Districts adopting a four-day school week in recent years have increasingly made the move in hopes of boosting teacher recruitment and retention. But a new study adds to a small but growing body of research that suggests the truncated schedule might not have the desired staffing outcome.
The number of schools and districts using four-day weeks has steadily risen in recent decades and especially in the past few years as schools have struggled to fight teacher burnout and turnover. More than 2,100 schools last year used a four-day schedule, up from more than 1,600 in 2019, according to research—a rise of more than 30 percent.
To be sure, districts with four-day weeks still represent a small share of U.S. school systems. But leaders of districts that have made the switch believe they have a competitive edge in hiring, according to research by the RAND Corp. And two-thirds of educators who responded to an EdWeek Research Center survey last December said they’d be more willing to accept a job offer from a district with a four-day schedule.
However, the new research from academics at the University of California Irvine and the University of Missouri found that teacher turnover actually increased in both the short and long terms after Oregon districts adopted a four-day week. The study examined the effects of four-day weeks in the state between 2007 and 2023. The researchers found that turnover among nonteaching staff was largely unaffected.
“The fact that teacher turnover increased was surprising for us and sort of went against our hypothesis,” said Aaron Ainsworth, one of the working paper’s authors and a graduate student in education policy and social context at UC Irvine. “But it seems to suggest that if your primary objective is to do this for teacher retention over the long term in particular, it’s probably not the best reason to do it. There might be other reasons, but people will have to weigh them very carefully because it seems there could be some pretty major trade-offs.”
Earlier on, districts cited budgetary motives for the switch to a four-day week. But some districts that have adopted the schedule have reported negligible savings. One study that examined the impact of the four-day week on a large district near Denver found that the change had a negative effect on teacher retention, student achievement, and home values within its boundaries.
Studies have also found mixed results with regard to students’ academic achievement. A study published in February by Missouri’s state education department found no significant difference in academic achievement regardless of the length of the school week. A RAND study in 2023, meanwhile, found small decreases in the growth of student achievement in districts with four-day weeks.
“Overall, the takeaway from looking at all these different contexts is that the potential benefits to retention, if they do exist, which is questionable at this point, are probably very small,” Ainsworth said. “That’s not to say that there won’t be some schools that could potentially benefit from this, but, on average, it seems to be the case that there will be, at best, small if there are any benefits at all to teacher retention.”
Still, parents and students—as well as educators and administrators—tend to express strong support for the schedules, which are mostly used in smaller, rural schools and districts that have more difficulty recruiting and retaining staff and don’t have the financial resources to increase salaries. So, they offer the shortened week as a recruitment perk, offering additional planning time, more flexibility, and time to relax.
Salary differences expanded over time
The researchers focused their study on Oregon because a large number of districts—about 40 percent—use the four-day week model. Between 2007 and 2023, 116 schools adopted the schedule, and 40 ended their use of it, according to the researchers.
But studying more than 15 years of data, they were able to determine both the short- and long-term impact on staffing in the schools that adopted the schedule.
They found that teacher turnover generally increased by about 2 percentage points immediately after adopting the four-day schedule. In the one to four years after adoption, turnover rates were not statistically different from those in schools with a traditional calendar. But, in the long term—more than five years after the schedule change—the total turnover rate was about 4 percentage points higher in four-day-week schools, largely due to higher exit rates among retirement-aged teachers and midcareer teachers who moved to other schools.
The results were consistent among teachers across grades and content areas, gender identity, and racial identity but somewhat higher in the short term for men, special education teachers, and teachers of color.
The effect on teacher salaries from the switch to a four-day week could be a factor
Teacher salaries in schools that moved to four-day weeks were generally lower to begin with but fell further behind schools with a traditional schedule over time.
“We think it’s plausible that ... part of the reason why this didn’t seem to really benefit retention is because those salary differentials were getting larger over time,” Ainsworth said.
He also hypothesized that because schools in Oregon began adopting the four-day schedule decades ago, it’s not as novel as it may be in other places where its adoption is less common.
“The schools that are later to the game may not have as much of the benefit because ... teachers already had those options,” he said. “So it could be that some teachers didn’t prefer that schedule, and once their schools adopted it, there was no reason for them to stay at that one given the salary, and the schedule, maybe, didn’t fit their preference.”
The researchers found that the change to a four-day week decreased the number of teachers’ contracted working days by about 15, on average.
