The New "New" Four Day School Week

    This week is graduation testing in Georgia. For those not familiar with graduation testing…they are simply tests given in 11^th grade that you must pass in order to graduate. There are four tests given (language arts, math, social studies and science) and passing each one is required for graduating high school in Georgia. The tests themselves are not the subject of this but more the time away from classes.

    I have already shown my agreement for many of the ideas written in John Medina’s book Brain Rules, but I want to take one of those ideas a bit further. He writes that repetition is key for learning. Revisiting old material and multiple shorter classes in the day are a few of his ideas to increase learning in the school atmosphere.

    The testing this week makes me think of the frequent breaks we have from class time. The calendar I have is speckled with little colorful squares highlighting days off, breaks and teacher work days. If you add in all days for graduation testing, state course testing, checkpoint tests and midterms/finals, I can make my own visual depiction of a grocery store earring tree.

    As a parent, I see that routine is very important in managing people for performance. Variations and differences in routine are important to keep motivation and interest, but these should be breaks and asides. Schools, and I’m talking about many throughout the nation, are in this frequent “break in routine” philosophy. It actually becomes a small running joke amongst students and teachers that there are so few five day work weeks in the spring.

 

 

    Imagine going to work and being assigned a different task. Not a harder task, but a not quite related task. Think if you worked as a car mechanic and one day you are asked to run the cash register. Not really a bad thing, it is nice to have an occasional interesting day and a break in routine, but that is a break, not a constant habit. The four day “work week” is becoming normal with all the testing and materials on which students need to be checked. The car mechanic example is not bad, but in learning, where repetition is key to memory and understanding, breaks are not beneficial. I have no hard evidence to back this up (since this is mostly an opinion blog), but when 20% of the year is not part of the “regular” learning routine…it becomes another type of routine…one with less instruction.

I like the educational model of the four day work week, and recently many districts are changing to this model to save money. I believe four days can work when done right, but we have to eliminate the average of one school day a week not used for education.