While no doubt kids — and let’s face it, many teachers — are into it, a new study finds a four-day school week leads to lower grades.
A team of researchers out of Oregon State University looked into pilot programs in both rural and non-rural school districts, and found that schools that made three-day weekends a regular thing saw lower standardized math test scores for 11th grade students.
Those in non-rural schools did even worse on the math tests than their rural counterparts; reading scores on standardized tests were about the same for both groups participating in the 4-day-week schedule.
The study paid particular attention to the math scores in that grade, the researchers explained, as that’s when parents tend to be less of a help with homework.
“As of the 2018-19 school year, 1,607 schools nationwide — 1.2% of all K-12 schools — had shifted to a four-day week,” according to the researchers. Subsequently, the pandemic and all that remote learning that came with it, brought the issue into sharper focus nationwide.
Many of the schools experimented with the shortened schedule for various reasons — but doing so to save money isn’t a great one, and that’s what many of the non-rural schools were going for, says the study’s lead author Paul Thompson. These administrators, “haven’t thought through all the details” of how best to implement such a schedule, such as boosting actual instruction time in the days the students are in school.
What’s more, those school administrators who tried to implement a four-day school week to combat absenteeism actually saw an increase after the change, according to the study.