People love taking breaks, especially students. After all, stress can build up for people when they feel like they’re being drowned in paper after paper. However, in recent years, some schools have begun looking to establish a new form of the learning schedule into their academic year: the four-day week.
The four-day school week was first introduced in the academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 650 districts partaking in 2020 and eventually 876 districts across 26 states in 2023.
Mostly, the majority of schools that adopted these shortened weekly schedules were smaller, rural districts that either struggled financially or struggled to find teachers to fill teaching positions. The benefit these schools found in cutting their educational week was the creation of a more flexible teaching schedule, enticing more teachers and job seekers to apply for open positions. Students could also reap some positives from this system: Since the school week would be shortened, students would be left with more time to complete homework and assignments, catch up on sleep, run errands, or work. There would also be more time for families to spend with their children, as they would see each other three days out of the week instead of two.
However, while these benefits might seem extremely attractive—especially to students and teachers—there are some serious concerns the public might need to consider before implementing these schedules.
For example, depending on the state, instructional time would need to be added to each school day—ranging from adding between 30 minutes to an hour more of class to an eight-hour school day. This could affect the learning capabilities of some students, especially younger ones, as more time in a classroom might cause less learning to occur due to fatigue or stress.
There is a lack of research into whether a four-day academic week would be beneficial or detrimental to students learning. Some researchers claim with less time for students to focus on education, the progress of learning could slow considerably compared to the learning curve on a five-day week. This concern can also be amplified by the knowledge that the 4-day school week has yet to be implemented by larger, urban schools leading to even less data on whether a four-day school week would be beneficial for a bigger pool of students.
Moreover, with the inability to send students to school, some parents might be left without any alternate avenue for child care. This leaves schools with the ability to charge extra for students to be monitored while their parents work, increasing the cost of childcare even more. Along with that, there is also the question of what to do with students who are dependent on free lunches or the meals the school provides for them. Less school days could mean less food for students who desperately rely upon those systems.
The morbid truth about implementing the four-day academic week is that some schools may only be considering it as a way to avoid increasing teachers’salaries. As the number of college students becoming teachers is plummeting, the shortened week could become an attractive benefit that could still reign in educators without raising their pay.
Of course, while some of the concerns surrounding this could be considered theoretical or exaggerated, there is no denying that the integration of a four-day week could lead to the undermining of some serious issues within our educational systems.
