Google the phrase 鈥渇our-day school week鈥� and up pop multiple news articles on the trending topic. In the past few months alone, school districts in Arkansas, Iowa, and Texas have announced the move to the new schedule.
The shorter week is typically used as a temporary cost-saving measure in smaller, cash-strapped districts. The main driver now? To attract and hold onto teachers.
鈥淢ore and more now, the option is used as a teacher recruitment and retention tool,鈥� said Mallory McGowin, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. In the past two years, the number of school districts in Missouri that have adopted the four-day week has nearly doubled, and will likely surpass 140 in the upcoming school year, McGowin said.
Missouri isn鈥檛 unique. As of 2018, an estimated 560 districts in 25 states were using the four-day-a-week schedule, according to the . Among districts pioneering the condensed schedule, a few as early as the 1970s, most were in small, rural communities that tended to make the switch to reduce costs. But, as Missouri鈥檚 McGowin notes, the more recent wave of schedule switchers are using the strategy to help solve serious staffing challenges.
The pandemic has both worsened the teacher shortage and made more plausible the tactic of shortening the school week to alleviate the problem. For starters, the pandemic left many in the teaching profession feeling burned out and reconsidering their career choice.
More than half of 3,621 respondents to a February 2022 survey said they were considering leaving the education profession earlier than anticipated. The pandemic also led employees in all industries to re-think their priorities, emphasizing a better work-life balance: An overwhelming 92 percent of U.S. employees in a recent nationwide said that they鈥檇 prefer a four-day over a five-day work schedule.
Additionally, these 1,000-plus respondents reported that the four-day work week鈥攎ore than any other employee perk鈥攚ould convince them to stay at their job.
Tack on the normalization of altered school schedules during the pandemic (e.g. remote, hybrid, and asynchronous learning days), and the concept of a permanent four-day work week begins to seem like a reasonable, perhaps preferable, schedule to educators.
Advocates see immediate benefits
Some district officials think so too. Those who recently made the switch to a four-day week say they鈥檝e seen an immediate impact on their staffing levels.
New Mexico鈥檚 Socorro Consolidated Schools faced 11 teacher vacancies for the 2020鈥�21 academic year. Overall, the district has 268 employees鈥攁pproximately 111 of those are teachers. With no qualified applicants from the United States, Superintendent Ron Hendrix sought and filled the vacancies with candidates from the Philippines. Then the district switched to a four-day week, effective for the 2021-22 year. The district again faced approximately the same number of job vacancies as the year prior. But this time, it was able to fill all but two positions鈥攁 culinary arts and a band leader job鈥攚ithout expanding the candidate search globally.
鈥淚t鈥檚 made a big difference with my teachers. Morale boost has really been one of the biggest things I鈥檝e seen [as a result of the schedule change],鈥� said Hendrix, who also observes its impact on new hires: 鈥淚f someone鈥檚 getting out of college, they鈥檙e not going to come to the middle of nowhere if they don鈥檛 have something to encourage them.鈥�
In some districts, the condensed schedule serves as the encouragement job candidates need to accept a job鈥攅specially when the salary doesn鈥檛. Such has been the case in Colorado鈥檚 27J school district, a 20,300-student system in the Denver area that may be the largest in the nation on a four-day schedule, according to Superintendent Chris Fiedler.
Fiedler says the district made the decision to move to a four-day week in 2018 after its sixth failed attempt to increase teacher salaries via a mill levy override, a voter-approved property tax used for local school operations.
鈥淚t was solely to attract and retain quality adults to work with kids,鈥� said Fiedler of the move made by his district, which he says pays about 20 percent less than neighboring ones.
The schedule change has produced the desired effect.
鈥淚 know it鈥檚 a reason some people join us,鈥� Fiedler said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e hired teachers away from surrounding communities.鈥�
Skeptics raise concerns about shorter weeks
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is skeptical and has flagged concerns about a truncated work week. She issued this statement against the concept: 鈥淎 shortened workweek is not a 鈥榤agic pill鈥� to solve the problem of educator shortages and, in some cases, could be wielded as an excuse by administrators not to invest in schools. Teachers want to be in school helping kids鈥攚ith the conditions they need to succeed.鈥�
Other notable skeptics say districts are overlooking the long-term negative effects on student learning in favor of a tactic to address an immediate problem.
