How do four-day school weeks impact teachers and students?

There has been a surge of popularity for four-day school weeks, particularly in rural districts. Cited reasons for the schedule change include hoping it will boost teacher recruitment and retention, reduce costs, and improve student attendance. It’s a small share of U.S. school systems that have adopted four-day schedules, but it has grown post-COVID.

What are the effects? How does the shortened schedule impact teachers and students?

New research has found that teacher turnover actually increased in Oregon school districts that use the four-day week model, which is about 40 percent. Turnover among non-teaching staff was largely unaffected. Academics at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Missouri examined the short- and long-term effects of four-day school weeks in the state between 2007 and 2023.

Perhaps the turnover could be linked to teacher salaries, writes Education Week. “Teacher salaries in schools that moved to four-day weeks were generally lower to begin with but fell further behind schools with a traditional schedule over time.” (The number of contracted working days for teachers decreased by about 15 days, on average, under a four-day schedule, according to the study.)

“The findings suggest that policymakers interested in implementing 4dsw [four-day school weeks] for improved school employee retention should exercise caution…,” conclude the authors of the Oregon study.

A September working paper that looked at the impacts of four-day school weeks on teacher recruitment and retention and student attendance in Colorado, a state where such schedules are highly prevalent and most sustained, found “small negative or statistically insignificant effects on teacher recruitment and retention outcomes” and no significant effects on student attendance, outside of a “significant 0.76 percentage point decrease in attendance rates specifically for large rural schools” driven mainly during the Covid-impacted school years.

Numerous studies have consistently found that shorter schedules negatively impact student achievement. One study by Missouri’s education department found no statistically significant change in academic achievement in districts that switched to a four-day school week when compared to the districts that kept a five-day school week.

Finance studies have found that four-day school weeks can cut costs, but the average cost savings are minimal. According to a report by the Education Commission of the States, districts that moved to a shorter week generally saved about 0.4 percent to 2.5 percent of their budget. Other research has found that a $1,000 decrease in per pupil spending lowers average math and reading test scores by 3.9 percent of a standard deviation.

A 2023 study of a large school district in Colorado that moved to a four-day school week in 2018 found that “the change had a negative effect on teacher retention, student achievement, and home values within its boundaries,” reported Education Week.

The transition to a four-day school week is a cautionary tale, according to Paul Thompson, who conducted one of the studies on the student achievement effects of such a schedule.

A four-day school week that reduces instructional time has a negative and statistically significant impact on student learning.
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As a cost-cutting move, adopting a four-day school week is comparable to other program cuts and presents a viable option for financially-troubled school districts to consider. But switching to a four-day schedule is likely to have implications beyond just cost savings and achievement.
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If students and educators want to explore school calendars outside of the typical five-day-a-week schedule, we need to know how to structure flex time to enhance and extend in-school learning. Otherwise, we risk compounding the learning losses students have already sustained in the wake of Covid-19.