Dive Brief:

• Nearly 25,000 public school students in Idaho are going to school for four days instead of five, making up the difference with an added 45 minutes of instruction per day.

• Though the experiment has no hard results to speak of yet, Education Week reports that political leaders have shown little interest in seeking out answers.

• A four-month-long investigation, "Rescheduled Education,” executed collaboratively by the Idaho Education News and Idaho Public Television found that the shortened school week didn’t save districts money and that students may be learning less, as evidenced by a drop in SAT scores and new online tests.

Dive Insight:

“Many districts adopted the four-day schedule to stay afloat during the recession, but saved little money in the process,” Education Week reports. Superintendents apparently see the concentrated week as a perk to draw in teachers who might be reticent to teach in rural Idaho. And in some — but not all— districts, Fridays are used as PD days.  

The concept of a shorter school week is also going to be tested at the charter school network Success Academy next year. At the charter, school days were known for being long, and they will go from being a total of eight hours 45 minutes long down to just eight hours, the New York Times reports. Every Wednesday at the school is a half-day for teacher development. District school days, by comparison, are approximately six hours 20 minutes long, as mandated by the current teachers’ union contract in New York.

Recommended Reading

Education Week: Shorter School Weeks: An Unproven Experiment