A Quantitative Study of the Impact of Four-Day School Weeks on Teacher Retention in Rural Public School Districts

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative investigative examination was to look at how the four-day school week impacts teacher retention, specifically in Idaho rural school districts. The research question studied was what is the relationship between the four–day school week and teacher retention in rural school districts? Within the quantitative research design, the causal–comparative design was the selected procedure. The sample in this study was public educators teaching in rural public-school districts with a four-day school week as compared to teachers with a five-day school week from the state of Idaho. This data was collected in the Fall of 2021 into the Spring of 2022 from databases in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. Next, descriptive statistics were employed, including independent sample t-tests to investigate the discrepancies in teacher retention rates among rural public schools with four-day school weeks and those five-day school weeks by a variety of variables. The research compared teacher retention in rural school districts on the four-day school week to the rate of teacher retention in rural school districts on the five-day school week. Three years of historical teacher retention data was collected from the Idaho Department of Education beginning with the 2017-2018 school year and ending with the 2019-2020 school year. While results indicate that school districts on a five-day school week consistently had a higher rate of teacher retention when compared to districts on a four-day school week, there was no statistically significant impact (p>_.05).