As many school districts face teacher shortages and budget shortfalls in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, more districts are adopting a four-day school week to make education more attractive and reduce costs. A new study by Aaron Ainsworth and Emily Penner of the University of California, Irvine, and Yujia Liu of the University of Missouri finds that this strategy has a negative impact on teacher retention.
The study analyzed administrative data from the Oregon Department of Education covering public school students and staff from the 2006-2007 school year to the 2022-23 school year. In Oregon, school districts began implementing a four-day week in the 1980s, and the state has one of the highest adoption rates in the nation. By the 2018-19 school year, 40 percent of Oregon school districts had adopted this strategy.
The researchers compared teacher turnover rates between four-day and five-day school weeks and found that teacher turnover increased by 2.3 percentage points immediately after the introduction of the four-day school week. Sales stabilized after the first year but spiked again after five to nine years, increasing by up to 5 percentage points. The increase in turnover was caused by both teacher attrition and mobility. Younger, less experienced teachers were more likely to move between districts, while older, more experienced teachers were more likely to leave the profession.
This effect was relatively consistent across gender, race, and position type, although slightly higher attrition rates were observed for men, special education teachers, and teachers of color. Importantly, a four-day work week did not increase non-teaching staff turnover.
Although the four-day week has been promoted as a non-financial benefit to attract and retain educators, researchers suggest that the findings cast doubt on its long-term effectiveness. are. They found that over time, salaries in districts with a four-day week fell further behind those with a five-day week. Researchers stress that both working conditions and pay are important for teacher retention, and that focusing on one without addressing the other is unlikely to reduce attrition rates in the long term. .
