Over several years, culminating in the 2018 state legislative session, officials blamed the growing trend of four-day weeks at Oklahoma schools on a lack of state funding.

But since 2018, state school spending has exploded and teacher salaries have surged. But as school officials have pocketed the extra cash they have also, in many cases, continued to limit school weeks to just four days.

Broken Arrow, the state’s fifth-largest brick-and-mortar school district by enrollment, could join that list next fall. Officials in that district are considering a shift to a four-day week even though research indicates the shorter week could reduce academic outcomes.

And the district is also building pre-planned distance-learning days into the school calendar along with the proposed four-day week. Since distance-learning days often involve little direct instruction, that effectively means students in Broken Arrow could have roughly four fewer weeks of in-person instruction than their counterparts in many states across the U.S.

One state lawmaker who has sought to restrict the use of virtual days is critical of the Broken Arrow proposal.

“Despite historic investments by taxpayers, our educational outcomes have continued to decline,” said state Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond. “We know that our students benefit from more time in the classroom, not less. A four-day work week combined with the use of virtual days is not going to increase educational attainment or ensure our students are prepared to enter the workforce.”

Under legislation filed this year by Thompson and state Sen. Lonnie Paxton, public schools would have been allowed to shift to virtual learning only in the event of inclement weather, staff shortages caused by illness, building maintenance issues, or if found necessary by school administrators.

And when school district officials used a distance-learning day instead of a traditional snow day, the bill would have required schools to provide a minimum of five and a half hours of instruction to K-8 students and six hours to high school students. Additionally, more than half of the online instruction would have to be synchronous, meaning there must be “real-time interaction between a teacher and students as the primary format of instruction.”

The legislation passed the state Senate but did not receive a floor vote in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

Broken Arrow officials are considering three school calendars for the 2025-2026 school year. Two of the three proposed calendars involve four-day school weeks.

The four-day week calendars have 165 school days, compared to 176 days in the traditional Broken Arrow calendar with an extra 25 minutes tacked on to each day in the four-day week calendars.

The two four-day week calendars also include four prescheduled distance-learning days, meaning actual in-class days will be reduced to 161—assuming the school does not shift to distance learning on additional days due to inclement weather.

Nationally, the average K–12 school is in session for 179 days a year with about seven hours spent in school each day.

Across the nation, the minimum required number of school days ranges from 160 in Colorado to 186 in Kansas; while in the 37 states that require a minimum number of instructional hours per school year, the range is from 720 hours in Arizona to 1,260 in Texas. (Oklahoma requires 1,080 hours.)

Research has shown that four-day weeks are associated with reduced academic outcomes and that learning loss increases the longer a child is in a four-day school week.

“Time in School: A Conceptual Framework, Synthesis of the Causal Research, and Empirical Exploration,” published in the May 30, 2024 edition of the American Educational Research Journal, found that “large differences in the length of the school day and year across public schools are an underappreciated dimension of educational inequality in the United States.”

A second study, “A multi-state, student-level analysis of the effects of the four-day school week on student achievement and growth,” published in the June 2024 edition of Economics of Education Review, found that a four-day school week produced “significant negative effects” on spring reading achievement and fall-to-spring gains in math.

Researchers found “suggestive evidence that the negative effects of the schedule grow in magnitude over time.” The four-day week’s negative average effects on test scores were slightly greater than those associated with certain increases in class size or teacher turnover.

Even while operating on a five-day-a-week calendar, just 28 percent of students in Broken Arrow scored at the proficient or better levels on overall state testing in 2023. In English, just 30 percent of Broken Arrow students scored proficient or better, while in math only 28 percent hit that level of achievement. Only 25 percent were proficient or better in science.

(Achievement levels rose for most schools on 2024 state testing, but numerous local school officials around the state have acknowledged that was primarily the result of state changes in the grading system used for state tests rather than a result of increased academic mastery.)

Despite funding claims, schools stick to four-day weeks after huge cash infusion

For Broken Arrow officials to now consider a four-day school week, joining mostly small districts that have employed that schedule, flies in the face of claims made leading up to 2018 when lawmakers approved hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases, in part to fund schools.

At that time, officials claimed financial challenges were forcing the shift to a four-day week.

In 2016, former Oklahoma House Speaker Steve Lewis, a Democrat, declared that four-day school weeks were a “consequence of our state’s unwillingness to responsibly fund our public schools.”

In 2018, four-day weeks were blamed on state funding amid calls for massive tax increases.

Oklahoma City’s NBC-affiliate news station KFOR reported, “Four-day school weeks are a growing trend across Oklahoma, a state facing a crippling budget crisis and a teacher shortage.”

In 2018, Chalkbeat, a national site devoted to education issues, declared that four-day school weeks were “a nationwide symptom of tight budgets.”

“As school districts across the country have faced budget crunches, a number have landed on a cost-saving solution: canceling school one day a week,” Chalkbeat reported.

That same year, CBS News reported that talk of an Oklahoma teacher walkout was occurring “after some schools switched to a four-day school week to try to make up for low pay.”

A 2018 article by Stateline declared that “cash-strapped districts” were “using four-day weeks to cope with a teacher shortage and state budget cuts” at that time.

But lawmakers have increased state funding to Oklahoma public schools by roughly $1 billion since 2018, and schools have also received continued increases in local property tax funding as well as a massive infusion of federal dollars due in part to Covid response. 

In 2023, when the funding increase reached $1 billion, state Sen. Adam Pugh noted that the rate of increase was unprecedented.

“From the year 1993 to the year 2018, the state of Oklahoma invested an additional $1.35 billion in public education,” said Pugh, R-Edmond. “From the year 2019 to the year 2024 … Oklahoma will have invested an additional $1.37 billion in public education.”

That meant state funding for schools surged more in just five years than state funding had during the prior 25 years.

Broken Arrow officials blame a teacher shortage for their decision to consider a four-day week. Officials at many four-day school districts have said it serves as a recruitment tool for teachers, who enjoy three-day weekends.

The teacher shortage also flies in the face of claims made by tax-increase supporters in 2018, who claimed that increased teacher pay would lead to more teachers. Teacher pay has increased significantly since 2017.

Thompson noted that the four-day week, combined with distance-learning days, creates many challenges for working families, particularly in a district the size of Broken Arrow, which has more than 20,000 students.

“Virtual days and shorter weeks create additional challenges for parents in the workforce who would have to find childcare, or find a way to take a day off during the week to accommodate this type of schedule,” Thompson said. “As a small business owner and a mother, I know firsthand the undue strain this would place on parents and businesses. Oklahoma has a profound workforce shortage, and I want our school districts to partner with us in addressing this issue, not exacerbate an already challenging situation.”