Impacts of Four-Day School Weeks on Academic Achievement and Achievement Gaps
Economist Paul Thompson will examine how four-day school weeks impact student achievement and pre-existing achievement gaps. He will use district-by-year variation in four-day school week use in a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to study the effects these school schedules have on student achievement and achievement gaps. He plans to employ Stanford Educational Data Archive school district-level test scores and demographic information from 2009-2016 in conjunction with a proprietary national longitudinal data set of four-day school week use to examine how abbreviated school weeks affect student performance on standardized tests.