The Four-Day School Week

School Administrator, March, 1999 by Kimberly Reeves

"When this issue was being debated by the New Mexico Legislature, they ruled out larger districts," says Jack McCoy, deputy director of learning services at the New Mexico Department of Education. "The logic was that in larger districts, you typically had more families with both parents working. The options for child care on that fifth day were fewer. In your rural districts, it was more likely that the child would be working at home with their parents on a farm or ranch."

Fearing backlash from local communities at the time, the New Mexico Legislature attached some stipulations to the four-day school week. The schedule was limited to those school districts with an enrollment under 500. School districts were required to survey their communities first for approval.

Eventually the enrollment cap was raised to 1,000. The legislature also made sure extracurricular activities were eliminated during the four days of instruction, putting more time on task for the condensed week, McCoy says. Even if the hours in the classroom were the same, lawmakers feared the new calendar would be seen as a retreat from higher classroom standards.

Some states, such as Oklahoma, introduced the four-day calendar during the depth of the oil crunch in the early '80s and have barely used it. More recently, legislators in Arkansas worried the recently enacted year-round and four-day calendars would become a mandate, a fear that proved to be groundless. Still other states, such as Utah, saw abuse of the alternative schedule by some school districts that translated the 180-day calendar into 990 seat hours. Scott Bean, Utah's state superintendent of public instruction, says school districts began adding blocks of minutes and hours in a haphazard way simply to add extra days to vacation time. In the end, the added minutes were squandered.

"You have to add time on a regular basis, something that ends up being a sequential schedule," Bean says. "You have to make sure what you do doesn't impact the education program or the instruction of students. We saw the way school districts were adding time was having little positive effect."

Utah's state board of education revisited the issue in 1995 to tighten the legislation to ensure the shifting of hours was used only for a four-day week.

Academic Merits

In New Mexico, 18 of the state's 89 school districts are on the four-day school week. Even though the schedule was implemented as a fiscal last resort, school districts using the shorter week have realized unexpected educational benefits, McCoy says. Attendance for teachers and students has improved while student achievement on standardized tests has remained stable. And staff recruitment became easier because a four-day work week was more attractive to prospective teachers.

"The four-day school week was probably one of those few decisions made in education in the name of money that actually ended up having educational benefits in terms of the academic performance of kids," says Joyce Ley, director of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Ore. "Schools end up operating more efficiently and they can maintain their programs, even when their resources have been reduced. It's been a good choice."