About 3% of U.S. public schools ran on a 12-month calendar in 2017-18, down from 5.5% in 2007-08. Most keep about the same number of school days and shorten summer, and studies of schools that switched found little or no gain in test scores.
Mary Johnson
The American school year is famously 180 days, but that is a convention, not a national rule. Colorado requires as few as 160 days, Kansas goes to 186, some states count hours instead of days, and the four-day week is quietly rewriting the math in hundreds of districts.
Arthur Chen
The story that summer break exists because children were needed for the harvest is backward: rural schools often ran summer terms and closed for planting. Once you drop the myth, the research on summer learning loss and year-round calendars turns out to be far shakier than the debate assumes.
Arthur Chen
Thirteen elementary schools and seven middle schools went back Tuesday, two weeks ahead of the rest of Dallas ISD. The extra days come with state funding attached, and they run in the opposite direction from districts cutting to four-day weeks.
Mary Johnson
Chattooga County is one of only a handful of Georgia districts on a four-day school week. The free Mondays are real, but so is the trade-off: the district runs 38 weeks instead of 36 and started school unusually early to fit the required instructional days in.
Mary Johnson
The four-day week is spreading fast across the rural West, and its appeal is real: teacher recruitment, morale, and a day off families cherish. But the cost savings are modest and the achievement research leans slightly negative. Here is what the evidence actually says.
Arthur Chen
Lehman Catholic High School in Sidney, Ohio is dropping Mondays, citing teacher burnout and a chance for students to do college prep, tutoring, and real work experience. Here is what the school said, and how it fits a fast-growing trend.
Mary Johnson
Under a new Indiana law, a school must earn an 'A' on the state's accountability scale, among other requirements, before it can apply to run a four-day week. The state's only four-day school is a high-poverty elementary that has never earned one.
Mary Johnson