Education researcher Paul Hill acknowledges that districts that lock in the four-day week may initially see a spike in teacher recruitment and retention. Nonetheless, he calls the move 鈥渁 race to the bottom鈥� and argues that with a shorter school week comes less instruction鈥攁nd less learning鈥攆or students.
鈥淸The shorter week] doesn鈥檛 have to be evaluated, or monitored. It just happens,鈥� said Hill, founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education and emeritus professor at the University of Washington Bothell.
Careful planning and communication precede effective change
While there鈥檚 no single process that precedes a change to the four-day school week, those who facilitated the switch in their districts described a deliberate, thoughtful approach.
Superintendent Fiedler says the change to a four-day week in his district came after extensive planning. The many adaptations included detailed schedule amendments, affordable day-care provisions for families on the day off (Friday), and the preservation of extracurricular offerings and athletics鈥揺ven when they required adjustments, like installing lights for later practices and events. The district鈥檚 contains detailed information about the switch that families can access.
Fiedler was intentional about how he made adjustments. For instance, unlike most districts that operate Tuesday through Friday, Fiedler intentionally chose Monday as the 鈥渙ff鈥� day. His rationale: Teachers would be more likely to use Monday to plan for the week ahead. A Friday, he reasoned, could feel more like the start to a three-day weekend. Also, Fiedler鈥檚 district uses select Mondays for teachers to come to school for meetings with staff or parents, and professional development.
The careful planning and communication appears to have paid off.
鈥淲e had six different meetings with parents. As you can imagine, the first couple were pretty intense,鈥� Fiedler said. 鈥淲e went from being afraid they [parents] were going to tar and feather us to getting a round of applause for being innovative and brave.鈥�
Fiedler says the pandemic has made it difficult to gauge the impact of the condensed schedule on student academic outcomes. The district hasn鈥檛 had full-blown statewide assessments since the spring of 2019; results from internal assessments, he says, have been pretty flat.
鈥淚鈥檓 pleased with flat, given all the other distractions of the pandemic,鈥� Fiedler said.
He does, however, point to one measure of student success: the district鈥檚 graduation rate. In 2017, the last year of the five-day schedule, the district鈥檚 graduation rate was 77.4 percent. The overall graduation rate has risen incrementally every academic year since the four-day week was implemented in 2018-19, reaching 88.2 percent in 2021.
Since the origin of the four-day schedule, the district鈥檚 Hispanic students (who make up 46 percent of the district鈥檚 total student population) netted an increased graduation rate of nearly 4 percent. In 2021, 27J鈥檚 Hispanic student graduation rate was 86.7 percent鈥�12.5 percent higher than that of Hispanic students statewide, and 5 percent higher than Colorado鈥檚 overall graduation rate.
Meanwhile, Fiedler says, the district remains 鈥渄ead last鈥� in funding compared to others in the state.
Teachers as champions for the change
Without the funding to make teacher salaries more competitive, districts like 27J use the four-day week as a leveraging tool to attract teachers, whom Fiedler says have been the biggest champions of the change at his district.
That comes as no surprise to Frank Walston, a retired teacher and executive director of the New Mexico Association of Classroom Teachers. More than a decade ago, he spearheaded the committee in his district that researched and facilitated the condensed school week in Capitan Municipal Schools, a small rural New Mexico district where he taught before retiring in 2017.
鈥淚 love a four-day school week,鈥� Walston said. 鈥淚 also understand its limitations.鈥�
The practice requires adjustments, says Walston. For instance, shorter weeks generally mean longer class periods by about 10 to 15 minutes, which both teachers and students need to get accustomed to.
Walston also acknowledges that nonsalaried employees could suffer pay losses in the switch. When the district where he taught initially went to a four-day schedule about a decade ago, the bus drivers in his district鈥攚ho were employed by a transportation company鈥攍ost wages due to the shortened work week. But eventually, the district bought the buses, allowing the bus drivers to become district employees with the option to pick up additional work hours doing other jobs in the schools.
Walston says that, in his experience, once teachers adjust to the schedule change they don鈥檛 want to go back.
鈥淲e had a teacher who left Capitan and went to another district with a five-day schedule,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey only stayed a semester.鈥�
