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In Colorado school districts with four-day workweeks, student performance is, on average, slightly lower than in school districts with five-day workweeks, and teacher turnover shows little improvement after switching from a five-day to a four-day workweek.

This is according to a new report from the Keystone Policy Center, which advocates stricter requirements for four-day school weeks and the establishment of a commission of experts to study the issue.

The “Doing Less with Less” report comes at a time when nearly two-thirds of Colorado’s 185 school districts — which enroll about 14% of the state’s students — operate on a four-day schedule. Over the past five years, about two dozen school districts across the state, most of them small and rural, have made the switch. This year, the 1,200-student Strasburg School District, about 30 miles east of Denver, is the only district to switch to a four-day schedule, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

“There’s this growing movement around the four-day week, and as far as I know, there hasn’t been any public discussion about the merits of this measure,” said Van Schoales, senior policy director at Keystone. “I mean, every county that has requested exemptions (from the five-day week) has received them. It’s been a rubber-stamping process.”

Keystone’s report, which draws on state and national research and reports from district leaders, concludes that fewer school days per week generally do not help children.

“The trend toward four-day school weeks in Colorado provides no net benefit to students in the state’s public schools,” the report says. “In fact, student outcomes are not even the primary consideration when school districts make this change.”

Rather, the main concern is to facilitate the recruitment and retention of teachers by offering the shorter week as an employment benefit.

While some Keystone district managers said the four-day week gave them a competitive advantage in staffing, the report concludes that working hours often do not make much difference

As an example, it describes how the small Dolores district in southwest Colorado switched to a four-day week a few years ago and the number of teachers leaving initially decreased. But when a larger district nearby also introduced the four-day week the following year, this advantage melted away.

“So now we’re arguing again about who should pay their people more, give them benefits and things like that,” Superintendent Reece Blincoe said in the report.

The report also highlights the experiences of School District 27J, a 23,000-student school district in the Denver suburb of Brighton that was the largest to make the transition.

District leaders took the plunge in the 2018-19 school year after voters repeatedly rejected ballot measures that would have increased teacher pay, believing the attractive schedules would attract and retain teachers who would otherwise be deterred by the district’s low salaries.

But a study by researchers at Brown University cited in the Keystone report found that experienced teachers were 5 percentage points less likely to return to 27J after switching to a four-day week. That wasn’t because teachers didn’t appreciate the shorter school week, but because the schedule didn’t outweigh the lure of higher salaries elsewhere.

The Keystone report calls on policymakers to consider solutions to the problem of teacher recruitment and retention, including higher salaries for teachers in rural areas and housing assistance in districts with a shortage of affordable housing.

The report also acknowledges that some research on four-day weeks is conflicting and more research is needed. Some studies have found the schedule helps retain teachers, reduce bullying, and increase attendance. Other studies link the schedule to lower graduation rates, higher rates of food insecurity, and more chronic absenteeism among high school students.

Schoales said: “We have refrained from telling people not to do it because we know there are circumstances in which it makes sense.”

He cited remote districts where students might spend an hour or two a day on the school bus.

“These are rare cases relative to the state’s population,” he said.

Although many school districts with a four-day week offer remedial programs or child care on the fifth day off school, fewer families than expected are taking advantage of these services, district officials told Keystone.

In Pueblo, Becky Medina, director of operations at the local Boys and Girls Club, worries about children who aren’t attending the extra programs her club offers on Fridays.

“Many of them don’t have the means to do that. Whether the barrier is transportation or finances, they’re not having those other experiences,” she told Keystone. “They’re the ones who are falling behind in school. Are they falling even further behind now?”

Because no one tracks which students show up for the program on the fifth day, “we hardly know,” Schoales said. “It would be understandable that it would be harder for kids with less money to benefit,” he said.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood and early literacy issues. You can reach Ann at [email protected].