Significant Change in School Time: The 4-Day School Movement

Silver Lining for Learning · Sep 9, 2023 · 1h 3m

A group of U.S. schools has implemented a 4-day school week. The number of school districts that offer 4 school days has grown significantly over the past 3 decades, from mere hundreds in the 1990s to over 1600 in more than 20 states in the United States in recent years. Some models of the 4-day school week add more instructional time to each of the days to minimize the reduction of total school time, although not all schools lengthen the 4 days.

Virtually all the districts that switched to 4 days are in rural areas or small towns. The original cause of this switch from 5 to 4 days was…