This country is in serious trouble.
The past two decades have seen an explosion in the adoption of the four-day school week. Though the policy has been documented as early as the 1930s, only 257 schools in the country had adopted it by 1999. 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. Generally, most of the schools and districts adopting the policy are rural and west of the Mississippi River.
Against this growing trend, however, there is increasing evidence that, by and large, a four-day school week causes student achievement to suffer. To study the policy's effects, we looked at a variety of outcomes in six states—Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota—five of which had the student achievement data we needed for the study. We compared achievement in English and math in grades 3 through 8 in schools that adopted the four-day school week against that of their five-day-a-week peers. We found that students in four-day school week districts fell behind a little every year. Though these changes were small, they accumulated. We estimate that after eight years, the damage to student achievement will about equal that caused, according to some estimates, by the pandemic. The potential long-term learning deficit in student achievement from the four-day school week is, our findings suggest, not trivial.
There is increasing evidence that, by and large, a four-day school week causes student achievement to suffer.
Why, then, is the policy so popular? For one thing, district leaders cannot see the harm. We found that school leaders, teachers, and parents in districts with a four-day week reported that test scores were equal to, or even better than, results from before the policy was adopted. Our analysis confirmed that, by and large, exam results remained the same or went up year to year, even after the shorter week was adopted. But if school leaders were able to see the bigger picture of what was happening outside their district, they would realize that students in five-day-a-week schools were progressing faster. The four-day students were actually, comparatively, falling behind. In other words, their performance would likely have grown faster if their district had never adopted the four-day school week.
https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/04/the-four-day-school-week-are-the-pros-worth-the-cons.html
The past two decades have seen an explosion in the adoption of the four-day school week. Though the policy has been documented as early as the 1930s, only 257 schools in the country had adopted it by 1999. 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. Generally, most of the schools and districts adopting the policy are rural and west of the Mississippi River.
Against this growing trend, however, there is increasing evidence that, by and large, a four-day school week causes student achievement to suffer. To study the policy's effects, we looked at a variety of outcomes in six states—Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota—five of which had the student achievement data we needed for the study. We compared achievement in English and math in grades 3 through 8 in schools that adopted the four-day school week against that of their five-day-a-week peers. We found that students in four-day school week districts fell behind a little every year. Though these changes were small, they accumulated. We estimate that after eight years, the damage to student achievement will about equal that caused, according to some estimates, by the pandemic. The potential long-term learning deficit in student achievement from the four-day school week is, our findings suggest, not trivial.
There is increasing evidence that, by and large, a four-day school week causes student achievement to suffer.
Why, then, is the policy so popular? For one thing, district leaders cannot see the harm. We found that school leaders, teachers, and parents in districts with a four-day week reported that test scores were equal to, or even better than, results from before the policy was adopted. Our analysis confirmed that, by and large, exam results remained the same or went up year to year, even after the shorter week was adopted. But if school leaders were able to see the bigger picture of what was happening outside their district, they would realize that students in five-day-a-week schools were progressing faster. The four-day students were actually, comparatively, falling behind. In other words, their performance would likely have grown faster if their district had never adopted the four-day school week.
https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/04/the-four-day-school-week-are-the-pros-worth-the-cons.html
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