Why some US schools are switching to 4-day work week

97 from Oklahoma's 513 school districts in recent years have switched to an 4-day work week, citing their budget cuts and teacher shortages.

Фото: Depositphotos

Mostly this innovation was applied in rural areas, but urban school districts also think about taking advantage of this experience, writes NBC News.

Next fall, the 27J school district of Adams County, located in the northeastern suburb of Denver, will also move to the 4-day work week, becoming the first major urban school district in the country to choose a similar training system, with almost 18 000 students studying there.

About 550 school districts in 24 states have switched to a four-day school week, most of them in Colorado, Oklahoma, Montana and Oregon, according to officials.

According to teachers and parents, the transition to 4-day education increases morale among students and teachers and leads to improved performance, and three days off makes children more active.

But in urban areas, according to experts, the effect will not be so positive, since parents will need to find child care for this day, because most moms and dads will be at work on this extra day off.

The biggest reason why schools go for a short week is the insufficient number of teachers.

The demand for K-12 classes in public schools exceeded supply by more than 100 000 this year. The lack of staff is caused by low salaries and the inability of districts to retain teachers due to low job satisfaction.

But schools that tested the shortened work week noticed that with 4 working days, attendance, performance, and also the moral spirit of teachers and students increased.

A study by two economics professors in 2015 showed statistically significant progress in performing standardized test assignments among fourth and fifth grade students, which were converted to an 4-day work week in rural Colorado.

But the researchers also found that in rural areas, pupils almost always have one of their parents, who is constantly at home, a grandfather or grandmother, so there is someone to look after for an extra day off for a child.

And given that the workload is governed by hours, and not by days, such a training schedule does not lead to students lacking knowledge.

For example, in Oklahoma and Colorado, students should be in 1080 hours in the school year, and this figure can be achieved with the 4-day work week, just children should spend an hour more at school than with the 5-day work week.

At the same time, directors of educational institutions say that this did not save much money - they managed to reduce expenses by less than 1% of the school budget. But it has had a positive impact on productivity and helped solve the problem of a shortage of teachers, who can now work in several schools.

On an additional day off, many schools that have switched to 4-day education offer visits to museums and other extracurricular activities.

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