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School Districts' Answer to Budget Woes: Less School
4-day school weeks gain popularity across US
FORT VALLEY, Ga. - During the school year, Mondays in this rural
Georgia community are for video games, trips to grandma's house and
hanging out at the neighborhood community center.
Don't bother
showing up for school. The doors are locked and the lights are off.
Peach County is one of more than 120 school districts across the
country where students attend school just four days a week, a
cost-saving tactic gaining popularity among cash-strapped districts
struggling to make ends meet. The 4,000-student district started shaving
a day off its weekly school calendar last year to help fill a $1
million budget shortfall.
It was that or lay off 39 teachers
the week before school started, said Superintendent Susan Clark.
"We're treading water," Clark said as she stood outside the
headquarters of her seven-school district. "There was nothing else for
us to do."
The results? Test scores went up.
So did
attendance - for both students and teachers. The district is spending
one-third of what it once did on substitute teachers, Clark said.
And the graduation rate likely will be more than 80 percent for the
first time in years, Clark said.
The four days that students
are in school are slightly longer and more crowded with classes and
activities. After school, students can get tutoring in subjects where
they're struggling.
On their off day, students who don't have
other options attend "Monday care" at area churches and the local Boys
& Girls Club, where tutors are also available to help with homework.
The programs generally cost a few dollars a day per student.
Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on
student performance. In fact, there is mostly just anecdotal evidence
in reports on the trend with little scientific data to back up what many
districts say, said University of Southern Maine researcher Christine
Donis-Keller.
"The broadest conclusion you can draw is that it
doesn't hurt academics," said Donis-Keller, who is with the university's
Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation.
Many districts that have the shortened schedule say they've seen
students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise
test scores and attendance. But others say that not only did they not
save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also
saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't
have enough contact with teachers.
The school district in
Marlow, Okla., is switching back to a five-day week after administrators
decided students were not being served well by attending school only
four days. The 440-student district tried the shorter week the spring
semester this year to save $25,000 in operation costs.
"It was
harder on the teachers. We were asking the kids to move at a quicker
pace," said district Superintendent Bennie Newton. "We're hoping the
four-day week won't come into play next year."
The move by
Peach County in Georgia gets mixed reviews.
Parents like
Heather Bradshaw worry that their children are getting shortchanged on
time with teachers.
"I don't feel like they're having the
necessary time in the classroom," said Bradshaw, a single mother with a
fourth-grade son at one of the county's three elementary schools. "The
schedule has slowed him down."
Other parents prefer the shorter
schedule and don't mind the hassle of finding a babysitter one day a
week.
"It makes the children's weekend a little better, so they
get more rest," said LaKeisha Johnson, who sends her fourth-grade
daughter to the Boys & Girls Club on Mondays.
The trend of
four-day school weeks started in New Mexico during the oil crisis of the
1970s and has been popular in rural states where students have to
commute a long way. Other districts have used it as a way to try to fix
schools with a long history of poor student performance by shaking up
the schedule and giving children more time to study outside of school.
Georgia, Oklahoma and Maine have changed their laws in the last
couple of years to allow districts to count their school year by hours
rather than days, allowing for a four-day week if needed. Hawaii schools
were off every other Friday this year for schools to save money, giving
them the state with the shortest school year in the country.
From California to Minnesota to New York, districts - mostly small,
rural ones with less than 5,000 students - are following the trend,
hoping to rescue their bleeding budgets.
For Peach County,
the four-day week was enough of a success that the school district is
trying it again next year, Clark said. The move saves $400,000 annually
and is popular among teachers and students because they get extra rest,
she said
"Teachers tell me they are much more focused because
they've had time to prepare. They don't have kids sleeping in class on
Tuesday," she said. "Everything has taken on a laser-light focus."
Comments
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23 Comments so far
Show AllThe five day school week was an arbitrary one and not based on the needs of the children. The five day work week was a demand by unions to benefit workers. No reason not to move to four on account of the workers.
Sounds good to me, as long as the kids are learning. Leave it in where it is working and adjust it where it needs to be adjusted. And save money too? Such a deal!
Four days is fine with you? How about three days? Two? The only reason students appear to be doing fine with a four day schedule is that all effort is going to help them pass the damn tests. Don't imagine for a second that passing the test has anything to do with real education. It doesn't.
As a former biology teacher, I would like politicians and administrators to tell me what subjects I will not address during a school year constructed of four days weeks: ecology? photosynthesis? animal diversity? Oh--here's a good one: evolution. Why is it that every other field recognizes that you only become proficient at something by putting in intense study over long periods of time--but apparently, not education?
The students that will come out of a school district with 20 percent less contact with learning may do fine on standardized tests, but they will continue to slide into the abyss when they are compared with other students who understand what it takes to be successful in school and on the job.
I used to label my sarcasm as such with a (/sarcasm) at the end. Maybe GLR and 4thefuture need to do the same, or maybe they're serious.
