With more schools nationwide deciding to switch to a four-day school week, people have started to notice. For example, according to Colorado Public Radio, more than 60% of the school districts in Colorado have switched to the plan. It’s not just Colorado though, at least 23 other states have at least one school district that has been using the four-day school week approach. With more people talking about it than ever, four-day school weeks are continuing to become more popular.
One of the biggest reasons the four-day school week has gained popularity is because most people like the idea. In surveys by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), 95% of students and 84% of families would like to see schools take more action to make their days shorter and switch to four-day school weeks.
“I think we should have a four-day school week because I get a lot of homework,” sophomore Madden Shaman said. “And on the last day on Friday, it could be a homework day. It will also cause less stress to my mental state.”
It’s not just that the idea is popular, there has been proof it has worked. The average American College Testing (ACT) composite score nationally in 2010 was 21%. Meanwhile just last year in 2024, the composite average score was down to 19.4%. But in Colorado, which had 60% of their districts using the four-day school week, their average ACT composite score bumped up from 20.6% in 2010 to 24.7% just last year.
Besides Colorado, only Oregon, Idaho, South Dakota and New Mexico have more than 20% of their school districts implementing the four-day school week. Those states haven’t seen the same gains as Colorado has, but most of them haven’t used the four-day school week plan as long either.
It isn’t just test scores that have caused some schools to make a switch though, attendance is another factor that has come into play. According to the Colorado Department of Education, the average student attendance went from 90.8% in 2022-23 to 91.5% in the 2023-24 school year, an increase of 0.7%. Students who missed 10 or more school days per year also went down from 31.1% in 2022-23 to 27.7% just last year according to the website.
Even though some might argue that Colorado’s absences going down had nothing to do with the four-day school week plans across the state, it’s hard to back a claim like that up. The Colorado Department of Education found that during the 2021-22 school year In Colorado, 896,039 students attended school on record with 317,796 of them being chronically absent. That gave the state a 35.5% chronic absence rate and one of the worst states regarding absence rates in the country. After removing almost every district that had five-day school weeks in effect, the numbers steadily changed. For only the districts that had at least one school with a four-day school week plan in place, the chronic absent rate went steadily down. Out of 529,738 students, only 205,186 were chronically absent, meaning that schools with four-day school weeks only had a chronically absence rate of around 30.8%, almost 5% lower than the state average that year.
“I think that it will be very good because kids will be able to focus more on outside-of-school activities and relationships which can also help to increase mental health,” junior Elyse Sturm said. “It also may help students get more sleep which can help them perform better.”
It’s not just better performance and fewer absences, four-day school weeks also have been shown to reduce costs for schools, give people a better work-life balance, and improve student mental health. Lots of people, in or out of school, have shown they want change. Four-day school weeks might not be popular now, but in the future at this pace, expect change to happen soon.
