Hundreds of US schools facing teacher shortages are turning to four-day teaching weeks to attract and keep staff. That’s causing concern among parents over child-care demands and lower test scores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 1,600 schools across 24 states have a four-day school week, and the trend is growing. At least 800 districts are using four-day school weeks this year, Paul Thompson, a professor at Oregon State University who studies the topic, told The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are especially popular among smaller districts and west of the Mississippi River, due to varying state instructional time policies and the generally higher-than-average per-pupil costs for smaller districts, Andrea Phillips, a policy researcher at Rand Corp who has studied the subject, told DiveWire, a press release distribution service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rural communities in some Midwestern and southern states are turning to four-day weeks. Dozens of districts in Texas, Missouri, Colorado and Oklahoma have adopted the practice in recent years to save money and shorten commute times for students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thompson said about half of US states allow four-day weeks under statutes that typically require minimum instructional hours or school days. Most districts that move to a shorter school week increase the amount of instructional time each day, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
COVID-19 has hurt school staffing, forcing some schools to turn to recruiting state employees, retirees and National Guard members to fill in as substitute teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Superintendent Chris Heslinga of Maysville, Missouri, told The Wall Street Journal that he made the decision to switch to a four-day week in his district this year because it has become increasingly difficult to staff schools in small rural districts such as his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maysville is taking Mondays off and adding a half-hour of instructional time to Tuesdays through Fridays to meet the state requirements for hours, Heslinga said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the district’s elementary schools, the extra time is used for longer lessons in subjects such as reading and math.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students in middle school and high school use the time to catch up in classes in which they have fallen behind, or as a study-hall period, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heslinga said the move has helped the district staff schools but the district hasn’t yet decided whether it will make the four-day week permanent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no significant evidence available to show a four-day week is making it easier to attract and retain staff, but Thompson said the trend is gaining steam nationwide as districts seek an edge in the competition for teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Competitive advantage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A 2021 report conducted by the California-based research organization Rand Corp found that parents, teachers and students in districts with four-day weeks responded favorably to the shortened schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teachers and families said the arrangements provided more time for recovery from busy schedules and that students learned at least as much in a four-day week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It emerged as a real competitive advantage,” Andrea Phillips, a policy researcher at Rand who has studied the subject, told DiveWire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Rand study found that districts that adopted four-day weeks in its pre-pandemic study experienced slower gains in math and reading scores on state exams, compared with similar districts with five-day schedules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hundreds of US schools facing teacher shortages are turning to four-day teaching weeks to attract and keep staff. That’s causing concern among parents over child-care demands and lower test scores. More than 1,600 schools across 24 states have a four-day school week, and the trend is growing. At least 800 districts are using four-day school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9,8,1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-culture-sport","category-social","category-uncategorized","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5675,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646\/revisions\/5675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}