Are All Four-Day School Weeks Created Equal? A National Assessment of Four-Day School Week Policy Adoption and Implementation

Many school districts have faced increased financial pressures following the Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009), due in part to stagnant or decreasing local property tax revenue, slowly recovering state foundation aid in many states (Leachman, Masterson, and Figueroa 2017), and increasing expenditures (Marchitello 2018; Costrell 2020). While some states have developed financial intervention systems to help school districts navigate these financial pressures, school districts have traditionally dealt with financial pressures by laying off teachers and administrators, increasing class sizes, closing or consolidating schools, implementing student activity fees, and/or implementing alternative school schedules.¹ One type of alternative school schedule² that is used to reduce costs and ease financial pressures is the four-day school week. This alternative to the traditional five school days per week model eliminates one school day per week with lengthened hours on the remaining four days. Although four-day school weeks have been used in the United States since the 1930s (Donis-Keller and Silvernail 2009), use of this model has significantly increased in the wake of the Great Recession. There were approximately 1,607 schools in 662 school districts across at least 24 states³ using a four-day school week calendar as of the 2018–19 school year.

Despite the growing use of four-day school weeks across the United States, little is known about the characteristics of the schools implementing this model,⁴ the rationale for these schedule changes, and how these school schedules are being structured (e.g., school day start and end times, number of yearly instructional days, which day is used as the nonschool weekday [i.e., the “off day”], and use of any off-day activities). Previous research has largely featured case studies of the adoption and implementation of four-day school weeks in individual schools or a small group of schools.⁵ Our study attempts to build on these by contextualizing questions of four-day school week adoption and implementation at a scale not observed in this previous literature.

Several state-level quasi-experimental analyses have assessed the impacts of four-day school weeks on student achievement (Anderson and Walker 2015; Thompson 2019; Morton 2021), juvenile crime (Fischer and Argyle 2018), and maternal labor supply (Ward 2019). Anderson and Walker (2015) find positive effects of four-day school weeks on fourth- and fifth-grade math and reading proficiency rates in Colorado, whereas Thompson (2019) finds negative effects on math and reading achievement in third through eighth grades using student test score data in Oregon. Morton finds null effects on district-level achievement in Oklahoma. Fischer and Argyle find that four-day school weeks led to an almost 20 percent increase in juvenile crime. Ward finds that mothers of primary school-age children work fewer hours and are less likely to be employed as a greater percentage of local school enrollment switches to a four-day school week schedule. The findings of these studies—in particular, the differing achievement results found in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Oregon—suggest that differences in the policy environment and/or the structure and implementation of these four-day school weeks may be a relevant mechanism to consider when analyzing these effects. Yet, to date, there has been no large-scale national assessment of the adoption and implementation of this four-day school week model.

To address this significant knowledge gap regarding four-day school weeks, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the schools and school districts across the United States adopting four-day school weeks and detail the main features of these school schedules (e.g., day off, school day length, school start time). Specifically, this paper examines the following research questions: (1) which types of districts adopt four-day weeks? (2) what motivates districts to adopt these policies? (3) how do these patterns vary across states and over time? (4) what are the key features of the structure of current four-day weeks? (5) how do these structures vary across states? and (6) what implications do they have for explaining differences in past research on four-day school week effects? From anecdotal evidence, we expect to find that districts opting for a four-day school week schedule will be primarily small, rural school districts and will be motivated by financial, student attendance, and teacher recruitment issues. We expect these factors may vary over time, with larger school districts adopting these schedules and these decisions becoming more financially motivated during the Great Recession period. Finally, we expect there to be heterogeneity across districts and states in the structures of these school schedules in terms of off-day activities and time in school, and this heterogeneity will help reconcile some of the differences in findings from the previous literature on four-day school week effects.

