Over the last 15 years, the proportion of Missouri schools and districts operating on a four-day week has exploded, now enrolling 12 percent of all K-12 students in the state. (CALDER)
Circulated as a working paper on Monday, the study offers a statistical analysis of the effects of shifting to a shorter week alongside extensive reflections from educators themselves. Most of those teachers, principals, and superintendents spoke favorably about the change, saying they believed it had helped their schools attract and retain teachers in the midst of a tight job market.
The numbers tell a different story, however: On average, the 178 Missouri districts that adopted a four-day week since 2010 did not improve at either recruiting new teachers or retaining their veterans. Andrew Camp, a scholar at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute and one of the paper’s authors, said district leaders’ enthusiasm for four-day weeks was likely grounded in the sincere belief that they could be the answer to persistent staffing challenges.
“These things spread through word of mouth, they grab hold of people’s imaginations, and we end up with this rapid adoption of four-day school weeks,” Camp said. “But the fact that it was such a small effect — for a lot of these districts, it’s one teacher being retained every three years — was really striking.”
The almost negligible results, and officials’ apparent misapprehension about their true magnitude, are particularly salient given both the scale of the four-day phenomenon and the speed with which it has been embraced.
Mirroring national trends, the number of districts throughout Missouri operating on a shortened schedule has skyrocketed over the last decade and a half, accounting for one-third of the statewide total last year. Twelve percent of all students, and 13 percent of all teachers, now experience a four-day week (smaller figures proportionally, because they live almost exclusively in rural areas with smaller headcounts).
The initial wave of transitions, beginning in the early 2010s, is usually attributed to states’ need to contain education costs in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But in the study’s 36 interviews with leaders of Missouri schools and districts, along with several teachers, respondents generally agreed the main effect of the scheduling change was to slow turnover and make schools more attractive places to work.
At least one superintendent credited the four-day week — which requires teachers to work longer days when school is in session, effectively holding instructional hours constant — with a surge in job applications and a sizable drop in workforce churn. Several others claimed that a longer weekend was a vital feature in drawing teachers to far-flung communities that cannot afford to offer top salaries.
But after examining state administrative data between the 2008–09 and 2023–24 school years, including figures on teachers’ school and district assignments, education levels, and experience, Camp and his co-authors found that four-day districts won only meager advantages. Switching to a truncated schedule resulted in just 0.6 job exits per 100 teachers, an effect that falls below the bar for statistical significance.
Camp said the findings were broadly in line with those of prior work on the four-day schedule. While the transition might prove appealing, especially to new teachers, it likely would not address most employees’ complaints about salary and working conditions.
“We don’t rule out the possibility that there is a short-term, very small bump in teacher retention and recruitment,” he said. “But what our results from Missouri show is that, over this lengthy period, there’s no lasting effect.”
