A Texas school district is shaving a day a week off its instructional time for students as a means to attract teachers, a move officials describe as a “win-win-win!”
The Whitney Independent School District southwest of Dallas approved the plan at a board meeting on Monday, after surveying faculty and staff, Superintendent Todd Southard told WNEM.
“The results of the survey showed that 94.7% of the staff wanted to move to a four-day instructional week, and 66.7% of the WISD faculty/staff preferred to have Mondays as the off day to allow them to better prepare for the upcoming week of instruction,” Southard said.
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The superintendent told media the intent behind the change is to recruit and retain teachers for the district, while also giving them more time to prepare weekly instructional materials for students.
“It has become increasingly difficult to find quality educators, a problem that is not exclusive to Whitney ISD,” he said. “All indicators show this problem is only going to get worse, as more and more teachers look to leave the profession, and college teacher preparation programs continue to see a decline in enrollment.”
The decision comes despite the district’s documented struggles with chronic student absenteeism, and mediocre academics.
About 16.9% of WISD students were chronically absent in the 2020-21 school year, while that figure for Black students was 28%, both well above the statewide averages of 15% and 20.7%, respectively, according to the Texas Tribune.
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Student testing data cited by U.S. News & World Report shows only 47% of the district’s elementary students can read at grade level, and just 41% tested proficient or better in math.
Regardless, district officials are championing the change as a “win-win-win!”
“Whitney ISD is elevating education with a 4-say school week for the 2025-2026 year, and we want YOU on our team!” read a pop-up on the district’s website. “Imagine: more time for you, more focused prep time, and more engaged students. It’s a win-win-win!”
While it’s certainly a win for teachers, research suggests students pay the price.
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“It’s a huge mistake to move to a four-day school week,” Matt Kraft of Brown University, who co-wrote a paper on the influence of class time on learning, told RealClear Investigations. “At this moment we need to maximize instructional time to support students’ academic recovery, not reduce it.”
More than 2,000 schools across the nation have shifted to three-day weekends over the last couple of decades, a move that has grown in popularity as schools with limited budgets face stiff competition for educators, RealClear reports.
“While its impact on teacher shortages appears to be mixed in different districts, its harmful effects on the academic growth of students – arguably the top priority of public education – is clear. Teams of researchers examining the program in a variety of states have come to a similar conclusion: The four-day week stymies learning in math and English when instructional time is reduced, as is often the case,” the news site reports.
“The most authoritative multi-state study to date found that students have suffered small-to-medium negative effects, learning ‘significantly less’ than they would have in a traditional five-day program, says co-author Emily Morton of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.”
Other research from Andrew Camp at the University of Arkansas also found four-day school weeks often do not improve teacher recruitment and retention as much as some superintendents expect them to.
At 32 Arkansas districts that moved to a four-day week, Camp found retention improved by a mere 1.4 percentage points, while another study at Colorado’s district 27J near Denver revealed retention of experienced teachers actually fell by 5% in the first year the district moved to a four-day week.
“Districts making the change to four days should be realistic about what they can expect to achieve,” Camp told RealClear. “They should consider other options to help deal with staffing challenges that don’t put students at risk of learning loss.”