To answer these research questions, we have compiled, to date, the most comprehensive four-day school week dataset through examinations of current school calendars and direct correspondence with four-day school week school districts. This dataset includes panel data on four-day school week adoption/use from 1999–2019 and a cross-section of the structure of four-day school week implementation during the 2018–19 school year. Using this unique dataset, we confirm that these school schedules are often used in small, rural school districts and are often financially motivated. These school calendars feature a day off once a week, with a majority of schools using a Friday off-day. Fewer than one-third of districts offer student-based academic services on the off day. Four-day school week schools average 148 school days annually and have increased time in school that, on average, is about 45 minutes longer than the national daily average for five-day schools. Despite the increase in hours, the reduction in the number of school session days results in less school time in four-day school week schools than the national average for five-day schools. There also is substantial heterogeneity in the structure of these four-day school weeks across states, which may help explain differences in achievement and other outcomes of four-day school weeks across states. We also find that differences in instructional spending and the availability of off-day academic student programming may explain differences in cost savings among financially and nonfinancially motivated four-day school week districts.

The previous research on four-day school weeks has focused on the effects for individual school districts or multiple four-day school week school districts within particular states. A key hurdle to undertaking a nationwide study of four-day school week impacts on student and district outcomes (e.g., student achievement, cost savings, juvenile crime) has been the lack of a complete national longitudinal database of four-day school week adoption. Using publicly available data from state boards of education, combined with extensive proprietary data collection, we have, to our knowledge, compiled the most expansive four-day school week dataset. This section details the specifics of the creation of this national database and the other data used in the subsequent analyses conducted in this study.

To identify which school districts had at least one school operating on a four-day school week in 2018–19, we first collected lists of four-day school week districts from state departments of education Web sites.⁶ Once we identified the subset of school districts in each state that were flagged as using a four-day school week, we went to each school district's Web site and school calendar to confirm the school district was indeed operating on a four-day school week during the 2018–19 school year. As available, we also collected information on the school day start and end times, total number of yearly student instructional days, and whether the off day occurred on Monday or Friday. Historical data on the use of four-day school weeks from 1999–2019 were determined from state departments of education Web sites, news reports on four-day school week adoption, and e-mail and phone correspondence with these four-day school week schools, as described below.⁷

For school districts where some of this information was missing from either the school district Web site or the school calendar, we conducted e-mail and phone correspondence with school districts to collect the missing data.⁸ Through e-mail and phone correspondence with all four-day school week districts, we also collected information on the rationale for the switch to the four-day school week schedule, whether the school provides any student services on the off day, and, if so, what form those services take (e.g., remedial instruction, enrichment activities). These two survey items were asked as open-ended questions and responses were interpreted and coded based on the key themes identified in the responses (e.g., cost savings, absences). For the full text of the survey questions from the e-mail/phone survey that was conducted with these school districts, see online Appendix C.

For the 2018–19 school year, we have information on the off-day used for 659 out of the 665 (99.1 percent) school districts with at least one four-day school week school; we also have school day start/end times, and yearly student instructional days for 1,543 out of the 1,608 four-day school week schools (96 percent). We obtained full historical four-day school week use for 2,006 out of the 2,081 schools (96.4 percent) that have ever had a four-day school week.⁹ We received responses regarding use of off-day programming from 552 out of the 796 districts (69.4 percent) that have ever had at least one school with a four-day school week, and responses regarding rationale for the switch to the four-day school week from 533 out of the 796 (67 percent) that have ever had at least one school with a four-day school week. As noted in online Appendix table A.1, there are no notable differences¹⁰ between districts that responded to these survey items compared to those that did not respond or could not be reached.

