State finds no impact in four-day changes
By Marcus Clem
School districts that drop Monday from the weekly calendar don’t seem to gain or lose very much in academics and student success, a new report finds.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education commissioned the study via SAS Institute Inc., a consultant firm that looks at statistics on behalf of governments and other corporations. SAS found that since Lathrop R-II, southeast of St. Joseph, first adopted the four-day calendar in 2011, more than 100 Missouri districts have followed suit.
“Overall, there is no statistically significant effect on either academic achievement or building growth in Missouri,” the firm stated in a presentation document soon to be formally reviewed by the Missouri Board of Education. The board, chaired by Charlie Shields of St. Joseph, oversees DESE.
DESE governs some 555 local education agencies, or LEAS, a category comprising all districts, as well as the publicly funded, privately run charter schools that exist only in Kansas City and St. Louis. The findings are locally relevant because the four-day week could soon be a reality in St. Joseph. Surveys have been underway to try to understand what people in various interest groups think about the concept.
“I don’t believe that compiling the same amount of instructional time into four days will produce positive outcomes,” said David Foster, a St. Joseph Board of Education member.
The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be a turning point. Before the virus outbreak, SAS found, a four-day district tended to be located in the countryside. Afterward, urban districts like Independence Public Schools of Jackson County made the switch. Before, almost every student attending four days per week was not part of an ethnic minority group. Afterward, student populations diversified. Nevertheless, students seemed to do just as well as they did attending five days per week, SAS found, regardless of the location or demographics involved.
With all of this in mind, Foster opposes the four-day calendar, for other reasons. Although his term on the board will end in four months, he intends to continue pushing back on the idea.
“Elementary students and those with learning disabilities could fall even further behind, not to mention the challenge of finding supervision for the students impacted,” Foster said. “Even if it’s a small decrease academically, it’s still trending in the wrong direction. As far as I know, there hasn’t been many who advocated for the four-day school week as a means to enhance test scores, and probably for good reason.”
A final board vote on the matter is possible later in 2024, setting up a new local calendar in the 2024-25 or 2025-26 academic years.
