More than 2,000 schools in 900 districts across the United States have implemented a four-day week, citing the lack of staff as the predominant factor driving the trend.
The number of impacted schools rose by around 500 over the last four years alone and nearly 2,000 since 1999, when there were just over one hundred schools with reduced contact hours. The trend initially began in rural parts of the country yet has spread into much larger school districts, often with tens of thousands of pupils.
A number of schools have waxed lyrical about the success of switching to four days, with teaching applications increasing “fourfold” since the schedule started.
However, Paul Thompson, associate professor of economics at Oregon State University, has highlighted the potential ramifications of the reduced schedule, such as major declines in student attainment and displaying “risky behaviors” when away from school.
Thompson states: “We’ve done some work here in Oregon and found juvenile crime increased in areas where there was higher prevalence of four-day school weeks, another study that looked at this in Colorado found a very similar effect.”
Pupils are “smoking tobacco, more often doing other sorts of drugs more often when there’s higher four-day-week prevalence,” he adds.
Professor of Sociology and Education at Columbia University Aaron Pallas shares similar concerns, arguing, “I think that the biggest concern I have about compressing a school week into four days, is the attention spans of younger children.”
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