PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A new study out of Oregon State University found 11th-grade students who participated in a shortened four-day school schedules performed more poorly on standardized math tests when compared to students who attended a standard five-day school schedule.
According to OSU, “Oregon has the fourth-highest number of schools on a four-day week in the country, with 137 schools across 80 districts opting for the shorter school week, or roughly 11% of the more than 1,200 K-12 schools in the state. The majority of these schools are in rural areas, particularly in Eastern Oregon.”
The study results are timely, as the university claimed more K-12 schools have moved to truncated class schedules before and since the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to incentivize teachers and cut spending.
“As of the 2018-19 school year, 1,607 schools nationwide — 1.2% of all K-12 schools — had shifted to a four-day week,” OSU stated in a recent release. “The loss of instruction time due to COVID-related closures has prompted more to consider how the school week can best accommodate both students and teachers.”
Researchers with OSU’S College of Liberal Arts examined data on 341,390 high school students from 2005 to 2019, to analyze the impact of shortened four-day school weeks on students’ scores. Results showed math grades were lower than average among 11th-grade students on a shortened school week.
The study’s findings, which were published in December of 2021, showed the effect was more pronounced among non-rural students and four-day schedules did not appear to significantly impact reading scores.
“These bigger cuts seem to be happening in non-rural areas that haven’t thought through all the details of implementation — they may be moving to four-day school for short-term reasons, like cost savings,” Paul Thompson stated.
Thompson is the lead author of the study and a professor in OSU’S College of Liberal Arts.
“That’s different from what we’re seeing in rural areas, where it’s really a lifestyle choice for these schools,” he explained. “And they’ve thought a lot about how they should structure their schedule.”
According to OSU, Thompson has conducted prior research on the impacts of shortened class schedules on elementary and middle school classes but chose to focus this study on high school students.
Thompson credits the drop in scores to the difficulty of high school math, proposing it would be a challenging subject for parents to teach when trying to make up for lost class time. He stated, “It’s much easier to help with addition and subtraction than to help with algebra and calculus.”
The study results also illustrated financial disparities between rural and non-rural districts and found a correlation between the reason for shortening school schedules and the amount of resources and make-up class time offered.
Based on Thompson’s research, rural school districts that switched to four-day class schedules most likely made the transition in an attempt to cut back on absences caused by extracurricular activities and generally offered students a slew of activities during the non-school weekday.
To supplement the time lost in class, the majority of these four-day schedules have longer school days than average, with class starting at about 7:45 a.m. and ending at 4 p.m.
However, the research suggested districts that shifted to four-day schedules due to budgeting concerns did not generally extend school day hours or offer supplemental activities in lieu of the class time missed.
“The school districts driving these achievement differences are the ones that have really low levels of instructional time,” Thompson said. “That’s something schools have to reckon with in the pandemic, as well: How can we maintain instructional time in the absence of in-person learning?”
He continued, “With technological advancements, asynchronous teaching could be a substitute for in-seat time. It may be an imperfect substitute, but it would be better than nothing else.”