Keeping Up With the Joneses: District Adoption of the 4-Day School Week in Rural Missouri

Abstract

In recent years, rural school district adoption of 4-day school weeks has grown markedly. Despite this rapid growth, scant empirical evidence has documented the factors associated with district adoption and subsequent effects on student, labor, and economic outcomes. We examine the spread of the 4-day school week in rural Missouri, where over 10% of the state’s districts have adopted the policy in the past decade, the majority over the past 2 years. To help policymakers understand why districts forgo a day of instruction and to contextualize postpolicy effects, we conduct a survival analysis to assess student, district, and staff characteristics associated with policy adoption. We find that the presence of nearby 4-day school week districts most strongly predicts policy adoption. Adopting districts typically offer lower teacher salaries than nearby districts and have declining student enrollments. Our findings may inform policy focused on teacher recruitment and retention in rural locales.