Less Is More? The Causal Effect of Four-Day Weeks on School Employee Retention

• In Event: A Profession in Crisis? New Data on the Challenges of Recruitment and Retention of the Educator Workforce

Abstract

The use of four-day school weeks (4dsw) in the United States has expanded rapidly over the past two decades (Thompson et al., 2021). Previous work has examined the impact of 4dsw on students, but little research examines their effect on school employees who are also intended beneficiaries of these schedules. Given the mixed findings for student outcomes (Morton, 2023; Thompson, 2021), understanding how 4dsw adoption affects employee retention is critical for policymakers to know when considering implementation. To date, qualitative research documents the popularity of 4dsw among teachers, with administrators reporting lower levels of teacher turnover after policy adoption (Kilburn et al., 2021; Turner et al., 2018). The only existing study examining the causal effects of 4dsw on educators finds declines in teacher retention in a large suburban district one year after implementation (Nowak et al., 2023). Thus, it is unknown how the effects of the policy evolve several years after adoption, how the policy affects non-teaching staff, and how the policy impacts retention in more rural contexts where the vast majority of 4dsw adopters are located.

Data & Methods

This paper examines the effect of four-day school weeks in a western state on teacher and other staff retention by leveraging a staggered roll-out of the schedule using a difference-in-differences design. We use detailed records for the universe of public school employees in the state from the 2006-07 to 2016-17 school years merged with information about when school districts began or ended their four-day schedules. During this period, approximately 80 schools began a 4dsw and about 30 ended their use of the schedule.

Preliminary Findings & Implications

Preliminary results suggest that 4dsw adoption did not improve employee retention and, if anything, caused retention to decline. Adopting a four-day week increased turnover by 2 percentage points in the initial year among non-licensed staff and in later years by about 8 percentage points for teachers and other certificated staff. There is suggestive evidence that the mechanism driving these negative effects is lower relative teacher salaries and not dramatic changes in the composition of the teacher workforce in 4dsw districts. Some caution is warranted, however, because we do observe a few pre-trend differences related to student characteristics and teacher pay between 4dsw and non-4dsw districts. We are in the process of incorporating advances from the DiD literature into the analysis, testing for possible impacts on neighboring school districts, and exploring heterogeneity by employee characteristics.

This paper contributes to the field’s understanding of challenges to employee recruitment and retention by highlighting the roles of pecuniary and nonpecuniary benefits. In doing so, the paper attempts to provide the first state-wide evaluation of 4dsw effects on school employee retention and among the first causal evidence regarding factors affecting the labor supply decisions of non-teaching, non-administrative employees (e.g., Bassok et al., 2021). The findings suggest that policymakers interested in adopting four-day schedules for improved school employee retention should exercise caution and be attentive to the full set of incentives offered to staff.

Authors

• Aaron J. Ainsworth, University of California - Irvine

• Emily K. Penner, University of California - Irvine

• Yujia Liu, University of Missouri