5dsw schedule.

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Can Four Equal Five? Assessing the Four-Day School Week

Oct 7, 2021

Academic Achievement
Education Administration
Elementary Education
Secondary Education
Teacher Incentives
Teachers and Teaching

Document Details

Copyright: RAND Corporation
Availability: Available
Print Format: Paperback
Paperback Pages: 202
Paperback Price: $31.50
Paperback ISBN/EAN: 978-1-9774-0776-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/RR-A373-1
Document Number: RR-A373-1

Research conducted by

RAND Education and Labor
RAND Social and Economic Well-Being

This study was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and undertaken jointly by RAND Education and Labor and RAND Social and Economic Well-Being .

This publication is part of the RAND research report series. Research reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND research reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions .

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IMAGES

What a 4-day school week means for teachers, students and families
Four-Day School Week Resources
Four day school week research proposal
Four day school week: Is it for the students?
4-Day School Weeks: New Research Examines the Benefits and Drawbacks
Parents, students, staff support four-day school week

COMMENTS

4-Day School Weeks: New Research Examines the Benefits and Drawbacks
4-Day School Weeks: New Research Examines the Benefits and Drawbacks. The move from a five-day school week to a four-day week with extended days has been one of the fastest-increasing—and least ...
Four-day school week: Research suggests impacts of a condensed schedule
We updated this piece on the four-day school week, originally published in June 2018, on July 15, 2023 to include new research and other information. More than 2,100 public schools in 25 states have switched to a four-day school week, often in hopes of recruiting teachers, saving money and boosting student attendance, researchers estimate.
What the research tells us about four-day school weeks
The research is mixed on the impact of four-day weeks on student achievement, but most studies find small to medium negative impacts on achievement on average. These negative effects are roughly equivalent to a student being two to seven weeks behind where they would have been if they had stayed on a five-day week.
The Popularity of 4-Day School Weeks, in Charts
Teachers tend to be more supportive of four-day weeks than school and district leaders, according to the EdWeek Research Center survey results from a nationally representative survey of 924 ...
PROOF POINTS: Seven new studies on the impact of a four-day school week
A four-day school week may be popular with families, but it may also harm academic achievement, especially for rural students. Learn about the latest research on the impact of a four-day schedule on test scores, attendance, and sports in different states.
4-day school weeks: Educational innovation or detriment?
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.
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 ...
3. The Who, When, and Why of Four-Day School Week Adoption
Abstract. Four-day school weeks are used in over 1,600 schools across twenty-four states but little is known about adoption and implementation of these types of school calendars. Through examinations of school calendars and correspondence with school districts, we have compiled the most complete four-day school week dataset to date. We use this unique database to conduct a comprehensive ...
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.
A Four-Day School Week? Here Are the Costs and Benefits
Yet research on the pros and cons of a four-day school week had not kept up. Some small studies showed drop-offs in student achievement. Others showed small improvements. To provide some guidance to state and school leaders, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation asked RAND to investigate what exactly a four-day week means for students, teachers, and schools.
Researchers create online tool to research the four-day school week
Most studies examined the four-day school week in rural communities (82 studies) and in the states of Missouri (33 studies), Colorado (26 studies), Oklahoma (18 studies) and Oregon (17 studies).
Four-Day School Week Research Database
Four-Day School Week Research Database. This interactive tool is a comprehensive collection of all empirical research that has been done on the four-day school week as of May 2023. The literature was compiled as part of a scoping review, which involves an exhaustive search of the literature base on a topic to explore what areas have been ...
What the research says about 4-day school weeks
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 ...
Can Four Equal Five? Assessing the Four-Day School Week
A four-day school week is becoming more common, especially in states with large rural areas. Champions of the shorter week contend that it saves money, improves student attendance, and helps recruit and retain teachers to rural districts. ... Research briefs present policy-oriented summaries of individual published, peer-reviewed documents or ...
