Some districts see a shorter college week as a method to appeal to educating expertise. However many stay skeptical.
By Robbie Sequeira for Stateline
Northeast of the capital metropolis of Des Moines in central Iowa, the 400-student Collins-Maxwell Neighborhood College District is one in all many throughout the state shifting to a four-day college week.
Like many rural Okay-12 colleges, the district has struggled to seek out lecturers, and it sees the four-day week as a helpful recruiting software. It additionally needs to curb pupil absences, which are inclined to spike on Mondays and Fridays.
The district maintained its conventional five-day calendar in August and September. However any further, with scattered exceptions, the center college and highschool within the Collins-Maxwell district will probably be closed on Mondays. To fulfill Iowa’s minimal variety of educational hours, the district will lengthen the opposite days throughout four-day weeks.
Superintendent Marc Snavely mentioned he watched close by colleges transition to shorter weeks and was intrigued by the reviews he obtained from his counterparts in different districts. Snavely hopes the shorter week will increase instructor morale, scale back burnout, and make the agricultural district extra aggressive with close by districts which might be bigger and might provide lecturers higher pay.
“Ultimately, the ‘why’ behind the four-day school week came down to staff recruitment and retention,” Snavely mentioned in an interview. “We felt being a small school district, the four-day week would allow us to better compete.”
He added that surrounding colleges with four-day weeks mentioned they skilled fewer self-discipline issues and improved attendance. And rural college districts throughout the nation tout the four-day work week as a method to stretch tight college budgets amid Okay-12 funding uncertainties on the federal and state ranges.
A pupil arrives for elementary college in Chicago’s Logan Sq. neighborhood on Oct. 15.
However regardless of the reviews of upper attendance and calmer school rooms, schooling researchers say the proof tells a extra sophisticated story.
Emily Morton, lead researcher for the Northwest Analysis Affiliation, which creates standardized testing for Okay-12 colleges, cautioned that the promised advantages haven’t proven up within the information. Furthermore, longer college days can hurt tutorial efficiency, Morton mentioned.
However such considerations won’t matter as four-day college weeks turn into extra fashionable nationwide.
“One thing that does show up clearly is that there is an extremely high approval rating for these policies,” Morton mentioned. “Parents and students overwhelmingly want to stay on a four-day week once they have it.”
A rural pattern
There are greater than 2,100 colleges in 26 states utilizing four-day weeks, in response to researchers at Oregon State College. In Iowa, the variety of districts on a four-day schedule has grown from six in 2023-24 to greater than two dozen in 2025. In Colorado, two-thirds of districts are on the altered schedule.
However to date, it’s virtually totally a rural phenomenon.
“To my knowledge, there’s not a single urban district using a four-day week,” Morton mentioned. “What a four-day week looks like in a rural community is very different from what people in suburban or urban areas imagine.”
Dr. Shanon Taylor, an schooling professor on the College of Nevada, Reno who research college scheduling, mentioned districts sometimes undertake the mannequin for financial and staffing causes, not tutorial ones. Rural districts usually lower your expenses on transportation, utilities and constructing operations, she mentioned, and the promise of everlasting three-day weekends helps recruitment efforts.
Nevertheless, the burden of accommodating this transition might fall closely on mother and father who work 5 days every week, and particularly on the mother and father of youthful college students who should discover a baby care various on the chosen time off.
“The research is still mixed,” Taylor mentioned. “We don’t yet have decisive evidence showing academic benefits or drawbacks.”
In June, researchers on the College of Oregon printed a assessment of 11 research on four-day college weeks, which included information on tutorial achievement, attendance, self-discipline and legal exercise. The impression of a four-day week assorted based mostly on grade stage and on location, the Oregon researchers discovered, however total “there was no evidence of large positive effects.”
In addition they famous that “maintaining activities that foster healthy youth development on the fifth day is important for minimizing other negative impacts.”
State vs. native clashes
In some states, the coverage has sparked battle between state and native officers.
“There’s a lot of tension between state leaders and rural districts over whether the four-day week is something the state should allow,” mentioned Morton. “In Oklahoma, when the state tried to take it away, districts simply shifted to ‘virtual Fridays’ — and instruction mostly didn’t happen.”
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a conservative assume tank, discovered by way of a public data request that greater than 100 Oklahoma districts had at the least one college the place college students had at the least two full weeks’ value of “virtual days” within the 2022-23 college 12 months. Greater than 60 districts had at the least one college that went on-line for 3 weeks or extra. Throughout a lot of these days, there was minimal reside instruction.
In response, Oklahoma this 12 months enacted a legislation that restricts public colleges’ means to shift to digital studying. The measure limits districts to 2 days of digital instruction every college 12 months, and solely permits them below sure circumstances, equivalent to a state of emergency declared by the governor.
Missouri enacted a legislation in 2024 requiring that sure massive metropolis, constitution and county districts get hold of voter approval earlier than adopting or persevering with a four-day week. The Independence College District, a 14,000-student suburban system on the sting of Kansas Metropolis that switched to the shorter week in 2023-24, has since sued the state, alleging the legislation unconstitutionally targets sure districts based mostly on arbitrary standards equivalent to county measurement.
Final 12 months, a New Mexico mandate for districts to undertake calendars with extra college days was halted in court docket. And Arkansas legislators thought of a invoice that may enable for vary of educational instances from 160 to 190 days, which might be contingent on a faculty’s score. A lot of rural districts there have moved to four-day schedules.
In the meantime, uncertainty over the prices and advantages of the strategy are more likely to persist.
Morton, the schooling evaluation researcher, mentioned that small rural districts won’t be outfitted to find out whether or not a four-day week produces advantages till additional research are carried out throughout the nation.
“Even if your test scores stay flat, nearby districts might be rising, so your ‘flat’ could actually be a negative effect,” she mentioned. “States need to equip districts with what national research shows, because local data will never be able to answer these questions alone.”