We augment this four-day school week information with data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), including school district-level information on total enrollment; the number of schools; pupil–teacher ratio; the number of students disaggregated by sex, race, free and reduced-price lunch eligibility (via the National School Lunch Program), urbanicity, and per-pupil revenues and expenditures. We also obtain disaggregated school district financial information from the NCES F-33 files from 1999–2014 to examine the expenditure impacts of different four-day school week structures and rationales. This study also uses the 2007–08 and 2011–12 restricted-use Schools and Staffing Survey data from the NCES. These data include information on the number of school days, which allows us to determine four- versus five-day school week status. This survey also includes data on instructional time by subject, which we use to compare across four- versus five-day schools to see what specific subjects may be experiencing changes to instructional time as a result of the switch to the four-day school week. Across the two years of Schools and Staffing survey data, approximately 120 of the total 9,770 schools (1.2 percent) in the analytic sample operated on a four-day school week schedule, a similar proportion to that found in our nationwide database.¹¹

Before detailing implementation specifics of these policies, we first seek to establish the policy environment in which these four-day school weeks are adopted. This section examines our first set of research questions detailing what types of districts adopt four-day school weeks, when these changes have occurred across time and geographical dimensions, and the rationale behind these school schedule adoption decisions.

As shown in panel A of table 2, four-day school week school districts, on average, are much more geographically concentrated in rural areas and, on average, have significantly smaller enrollments than five-day school week districts. Of the four-day school week districts implementing the schedule districtwide,¹⁴ 90 percent are rural districts and have an average total school district enrollment of 454 students.¹⁵ Among five-day school week districts, only 50 percent are rural districts and have an average enrollment of 3,735. The lower enrollments in four-day school week districts also may be driving the larger average per-pupil spending in these districts. Four-day school week school districts generally have fewer schools and lower pupil–teacher ratios than five-day school week school districts. Although both four- and five-day school week schools have comparable fractions of female students, four-day school week school districts differ in terms of the racial and socioeconomic composition of the student body. Four-day school week districts have significantly smaller proportions of black and Asian students, and a significantly higher proportion of free or reduced-price lunch-eligible students than five-day school week school districts.

There also is notable heterogeneity in the type of districts adopting these school schedules across different states and across time. As shown in panel B of table 2, the size of four-day school week districts varies greatly across states, with Oregon having an average enrollment of 781 in four-day school week districts compared to Montana, where four-day school week districts only average eighty students. While many of the states have demographic makeups that are similar to the national average, Oklahoma is a primary exception. Oklahoma four-day school week school districts have much lower white student percentages and much higher percentages of American Indian students due to the high adoption of four-day school weeks by schools with high populations of American Indians. As shown in panel C of table 2, more recent adopters of four-day school weeks are larger, have lower per-pupil expenditures and revenues, and are less rural than early adopters (pre-2000) of four-day school weeks.

In addition to examining which school districts adopt four-day school weeks, it is also critical to understand why school districts are adopting these types of school schedules. Based on our phone and e-mail survey/correspondence with four-day school week school districts, we find that the choice to adopt four-day school weeks appears to be motivated by three main rationales (see table 3). The first is cost savings, as stagnant or declining property tax revenues and declining state aid necessitate unique cost-cutting measures in many school districts. Nearly two thirds of the respondent school districts (65.1 percent) cited financial reasons as one of the main rationales for the switch to the four-day school week. The other two reasons most often cited by school districts were attendance issues (28.9 percent) related to things such as long commutes for school-sponsored athletic events or family appointments (e.g., medical), and issues related to being primarily rural districts (30.6 percent), such as teacher retention, long bus commutes for students, and family farming/ranching commitments. Some school districts (11.1 percent) also cite other things, such as aligning schedules with other four-day school week schools in the area and teacher professional development, as additional reasons for use of the four-day school week.

As noted in panels B and C of table 3, there is also some notable heterogeneity in the rationale for these school schedules across states and the time period of policy adoption. Districts in Oklahoma and Colorado generally cite financial and teacher recruitment/retention motivations for the four-day school week, while districts in Oregon and Montana cite primarily financial and athletics-related absence motivations for the four-day school week. Districts that first adopted the four-day school week prior to 2000 had a more evenly balanced distribution of motivations compared with the full sample, with 55.4 percent citing financial motivations, 41 percent citing attendance motivations, and 43.4 percent citing rural-related issues. For districts adopting the four-day school weeks after 2000, there has been a general shift away from absence-related motivations and toward greater financial motivations (particularly during the 2000s and the Great Recession period) and student/teacher recruitment and retention motivations (particularly since 2012).