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 ...
Doing Less with Less: How a four-day school week affects student
The report gives a brief review of national research on the four-day school week movement. Next, using Colorado Department of Education data, it delves into the impacts on student achievement, teacher talent, and enrollment. It then explores how the four-day school week has affected districts in rural southwestern Colorado and in the Denver ...
Is the Four Day School Week Worth It? What the Research Says
Among the benefits of a four-day school week that they found: Parents and students were largely happy with the four-day week and valued the extra day of time spent together and increased flexibility. The four-day week got a thumbs up from 69 percent of parents and 85 percent of kids. Students in four-day week schools had more free time overall ...
Four-Day School Week Linked to Better Academic ...
The study looked at the effect of the four-day school week on the reading and maths scores of children in years 4 and 5 in Colorado. While the shortened week wasn't associated with a change in reading ability, maths test scores were significantly higher among children who went to school one day less a week. The research comes at a time when a ...
Cardinal CSD sees improvement from students and teachers from four-day
ELDON, Iowa — Since switching from a five-day to a four-day school week three years ago, the Cardinal Community School District has seen notable improvements in several key areas. Superintendent James Craig emphasizes that the change has resulted in increased student engagement and teacher retention. "The original reason it was put into place was to try to give us a better chance at ...
Does Four Equal Five? Implementation and Outcomes of the Four-Day
The four-day school week (4dsw) is growing in popularity, especially in rural areas across the western United States. RAND Corporation researchers addressed knowledge gaps about the 4dsw by conducting a large-scale study of the implementation and outcomes of the 4dsw that involved the collection of original data in numerous districts across Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, as well as ...
Secondary Curriculum
Secondary Curriculum. The secondary school is divided into two stages… grades 7-8 (the Logic Stage) and grades 9-12 (the Rhetoric Stage). In grades 7-8, the students take the mastered information from the Grammar Stage and bring it into ordered relationships. Students begin to apply logic, assessing the validity of arguments and learning to ...
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Logos Times. To subscribe to Logos Times, please contact [email protected]. Logos Times, Summer 2024, Volume 13, Issue 2, Current Issue. Logos Times, Fall/Winter 2023/2024. Volume 13, Issue 1. Logos Times, Summer 2023, Volume 12, Issue 2. Logos Times, Fall/Winter 2022/2023, Volume 12, Issue 1. Logos Times, Summer 2022, Volume 11, Issue 3.
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Trouble viewing this calendar? Click here to open in a new window. About. Mission, Vision & Philosophy; Statement of Faith; Meet the Board; History
NATIONAL STUDENT EMPLOYMENT WEEK PROCLAMATION
Student Employment Week in the City of Moscow, and call upon all the residents of this city to join with the University of Idaho and Washington State University in observing this week and recognizing the reliability, initiative and unique contributions of student employees. Dated this 7th day of April, 2008.

Four-day school week: Research suggests impacts of a condensed schedule vary by student group, school type

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Denise-Marie Ordway

What the research tells us about four-day school weeks

How is the schedule different from a typical five-day week?

Where and why do districts switch to four-day weeks?

What are the impacts?

Policies to consider

Monitoring and evaluating the policy

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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 weeks: Educational innovation or detriment?

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

Maintaining instructional time key for mitigating academic harm

More to worry about than just achievement losses

The future of four-day school weeks

4 Studies to Know on 4-Day School Weeks

1. Maintaining instructional time is critical

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

3. Shortened schedules may equal calmer schools

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What the research says about 4-day school weeks

Doing Less with Less: How a four-day school week affects student learning and the teacher workforce

Teach Starter, part of Tes Teach Starter, part of Tes

Is the Four Day School Week Worth It? What the Research Says

Who Has a Four-Day School Week?

Reasons for the 4-Day School Week

Benefits of a Four-Day School Week

Drawbacks of a Four-Day School Week

The Future of the Four-Day School Week

What does the schedule look like where you are? Are four-day weeks being discussed?

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