Should Schools Adopt a Four-Day Week?

May 13, 2024

The number of U.S. schools shifting to a four-day week is on the rise. In 2023, around 900 school districts across 26 states followed a four-day schedule, up from 650 districts in 2020. Driving the trend is a nationwide teacher shortage, and some district leaders say offering the incentive of a shorter week will help them attract new teachers and keep the ones they have. Critics worry about potential lost time in the classroom, among other things. Should more schools adopt a four-day week? A district superintendent and an economist square off.

Fewer Days in School

Twenty-six states have at least one school district that runs on a four-day schedule

The four-day school week benefits families, school staff, and districts, particularly in rural communities.

We have a long history of using a four-day week in Colorado. It began as a pilot program in three rural districts in 1980, to attract much-needed teachers to those districts. Families benefited too, gaining a day to get kids to appointments that weren’t available on weekends. All in all, the shorter week allowed a healthier work-life balance for families and school staff, and without reducing the time students spent in the classroom. Today 128 of the 178 Colorado school districts are on a four-day schedule.

The district I lead—27J Schools, near Denver—is the 12th largest in Colorado, with more than 23,000 students. It moved to the four-day week in 2018, after failing to gain support for six consecutive ballot measures asking its community to increase local taxes to better fund teacher salaries and improve neighborhood schools. Losing at the polls meant 27J Schools couldn’t keep pace with neighboring districts in recruiting and keeping teachers. The starting salary in 27J was as much as $10,000 less than it was in other districts.

High school seniors use Mondays to gain experience through internships.

Since we couldn’t offer teachers a competitive salary, we offered them something just as valuable—time. Time to take care of their families, run errands, and rest. Reorganizing the schedule to four 8-hour days also gave schools more time for teacher training and gave teachers more time to prepare lessons, improving their performance in the classroom. And the time outside the classroom is a boon to students: High school seniors use Mondays to work as interns in local industries, such as hospitality, engineering, and health.

For school districts like 27J, the four-day week strikes a crucial balance between maintaining a competitive recruitment system, allowing families flexibility to meet their needs, and ensuring that students get a top-notch education.

—CHRIS FIEDLER

Superintendent, School District 27J, Colorado

There are many negatives to removing students from a traditional school environment, even if it’s just once a week.

Many school districts that have adopted the four-day week have had to reduce instructional time, sometimes as much as four hours a week, leading to declines in student test scores. Lost access to school meals and opportunities for physical activity once a week can adversely affect children’s health. And parents have to rearrange their work schedules, facing the cost of child care or the prospect of leaving their children unsupervised.

Research has found that when adolescents are unsupervised during the day off, they are more likely to engage in juvenile crime and risky behaviors such as drug and alcohol use.

Research shows that unsupervised teens are more likely to get into trouble.

Furthermore, the benefits that school districts hope to gain from the four-day school week—cost savings or teacher recruitment—may not actually be realized. Research shows that total spending per student falls by only 1 to 2 percent following the adoption of the four-day week, much less than many districts were expecting. And while school districts have championed the four-day week as a non-monetary benefit to teachers, little research exists on its effectiveness as a recruitment tool. Even if the four-day school week attracts teachers in the immediate wake of the policy, the benefit is likely to go away as more school districts adopt the four-day school week in the future.

This isn’t to say that the measure can’t be effective. Implementation is key. This schedule may work best in districts that maintain adequate instructional time, offer robust non-school weekday programming, or use that day to recapture time lost to things like students’ medical appointments and extracurricular activities. But in many cases, implementation has failed to meet these requirements, and so reform is needed to make this schedule work for all students, families, and communities.

—PAUL THOMPSON