How does a 4-day school week affect students and teachers?
The Buzz for August 9, 2024
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School is back in session for most of Arizona's children, but for students in about 175 districts and charter schools, that does not necessarily mean they are in the classroom Monday through Friday.
Those schools are opting to have students on campus four days a week rather than the traditional five.
AZPM asked all of the schools in an Arizona Department of Education database of schools that have a four-day week for students to fill out a questionnaire about their experience. Of our roughly 30 replies, most said they adopted the schedule to help recruit and retain either students or staff.
Other top concerns were limiting commute times for students.
Both of those are reasons that Patagonia Public Schools dropped Fridays this year, a day on which the schools already had half days. District Superintendent Kenny Hayes said some student commutes are as long as two hours.
"It's not a high percentage of kids, but enough that on Fridays they were on the bus more than they were in school," he said. "We also had a high rate of absences on those days anyways. It's also difficult to get high qualified teachers out to such a rural, remote area, so we're hoping that will also be a recruiting tool for us."
One of our survey respondents noted that it does four-day weeks to help with recruiting because it sits on a border with two states that have higher teacher pay than Arizona.
Another reason cited in AZPM's informal survey was budgetary concerns.
“If you don't go to school on Friday, you’re only bussing students four days a week, not five days a week. You’re serving food four days a week, not five days a week. Utility costs. And so I think it’s this blend of workforce/educator needs meets potential cost savings, especially in this financial context of Arizona,” said Chad Gestson of the Arizona Institute for Education and the Economy at Northern Arizona University.
Schools that AZPM spoke with said parents and teachers have been mostly positive about the four-day schedule, something that Hayes echoed, noting that about three-in-four parents were in favor. "The staff was overwhelmingly positive for the change. It only lengthened our school day by about 35 minutes, so that wasn't too difficult of a shift. And the parents were largely in agreement with it which was kind of surprising for me."
Those sentiments soured at one Glendale-area charter school to the point that, as of last week, it returned to a 5-day schedule.
Camelback Academy kept Fridays as a remote learning day after the COVID-19 pandemic and eventually decided to drop Friday instruction altogether.
When Camelback made that change, it did what most schools told AZPM they did to meet minimum instructional minutes, and lengthened the school day. In Camelback's case, it added 45 minutes to each day.
"We were finding that our students, especially our younger students but even in through eighth grade, by the time 4:00, 4:15 came along, they were exhausted and they just were not engaging at the end of the day at all. And we had lots of behavior issues specifically in Middle School," said Executive Director Karen Kordon.
Gestson said extended classroom time is a notable concern.
"It's a lot of time for kids to be sitting in multiple classes, multiple content areas in one day, and so certainly when systems go to four day week, engaging lessons and projects and problem-based curriculum are going to be critically important to keep students engaged. That's one concern: how do you manage a 10-hour day, 9-hour day versus a seven to eight?"
Kordon said the change also affected her students' achievement and their perception of the school.
"Before COVID, we were a high B school, we were very close I think we were six points away from an A. Then we went down to a low B, and in the 22-23 school year, that was the first year that testing counted toward our grade, we went down to a C, a high C, we are at three or three points away from a B. But we went down so we went down a full letter grade."
Another factor that goes into those school grades is attendance. Kordon expected that taking Friday off would limit the number of absences caused by extended weekends for family trips, but parents instead started taking their kids out of school for four-day weekends, cutting even further into lost instruction minutes.
"Previous research has said kids need more time in school, more instructional time, even after school and Saturdays," said Chad Gestson. "There is a fear that if we're going from five days sometimes down to four days, will that equate to less instructional time, and therefore might that equate to less student achievement? I think time will tell."
One group that is giving more time is school employees. When we talked to Superintendent Hayes, Patagonia Public Schools had only had one Friday off. Hayes said he spent that morning catching up on work before he and his wife, who also teaches in the district, headed to a back-to-school pool party where he helped grill hamburgers and hot dogs.
He said the day off will give teachers a chance to catch up and also grow their skills.
"We will have one Friday a month that will be professional development, so we don't get all our Fridays off."
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