For me, your last sentence rang true: McDonalds children for our McDonalds lifestyles. As long as NASCAR is ok, who really cares? (/sarcasm)
(what will really happen is the wealthy kids will continue to get a great education, and the poor and middle-class kids will be set up for the Faux News brain freeze: good little goose-stepping citizen-soldiers.
if I'm the planet, I'm not sure the school thing is working for me...
what's the goal, again?
As a long-ago former teacher who would never do that thankless and underpaid job again, what struck me the most about this posting was people not being upset about having to arrange "babysitting" for a day off school each week. I taught in big-city school districts, several, and I found consistently that parents considered school babysitting. They got most upset when there would be a random day off for teacher training and the like, since that would make them have to find someplace to park their kids while the parents worked. By the time I was done forever with this system, I had talked with thousands of parents. It was the rare one who cared about anything but keeping the kids in school while they were working, so they didn't have to do anything about their kids.
That is the main reason I think the education system is a mess and can never be fixed. No one wants to pay teachers any more than babysitters. In the posting it says having the Boys & Girls Club watch kids instead of the school costs only a few dollars. Parents generally think teachers are worth only a few PENNIES per student per day.
Nonetheless, I would not assume for a minute that less school would necessarily be bad, as most of the comments here do. With tutors and computers connected to the Internet at the B & G Club--which we have here in Santa Monica, too--there is no reason at all to think kids could not get just as much work done, if not more, by having an extra day off school.
A different form of the same solution was used by our local school district--students got two weeks off at Spring Break instead of the normal one, and school is ending a week early. That solution is also giving students less time at school, but because we do not have the law changed to give school districts credit from the state by the hour rather the the "minimum day," students did not get the extra rest while they were in school. They got just more vacation, which I don't think they need with three months off in the summer anyway.
In fact, many people have learned that two or three kids of your own are not a problem to watch and school all day long every day, while you pursue your own career based at home and using the Internet, just as your children are doing. I found and now my son is finding in second-generation home schooling of our children and now my grandchildren, that kids get much more learning--to say nothing of individual attention from people who love them, an irreplaceable commodity--from just doing a few hours' work with the Internet and charter school curricula, with park days and lots of cultural outings with other home-schooled kids. After all, parents had these children. Why should the state pay for babysitting them?
And the scale of the public education system results in lots of wasted time walking back and forth and taking attendance, to say nothing of the paperwork teachers have to do just to assure they are all doing something in their classes and students are not cutting classes to take drugs or no telling what else behind the gym. A local middle school student died from the "choking game" he and his friends had been playing after school every day behind the gym. He wouldn't have been there getting ridiculous peer advice if his parents had been raising him. I say the less school the better.
I would put my progressive credentials up against anyone's. Did you work for McGovern in 1968? Attend all the moratoriums against the Vietnam War? March in the South before 1965? Represent as a lawyer people seeking school desegregation? Have you been to the left of most in the U.S. for 50 years? Call people right-wingers if you wish. You don't come near hitting me.
In addition, ad hominem attacks like yours show only ignorance, not progressive politics. If you can't disagree civilly, how will you ever convince people who are truly right-wingers?
I know whereof I speak from ten years of personal experience teaching and two generations of watching children thrive being home-schooled. I don't care whether you agree or disagree, but attacking me personally will not change anyone's views.
It also does not bother me if you think everyone living in the blessed state of California is in La La Land. We know we are blessed. We want everyone to be equally blessed.
ardent 1: I have never been a "Democrat." That shows how little you know about right- and left-wing, but you freely throw around labels.
Why should anyone who thinks s/he is progressive talk about the class of the parents I talked to? I didn't talk about their class. I don't judge people or put them in classes. I said thousands of parents cared only that their own schedules for working not be interfered with by the school. Many of these people had very high-paying jobs, but they did not have nannies and such because their kids were in school so they didn't need them. I didn't hate them. I just saw that they didn't care about their children's education.
You said what you said. It was ignorant, ad hominem, and wrong. That's why you could never convince anyone, so you have to take refuge in class-baiting and name-calling.
"I say the less school the better." I disagree. I don't think the answer to bad parenting is less school, and that seems to be your implication. You seem to know people who've done an admirable job homeschooling their children. So do I. I also know teachers who've done a similarly admirable job. It means nothing. The statistics indicate that, on average, homeschooled children do no better than public schooled children. Likewise with chartered schools.
Here's my bottom line: why are we moving to a 4 day school week? Because this country has spent the last 40 years sucking up to its wealthiest 2%, thats why. That has created unprecedented gov't budget deficits, and that is why todays schoolchildren aren't going to be educated. We are robbing our children to pay our rich. That is all that is going on here.
