In recent years, education has taken a drastic turn of direction.
There is more talk of shortening the school week. Vinton Elementary in Lafayette is the first school in the state of Indiana to approve the four-day week. The shorter week, however, means longer school hours.
At Vinton, school starts each Monday through Thursday at 8 a.m. and students will be dismissed at 3:45 p.m. That’s almost nine hours. One can’t help but wonder what a longer day would look like for an elementary student. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the potential of a four-day school week has a lot of benefits, including cost savings, improved attendance and increased teacher morale.
However, there are some downsides to this controversial topic.
Some families can’t afford to provide for their children for an extra day. Just because school stops, doesn’t mean work does. Parents can’t stop working to take care of their children, especially those who are still in elementary school.
There are still a lot of unknowns about a four-day week being implemented into today’s educational system. If there was more funding for public schools, would they still be talking about shortening what a typical school week looks like for a student? Interesting question.
In recent years there has been more of an uprising on this matter. However, this is nothing new.
The talk about a four-day week has been a topic for discussion since the mid 1900s.
“While the mean test scores for five-day week schools exceeded those of four-day week schools in 11 of the 12 test comparisons, the differences were slight, with only one area revealing a statistically significant difference,” Professor Paul M. Hewitt said. There are other reasons beyond academic performance. For some people, this four-day week would be great, but not for everyone.
If we think as a whole society, this may not be the best path to go down for our future.