Can Four-Day School Weeks Keep Teachers From Leaving?
With instructor morale seemingly at an all-time low, faculty districts are searching for methods to maintain educators from burning out and quitting.
One thought: Give them an additional day without work.
Districts across the nation are asserting plans to undertake four-day faculty weeks within the fall. While this strategy is utilized by districts at instances to cut costs, a standard motivation now’s instructor recruitment and retention as continuous pandemic stress has workers leaving in pursuit of work-life stability.
The coverage sometimes includes lengthening the remaining 4 faculty days after one weekday is reduce from faculties’ schedules. About 660 faculties in 24 states have been utilizing four-day weeks earlier than the pandemic triggered faculty closures in 2020, in response to a Brookings Institutions estimate, a six-fold improve in comparison with 1999. It’s elevated since then.
The superintendent at one small district in South Texas was blunt in regards to the district’s choice to approve the change.
“We don’t have teachers running to Santa Rosa saying, ‘We want to teach,’” Superintendent Yolanda Chapa—whose district has lower than 1,000 college students—told native media in May.
Breathing Room
One City Schools, which at present serves 264 Wisconsin college students from preschool to fourth grade, is taking a barely totally different strategy to the four-day faculty week. Teachers will work a four-day week, however college students will proceed going to highschool 5 days every week. It’s a mannequin that takes care of issues over the impression of a shorter week on scholar studying and gaps in baby care which may in any other case come up.
“With the pandemic on top of everything, we really started talking about how we maintain this system for scholars and families, while keeping healthy—both physically and mentally—our teachers,” Head of Schools Devon Davis tells EdSurge.
A yr in the past, when leaders started speaking about making the change, Davis says the One City Schools have been already open year-round and for longer, eight-and-a-half hour days. The third grade instructing workforce—two academics and two assistant academics—began testing out the four-day program in May, working collectively to make sure that an grownup is all the time overseeing a classroom throughout a staffer’s day without work.
Third grade academics Ciera Carey and Lyndsey Standage, who’ve been piloting the four-day week, say the change was intimidating at first however is working properly. Carey has Fridays off, and Standage has Tuesdays off.
“I definitely feel it’s helped with burnout,” Carey says. “It’s my first year, but I can see with the longer school year and day, having that day to recharge and be able to put yourself first for a day is just really nice.”
Standage takes care of English language arts whereas Carey covers math and science, and so they report that with the ability to divide up topics has allowed them to plot extra inventive classes. They go between one another’s courses when each are current and put together work for college students to sort out throughout their day without work.
“The days that we’re not there, they’re still in their normal school rotation,” Standage explains. “The whole teaching team shifts arounds to teach the kids and go about daily tasks. The learning never stops for them.”
Things will work in another way at One City Preparatory Academy, the brand new middle- and high-school opening its doorways this fall, Davis provides. Students could have totally different studying experiences on their fifth day of faculty. That might imply bringing in friends from group applications, attending on-line programs or courses with workers aside from their core academics or collaborating in on-line programs.
Four-day weeks are having their desired results elsewhere, too. One Missouri instructor advised KCUR 89.3 that the coverage attracted her to the district the place she now works.
“I can only see it being helpful for other teachers as well who are new and need that extra day to prepare, because that’s been what I do with the day off normally,” Ellen Weimer, a highschool math instructor, advised the station.
By The Numbers
Davis says one purpose her district didn’t go for a typical four-day faculty week, during which each academics and college students have faculty 4 days every week, was a priority in regards to the impression of shedding a day of instruction on scholar achievement. Before making the shift, Davis examined out there analysis on four-day faculty weeks. The findings left her questioning whether or not college students on four-day schedules would carry out simply in addition to these on and five-day schedules.
“We felt strongly that we needed to stick with a five-day scholar schedule,” Davis says.
The analysis Davis reviewed is a part of a rising physique of existing and emerging research in regards to the impression of the four-day faculty week.
One study, which appeared in February’s Economics of Education Review, looked at how the variety of days and complete hours college students spend at school every week impacts their math and English take a look at scores. This examine evaluated outcomes for third via fifth graders throughout 12 states over a 10-year interval to contextualize the outcomes nationally. School districts have been divided into three teams based mostly on the typical variety of weekly hours college students spent in school—excessive, center and low.
What they discovered was {that a} four-day faculty week didn’t seem to have a adverse impression on scholar achievement in “middle” and “high” districts, the place college students respectively spent a median of 31 and 32 hours at school per week. They did, nonetheless, see math and English efficiency drop in “low” districts, the place college students acquired about 30 hours of weekly class time on common.
“[Our] results suggest that providing adequate instructional time in conjunction with the four-day school week should be a key focus of policymakers interested in adopting these four-day school week schedules,” the researchers write. “Adequate time in school may negate potential achievement reductions inherent to the four-day school week schedule (e.g., weekend learning loss; earlier school start times).”
