More US Schools Moving to Four-Day Week

Several Texas school districts have recently moved to a four-day school week, adding to the growing number of schools on truncated schedules amid teacher shortages across the country.

The Bandera Independent School District in the San Antonio area approved the transition on Monday, local news station KENS reported. It joins several other local districts—the Natalia, Utopia and La Vernia ISDs—that have shifted to four-day weeks.

Superintendent Gary Bitzkie said he hopes the shift helps recruit teachers and improve attendance rates.

"As it becomes increasingly more difficult to recruit and hire public educators, especially in rural districts like Bandera, we have learned from our colleagues around the state that have already moved into a four-day school week that it is a very powerful recruiting tool," Bitzkie told KENS. Newsweek reached out to Bitzkie for further comment via email.

Almost 2,100 schools in nearly 900 districts across 25 states have four-day school weeks, an increase of almost 850 percent since 1999, according to Paul Thompson, an associate professor of economics at Oregon State University who studies the impact of four-day weeks.

"Historically, there have been three main reasons cited for four-day school week use," Thompson told Newsweek.

"The first is around schools switching for issues related to rural schooling, including student absences due to extracurricular activities and appointments. The second is around cost savings, which was a primary reason for schools switching to this model around the Great Recession. Currently, the motivation is solely that of teacher retention and recruitment, with the four-day school week being used as a non-monetary benefit schools can offer teachers."

Few large school districts have adopted the four-day week.

In Colorado, the 27J school district, which is north of Denver, switched to the model in 2018. Superintendent Chris Fiedler told Good Morning America that the move was aimed at recruiting and keeping more teachers when the district's pay rate was lower than nearby districts with more available funding.

It's "a way to recruit folks without being able to pay them as well as our surrounding districts," Fiedler said.

However, research has suggested a four-day week could negatively affect students who already saw their learning disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research by the Rand Corp., which analyzed data from five states—Idaho, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Dakota—found that while student achievement improved in districts with four-day school weeks, it did so more slowly than if the same schools had maintained a five-day week.

"The key to determining the impacts of a four-day school week on student achievement seems to lie with changes in time in school," Thompson said. "For many districts, lengthening the other four school days is often insufficient to offset the time lost from removing one day per week."

Thompson added that there are other considerations that factor into the four-day week model, such as student health, physical activity, supervision on the day off, lost access to school meals, physical education opportunities and child care.

"The four-day school week has more far-reaching impacts than many other educational interventions," he said.

This comes as states across the country have been grappling with teacher shortages. Newsweek has previously reported on how low pay is one of the main reasons many educators are choosing to leave the profession.

"I'm a single woman, self-supporting, and the yearly 'salary increases' in my district never keep up with cost of living increases," Jodi Turchin, a 12th grade English teacher in Florida, told Newsweek last year. "It makes it nearly impossible to save, and it's only because I live simply that I don't have to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet."

Meanwhile, legislators in some states have been looking for ways to encourage educators to stay in or return to the profession. Florida legislators are considering a bill that would help retired teachers return to work, and in Utah legislators have proposed giving out bonuses of $20,000 to some teachers.

Update 2/22/24, 6:55 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add comment from Paul Thompson.