Are there bad parents out there? Yes. Do their children become bad parents, too? Yes, unless they find other adult role-models to pattern themselves after. Role-models, like, (say it with me), teachers. Cutting school hours does not make parents better at parenting. Well, it may work on some, but far more children will simply (as happened in the past, and in other countries even today) fall through the cracks, and become a burden to society. I think you're making a mistake to propose that fewer school days will lead to better parenting, overall. Nothing in history, or in the world today, suggests that to be true.
But, hey, maybe it IS true. It's an experiment, really. The tragedy here, is we are asking our children to take that experiment, an experiment WE didn't have to take, because we are so anxious to let our wealthiest 2% buy a third yacht. Its frankly sick. Its evidence of a sick society. And I believe that sickness is going to come home in a degradation in civil society in the future. Civil behavior requires a sense of trust, that such behavior reflects back on oneself. And THAT requires an education in how this principle has worked in the past. Our schools are lacking funds, but our JAILS are fully funded: clearly, we have embraced ANOTHER way to build a 'civil' society, and that way will fail, in my opinion. It will fail violently.
dbrew12, the question is not whether we SHOULD fund schools instead of jails, wars, tax cuts to rich people who just suck them up, not provide jobs to other people, etc. Obviously we SHOULD prefer education over all those things. The only question here is whether, if you can't pay for schools for five days, you should go to four days. I say yes because I don't think schooling is all the answer for children. They can go to museums, learn how to get around on their own, go to the B & G Clubs mentioned in this posting, rest at home or the beach or somewhere else, get tutored, etc. Spending from 8 to 2:30 five days a week instead of 8 to 4:30 four days a week at school is the only question being discussed. Because I have seen better results from less schooling in traditional schools, I said yes.
If we would pay teachers what they are worth, if we would pay for education instead of jails, if we would pay for education instead of endless wars, if if if--things would be better, but we don't have that choice now.
Never heard of her. Certainly wouldn't listen to it.
Why do you insist on keeping on calling me names and assailing what you misread as my character? Because you can't deal with the substance of what I am saying, which is that there are many many ways to learn, and public education has shown it is focused on the least of those, which is being stuck in one location with a few teachers five days a week. Coming into the 21st Century--even if it is caused by a budget crisis--may be just what public education needs.
GLR88, that's just sarcastic bullshit, right? If so, thanks. If not, you're seriously in need of a 17-day week in school, or perhaps just getting your head out of your arse.
And please leave 'God' out of it, will you? The almost-unfathomable but absolutely deserved crisis the US is in does not warrant mindless pursuit of the fairy tales about 'God' and 'Christianity', or any other 'religion' or sect thereof, and I'm certain I'm not alone in suggesting that the time for knee-jerk respect being paid to everyone who shoots their face off about 'Jesus', the bible, 'Christian' this-and-that and all the rest of that crap is well and truly over. Believe and mouth inanities about your beliefs in private, but kindly stop advertising it, and do not proselytize, no matter how much your 'God' has convinced you in some dream to do so.
And never mind Obama. Unless you haven't been getting out much, Obama is becoming irrelevant, and part of the problem faster than you can blink. Wake up on this Obama bullshit, alright?
Read John Taylor Gatto on education, demand that the military spending be put into education and food and health, and shut up about 'God' blessing America. It's perfectly clear that 'God' couldn't give a rat's ass about America.
Human beings will far more quickly repair the travesty of American education than any belief in imaginary beings will.
Why do you blame God for man's schemes? Do you really consider yourself free from ARROGANCE?
mE thinks it be a good idear to cutt skool and so militery can get more tax monee insted.
Proud to be a Amerikan where at leest i know im frea.
I believe we are reduced to nothing but sarcasm.
Several of the school districts in this area , listen to this, are going to the banks to borrow money on next years
property taxes so they can finish out this year.
The State , at this point , doesn't have the funds to help them stay open, they are at the mercy of the banks!!!!
Just as Wall Street would love.
These are hope and changes we can believe in.
It certainly is going to get a whole lot worse before it
gets better, if it ever gets better.
Those of you that believe we can vote ourselves out of this
by finding "good" democrats to run, check these numbers,
you can easily see that it is mathmaticaly imposible
Senate 80 to 13........keep public law 170-40
House 356 to 65........ " " " "
With the way our election system works, it is an imposibility
to change this by voting. Have a good day, and learn how
to home school.
I live in a small community in SW New Mexico where the four day school week has been the standard for a long time now. I know for a fact that the students do not suffer academically, actually they score higher than the national level.
The kids are in school longer each day, but they have extra time outdoors to chill, move around and be kids. The school has successfully maintained the highest grading scores for years.
Perhaps a lot has to do with the fact that this is predominately two parent household area with teachers who actually enjoy teaching, interacting with the kids and their parents and seeing each child as an individual.
It's not the amount of time spent in the classroom, but the quality of the teaching and support from the community.
This can work, but not for the reasons listed in this article.
We do have our priorities; the best interests of the young generation simply falls low on that list.