The four-day school week has been studied far more rigorously in the past five years than ever before. Below is a curated collection of peer-reviewed research, prioritizing studies published since 2021, organized by topic. Working papers and major reports are listed separately and clearly labeled. The short version: the four-day week’s effects depend less on the calendar itself than on how much instructional time a district keeps.
The recruitment-and-retention question — long the four-day week’s main selling point — finally has a peer-reviewed base of its own, and it does not speak with one voice. In Missouri and Oklahoma, Thompson (2025) finds no statistically significant average retention effect from adopting a four-day week. The study finds a small reduction in moves to other four-day districts and some recruiting from nearby five-day districts; where the schedule becomes more common locally, however, more teachers also exit teaching. Those local-market estimates vary by rurality, state, and teacher characteristics, and the author cautions that they may reflect other concurrent conditions. In Oregon, Ainsworth, Liu, and Penner (2026) find turnover got worse after adoption. A rural single-district case study (Hollingworth & An, 2025) documents every vacancy filled after switching. Working papers from Texas, Colorado, Arkansas, and Missouri fill out the range from modest help to no effect. The honest summary: many teachers value the schedule, and some adopting districts report easier recruiting — but the peer-reviewed evidence does not show a consistent statewide average retention benefit.
Videos of sessions from the October 2023 national conference, covering academic and non-academic impacts. Sessions feature researchers Paul Thompson (Oregon State), Rebecca Kilburn (University of New Mexico), Emily Tomayko (Montana State), Emily Morton (American Institutes for Research), and Jon Turner (Missouri State University), plus numerous superintendent panels.
Watch the conference sessions →Associate Professor of Educational Leadership · Missouri State University, Springfield MO