Four-Day School Weeks, a Nationwide Symptom of Tight Budgets, Lead to More Youth Crime, Study Finds
April 2, 2018
By: Matt Barnum
Source: Chalkbeat
As school districts across the country have faced budget crunches, a number have landed on a cost-saving solution: cancelling school one day a week.
Districts in at least 21 states have adopted the four-day school week, including one in five districts in Oklahoma — an issue teachers there raised as they prepared to strike this week. “This package does not overcome a shortfall that has caused four-day weeks and overcrowded classrooms,” the Oklahoma Education Association president said last week, criticizing a new law that provided pay increases for teachers.
Now a new study points to an unintended but perhaps unsurprising consequence of cutting the school week: a spike in juvenile crime.