Only a matter of time? The role of time in school on four-day school week achievement impacts

Abstract

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Effects of 4-Day School Weeks on Older Adolescents: Examining Impacts of the Schedule on Academic Achievement, Attendance, and Behavior in High School

“…The Goodman-Bacon (2021) decomposition of the weights on each two-group by two-period (2 × 2) pair also shows that the share of the overall weighting placed on comparisons between "timing groups" (districts who ever adopted a 4-day school week) and "nevertreated groups" was greater than 97% for all subsamples, further indicating that the issues related to variation in treatment timing for TWFE DID estimators are not likely to affect the original estimates herein. This result was similar to that of Thompson and Ward (2022), who used the same procedure and found that the weighting placed on the same comparisons was between 95% and 99% for all of their analyses. A graphical example of this decomposition exercise for the math ACT analysis in this study is presented in Supplementary Figure A6 in the online version of the journal.…”

“…Finally, he also demonstrates that the observed negative average effects on math and ELA achievement in his study can be attributed, at least in part, to 4-day schools' average 3.5 fewer hours of time students spend at school per week compared to the 5-day schools in his sample. Similarly, Thompson and Ward (2022) find that significant, negative effects of the 4-day week on math and ELA achievement are borne only by 4-day week districts that were in the lowest tercile of "time in school," measured as weekly instructional hours.…”

“…All other existing research on the 4-day week's effects on academic achievement examines students in Grades 3 to 8 and also uses a DID research design. Although Anderson and Walker (2015) estimate positive effects of the schedule on the percentage of fourth and fifth grade students scoring above the proficiency threshold in math and English Language Arts (ELA) on the Colorado state test, the four other studies to date estimate negative average effects of the schedule on standardized math and ELA achievement, ranging from approximately −0.03 SD to −0.10 SD (Kilburn et al, 2021;Morton, 2021;Thompson, 2021b;Thompson & Ward, 2022). However, the statistical significance of the estimates varies depending on the sample included in the analysis.…”

“…Kilburn et al (2021) leverage district-level standardized test data from 2010 to 2018 from Idaho, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota and estimate negative but nonsignificant average effects of the schedule on math (−0.03 SD) and ELA (−0.04 SD) using the canonical DID approach. 5 Finally, Thompson and Ward (2022) use district-level data from 2009 to 2018 from 12 states 6 and estimate a statistically significant average negative effect of the 4-day week on math achievement (−0.03 SD) and a nonsignificant average effect on ELA achievement (−0.02 SD). Overall, the estimated effects on students in Grades 3 to 8 are relatively consistent across studies and states, but the variation in statistical significance of the estimates depending on the state(s) included in the sample suggests there may be some statelevel variation in the implementation of the 4-day week or the composition of districts that implement the schedule.…”

“…A small body of literature on the effects of 4-day school weeks has developed over the past 6 years, but the scope of this work has been limited. Most of the existing research has focused on economic issues, such as school finance (Morton, 2021;Thompson, 2021a), parental labor supply (Ward, 2019), and housing prices (Nowak et al, 2019), or academic outcomes among younger students in Grades 3 to 8 (Anderson & Walker, 2015;Kilburn et al, 2021;Morton, 2021;Thompson, 2021b;Thompson & Ward, 2022). To date, there are few causal studies that consider outcomes of the 4-day school week for highschool-aged students.…”