Having addressed our first set of research questions, we now turn to the question of how school districts are structuring these four-day school week schedules. The design of these school schedules is critically important to understand, as decisions regarding school calendar structure may have important implications for academic achievement and other student outcomes, particularly if there are alternations in exposure to instructional hours (Lavy 2015; Cattaneo, Oggenfuss, and Wolter 2017), school meals (Schwartz and Rothbart 2020), and physical activity supports (Carlson et al. 2008; Packham and Street 2019). For example, Thompson (2019) found that schools in Oregon reduced instructional time by nearly 3.5 hours per week as a result of the switch to a four-day school week, which coincided with lower student achievement in these districts. Thus, it is important to understand what decisions school districts are making regarding which day of the week to take off, whether to offer any off-day enrichment opportunities to students, how much to lengthen the remaining school days each week, whether to move daily school start times earlier, how much to change overall instructional time, and how to distribute time among instruction and other activities (e.g., art/music/recess/physical education).

While many schools choose to close their school buildings completely on the off day, some school districts choose to keep buildings open to facilitate student extracurricular events, teacher professional development opportunities, and enrichment or remedial education to students who want or need these activities to complement their normal school curriculum. Of the 552 four-day school week school districts that provided information about the off day, 48.2 percent responded that buildings were fully closed or no academic services were offered to students or teachers on the off day. An additional 29.7 percent had some type of remedial or enrichment activities on the off day.¹⁸ These programs varied in scope, from teacher office hours to field trips to very structured off-day programs, and in frequency, from as needed to bi-monthly to weekly. For four-day school week school districts not offering student services on the off day, some districts (23.2 percent) provide teacher professional development activities on this day.

To accommodate the shortened week, school districts also have discretion regarding the structure of instructional time on the remaining four school days in order to meet minimum required hours statutes. On average, four-day school week schools have earlier school day start times, longer school days, and less annual student time spent in school than the average five-day school in the United States. Nationally, the average school start time among four-day school week schools is 7:56 AM, the average school day lasts seven hours and forty-six minutes, and the average number of student instructional days is 148. Among five-day schools in the United States, according to the 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey, the average school start time is 8:07 AM, the average school day lasts six hours and fifty-four minutes, and the average number of student instructional days is 179. Based on these differences, we find that four-day school week students attend school for an average of 1,150 hours per year¹⁹ compared with an average of 1,235 yearly hours for five-day school week students.²⁰

While overall differences in time in school are important, what likely matters most for student learning and test outcomes is the time spent in specific subjects. For example, do four-day school weeks maintain instructional time in the tested subjects (i.e., math and English/Language Arts) at the expense of nontested subjects? To examine this question, we compare responses from the Schools and Staffing Survey regarding time spent in specific subjects across four- and five-day school week schools. We find that time spent on tested subjects is generally less under a four-day schedule than a five-day schedule (table 4). In particular, on average, four-day schools have twenty-five fewer minutes per week of math instruction in both third and eighth grades, and forty-nine fewer minutes of English instruction in third grade. There is also greater time spent on third grade activities related to physical activity (physical education and recess) and music instruction under a four-day school week schedule. In particular, on average, third graders in four-day schools have twenty-one more minutes per week of physical education instruction, fifteen more minutes per week of recess, and twenty-two more minutes per week of music instruction. Thus, it appears that, contrary, to what we expected, four-day school week schools appear to be more heavily focusing on maintaining access to instruction that develops physical and creative skills, while possibly shifting away from maintaining instruction in key tested subjects. Given the cross-sectional nature of these comparisons, however, there is the possibility that the four-day school week schools sampled may have exhibited different instructional patterns regardless of whether they offered the four-day school week.

