Lacking Study of Benefits, Four-day week on the rise in education

The gas crunch has panicked even liberals into joining the throngs shouting “drill, baby, drill,” despite knowing full well any possible price relief is 10 to 20 years away. This same panic has prompted the publics acceptance and move toward a shortened school week, not fully understanding the unintended consequences of implementing such a drastic step. According to Dennis Carter, the Assistant Editor of eSchool News:

School districts and universities are taking cues from the business world and instituting four-day weeks, a trend that some say could become the norm as gas prices and energy costs continue to rise.

Experimenting with four-day school weeks is becoming popular in some of the country's most remote school districts, where buses travel hundreds of miles for student pickups, drop offs, and sporting events. Some school systems, during the past year, have eliminated Friday from the work schedule in Minnesota, Kentucky, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah.

With budgets in trouble in most states today, colleges and school districts see alternative scheduling as a way to save money. Ted Montgomery, a spokesman for Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Mich., said "I don't see why, if all the results come in and there have been no issues, that it wouldn't be continued. I haven't heard of any problems so far, honestly."

Wow, what a great idea. Or is it? A few comments followed this story offering a few possible “flies in the ointment.” Here are a are couple samples:

I Don't Think So!: Have you ever seen elementary children by 2 o'clock in the afternoon? It is not pretty. I truly do not think that productivity would be positive if children had a longer school day. Also, most parents work. Who will watch these children during the work week? The school day and the school year with its vacations were designed rather well. Before each vacation there seems to be a lot of illness so the break is well-timed. Though the four day week is certainly tempting, I don't feel that it would work out well.

Good idea, who will pay for it?: I love the idea of a four-day work week. The costs of operating the schools only four days a week could save millions of dollars. The flipside is parents not having the resources for day-care and supervision for older kids who are not quite old enough to be home alone or babysit younger siblings. If that one day could be used for technology based education, credit recovery, etc., that's a great use of time. However, if students don't have access to the internet, which is largely the case, they are being left out. As far as saving money by cutting the bus service (and it is a service) I can tell you that parents of children with disabilities will not be silent. While there are students who are physically and cognitively able to walk to school, there is still the issue of safety. Someone will have to make sure they are not assaulted, kidnapped, molested, killed, etc. Sad, but true. Year round schools would be great, but no one seems to be interested in what education professionals and researchers say about that. We have a modified schedule in our district for professional development and parents were not happy about that. And we are talking about only a couple of hours. I don't know how a whole day would go over.

Some of the issues raised here are problems I’ve thought about myself, even without the shortened school week. Is it an attempt to shift the additional cost to parents with children in schools, while freeing up the district and childless taxpayers of their social responsibilities?