Brooklyn Moore:

When the bell rings on Friday morning, no students in Central Athens Elementary are around to hear it. The drop-off lane is empty and the hallways are quiet, save for the few teachers who come in to prepare for the next week. Like at least 114 of Texas’s 1,207 districts, Athens Independent School District operates with a four-day instructional week. Six years into the experiment, the district’s superintendent, Janie Sims, says she would expect a staff, teacher, and parent mutiny if the change was reversed. Many teachers and parents of children in the district whom I talked to agreed.

All around Texas, small, rural districts have made the switch to a four-day school week since the Legislature in 2015 changed the state’s requirements for instruction time from a 180-day year minimum to a 75,600-minutes-per-year minimum (districts with 4-day weeks have longer days). These districts have historically struggled to compete with urban schools’ salaries and benefits, leading to low teacher retention and subsequent staffing shortages. The four-day week helps districts be competitive in recruiting and retaining instructors. Multiple Texas superintendents told me it also helps improve student attendance rates.

State education officials aren’t as convinced of the benefits for schoolchildren of the shorter week. At a February Texas House Education Committee hearing, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath testified, in part, on districts that have switched to four-day instruction. Harris County Republican Charles Cunningham asked him what effect it was having on learning outcomes. Morath answered plainly: “It’s bad; the data is pretty unequivocal.” He cited that STAAR (state testing) scores are, on average, six to eight percentage points lower in districts that have made the switch than in five-day ones.