As a majority of existing four-day school week research is conducted at the individual state level, it is also important to consider how the structure of these four-day school weeks varies across states. The varying structure of these school schedules across states may help explain the differing effects noted in existing four-day school week research, and inform future work on a national scale.

A key consideration regarding four-day school weeks is their impact on student achievement. The current quasi-experimental empirical literature—focused on four-day school weeks in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Oregon—provides mixed evidence on the impacts of four-day school weeks on achievement. Anderson and Walker (2015) find positive effects of four-day school weeks on fourth- and fifth-grade math and reading proficiency rates in Colorado, while Thompson (2019), using student test score data, finds negative effects on third- through eighth-grades, math and reading achievement in Oregon. Morton (2021) finds null impacts of four-day school weeks using district-level achievement in Oklahoma.

Our survey results suggest nearly two thirds of school districts adopt four-day school weeks for financial reasons. Thus, overall cost reduction is an important metric on which to base the effectiveness of these school schedules as a potential cost savings policy alternative for school districts. There is a small but growing literature on the impacts of four-day school weeks on school district costs.²² Projections from Griffith (2011) suggest the switch to a four-day school week could produce a maximum cost savings of up to 5.4 percent, but realized savings are likely to be lower—on the order of between 0.4 and 2.5 percent. Whereas Thompson (2020) finds minimal statistically significant overall cost savings of the four-day school week nationwide, Morton (2021) finds cost savings of 1.36 percent resulting from four-day school week adoption in Oklahoma. While both studies find minimal impacts on instructional spending, they do find statistically significant reductions in spending areas where services are reduced by one day per week (e.g., food service, transportation). The reductions in these spending areas are found to be larger in Oklahoma (10.5 percent for transportation; 14.1 percent for food services) than for four-day school weeks nationally (10.1 percent for transportation; 4.3 percent for food services). Thompson (2020) also notes these cost savings are larger in school districts with four-day school weeks that are financially motivated. This finding may help explain why Oklahoma—the state with the highest-degree of financially motivated four-day school weeks—had larger overall cost savings from four-day school weeks (Morton 2021) than what was found nationally (Thompson 2020).

The results of this previous literature suggest that the four-day school week may not intrinsically be a cost savings policy, and school districts that have these financial motivations may need to put in additional effort beyond just switching the school calendar to realize overall cost savings. Thompson (2020) posits that four-day school weeks often may be used as a negotiating tool to compensate teachers for lower salaries in the face of budgetary problems.²³ Beyond this, most savings appear to come from reductions in noninstructional operating expenditures, with the size of these reductions likely varying by the type of school schedule structures that are used to achieve these financial motivations.

To examine which attributes may influence cost savings, we compare average per-pupil costs before and after four-day school week adoption²⁴ for those with and without financial motivations, and provide descriptive statistics for the various school schedule structures used by these two groups of four-day school week districts. Table 5 presents these descriptive statistics and notes the expenditure changes post-four-day school week adoption align with the results of Thompson (2020). Mean per-pupil expenditures fall in the post-four-day school week period for school districts adopting these for financial reasons, but we find very little change and some slight increases in per-pupil expenditures for school districts adopting these school schedules for non-financial reasons.

These differences in expenditure changes between the two rationales appear to be driven primarily by stark differences in instructional expenditures and differences in the use of student academic off-day activities. Instructional expenditures fall by over $600 per pupil, on average, in districts with financial motivations for the four-day school week, while we see almost no change for those without financial motivations. These results align with those of Thompson (2020), who notes the four-day school week may be a necessary consequence of cost savings policies focused on reducing teacher salaries. Thus, school districts with financial motivations may be more willing to reduce teacher salaries—using the four-day school week as compensation for impacted teachers—than those moving to the four-day school week for other reasons. Given these findings, future work examining the role of the four-day school week in teacher labor markets is warranted.

While the structure of the school calendar (e.g., yearly time in school, instructional days, start time) is roughly the same, on average, across the two rationale groups, there is a noticeable difference in the use of the off day between these two groups. Relative to school districts without financial motivations for the four-day school week, school districts with financial motivations are slightly more likely to use a Monday-off day—18 percent compared to 15 percent—and much more likely not to offer off-day student academic activities—50 percent to 24 percent. The notable increases in per-pupil spending during the post-four-day school week period for operations and maintenance and student support services for school districts without financial motivations suggest that operating the building and providing additional student services on the off day may come at significant cost to these school districts. Thus, more work is needed to ascertain the true costs of these programs, as well as any benefits these enrichment activities provide to students.

Our survey results also suggest that a majority of school districts do not provide academic student services on the off day. This situation may create substantial unsupervised time for children or force parents to make tough financial decisions about outsourcing child care or changing work schedules to provide child care on their own during the off day. A few studies have examined the ramifications of the off day on juvenile crime and parental labor supply. Fischer and Argyle (2018) find that four-day school weeks led to an almost 20 percent increase in juvenile crime in Colorado. Given that Colorado generally has a percentage of school districts without student academic services on the off day that is comparable to the national average, we may expect similar opportunities for juvenile crime to be increased in other four-day school week settings. Ward (2019) finds in a study of four states that mothers of primary school-aged children work fewer hours and are less likely to be employed as a greater percentage of local school enrollment switches to a four-day school week schedule. Given that Ward takes advantage of data that include Oklahoma (where there is a much larger percentage of schools not offering off-day services to students), it may be the case that these results represent an upper bound on the labor supply responses of parents.

This study conducted the first comprehensive descriptive assessment of four-day school week nationally and found that the justification for four-day school weeks and structure of these school schedules varies considerably across districts. Thus, the parameters surrounding the structure of the four-day school week are likely to be an important consideration when analyzing the causal effects of these school schedules on various child and family outcomes.

Our findings suggest that certain aspects (e.g., instructional time) of these school schedules may impact student achievement. We demonstrate that instructional time in tested subjects is lower in four-day school week schools, which may have direct implications for student learning and test-score performance in these subjects. Thus, school officials considering these types of alternative school schedules should be cognizant of the potential instructional time implications of such a change. We also find that the willingness to cut instructional spending and the lack of availability of off-day academic student programming among financially motivated four-day school week districts may drive larger expenditure reductions in these districts compared with those adopting these school schedules for nonfinancial reasons.

Changes in the various parameters associated with these four-day school week schedules also could have impacts on other aspects of child well-being (e.g., health outcomes, health behaviors, absences, social/emotional outcomes). For example, school start times moving earlier as the result of the switch to the four-day school week could impact student sleep, tardiness, and so forth, while districts with an unstructured non-school off day may lead to greater opportunities for adolescents to engage in criminal behavior (see Fischer and Argyle 2018) and/or risky health behaviors. Losing one school day per week also may diminish exposure to school counselors and school-based health services, school meal programs (e.g., free or reduced-price lunch), and other supports that could negatively affect child physical health and social–emotional development. Thus, future work should attempt to use the wide variation in four-day school week structure highlighted in this paper to examine the mechanisms underlying the causal effects of these school schedules on various student outcomes. In doing so, we may gain a much greater understanding of how the policy decisions to switch to four-day school week impact students, families, and communities, and inform policy makers and school officials about how best to structure these types of alternative schedules.

The research reported in the paper was made possible (in part) by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (201800081). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation. A special thanks to Madeleine Smith, Zack Buhlmann, Robert Backus, Nolan Gunter, Dustin Bishop, Taylor Megy, Keaton Hedman, Tucker Cochenour, Erik Chi, Zachary Wyman, and Harjasleen Gulati for expert research assistance on this project. We also thank Andrew Barber and Jason Ward for helpful discussions and assistance reconciling the full dataset.