Northeast of Des Moines in central Iowa, is the Collins-Maxwell Community School District. It has 400 students and is one of several in the state moving to a four-day school week.
Like other rural schools, the district has had trouble finding teachers. It sees the shorter week as a way to attract them. It also wants to reduce student absences, which are higher on Mondays and Fridays.
The district used a five-day schedule earlier in the school year. But now, with some exceptions, the middle and high schools in the Collins-Maxwell district will be closed on Mondays.
To meet Iowa’s required number of school hours, the district will make the remaining days longer during four-day weeks. Superintendent Marc Snavely said he saw nearby schools switch to shorter weeks and was interested in what he heard from other districts. Snavely hopes the shorter week will improve teacher morale, reduce burnout and help the rural district compete with surrounding districts that are larger and can pay teachers more.
“Ultimately, the ‘why’ behind the four-day school week came down to staff recruitment and retention,“ Snavely said in an interview. “We felt being a small school district, the four-day week would allow us to better compete.”
He added that surrounding schools with four-day weeks said they had fewer discipline problems and improved attendance. Rural school districts across the country say the four-day work week helps them manage tight budgets with uncertain funding. But even with reports of better attendance and calmer classrooms, education researchers say the evidence is more complicated.
Emily Morton, lead researcher for the Northwest Evaluation Association, warned that the promised benefits have not been seen in the data. Also, longer school days can hurt academic performance, Morton said. But these concerns might not matter as four-day school weeks become more popular nationwide. “There is an extremely high approval rating for these policies,” Morton said. “Parents and students overwhelmingly want to stay on a four-day week once they have it.”
A Rural Trend
There are more than 2,100 schools in 26 states using four-day weeks, according to researchers at Oregon State University. In Iowa, the number of districts on a four-day schedule has grown from six in 2023-24 to more than two dozen in 2025. In Colorado, two-thirds of districts are on the changed schedule.
But so far, it’s almost entirely a rural trend.
"To my knowledge, there’s not a single urban district using a four-day week," Morton said. "What a four-day week looks like in a rural community is very different from what people in suburban or urban areas imagine."
Shanon Taylor is an education professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies school scheduling. She said districts usually choose the model for money and staffing reasons, not academic ones. Rural districts often save money on transportation, utilities and building operations, she said, and the promise of permanent three-day weekends helps with hiring teachers.
However, the change may be hard for parents who work five days a week, especially those with younger children who need to find childcare on the day off.
In June, researchers at the University of Oregon published a review of 11 studies on four-day school weeks, which included data on academic achievement, attendance, discipline and criminal activity. The impact of a four-day week varied based on grade level and location, the Oregon researchers found, but overall "there was no evidence of large positive effects."
They also noted that "maintaining activities that foster healthy youth development on the fifth day is important for minimizing other negative impacts."
State Vs. Local Clashes
In some states, the policy has caused disagreements between state and local officials.
"There’s a lot of tension between state leaders and rural districts over whether the four-day week is something the state should allow," said Morton. "In Oklahoma, when the state tried to take it away, districts simply shifted to ‘virtual Fridays’ — and instruction mostly didn’t happen."
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs found that more than 100 Oklahoma districts had at least one school where students had at least two full weeks of "virtual days" in the 2022-23 school year. More than 60 districts had at least one school that went online for three weeks or more. During many of those days, there was little live teaching.
In response, Oklahoma made a law that limits public schools’ ability to switch to virtual learning. The law allows only two days of virtual instruction each school year, and only under certain conditions, like a state of emergency declared by the governor.
Missouri made a law in 2024 that requires certain big city, charter and county districts to get voter approval before adopting or continuing a four-day week. The Independence School District, a 14,000-student suburban system near Kansas City that switched to the shorter week in 2023-24, has since sued the state. They said that the law unfairly targets certain districts based on random criteria like county size.
Last year, a New Mexico rule for districts to add more school days was stopped in court. And Arkansas lawmakers considered a bill that would allow for a range of school days from 160 to 190, depending on a school’s rating. Many rural districts there have moved to four-day schedules.
Meanwhile, questions about the costs and benefits of the approach are likely to continue.
Morton said that small rural districts might not be equipped to determine whether a four-day week produces benefits until further studies are conducted across the country.
"Even if your test scores stay flat, nearby districts might be rising, so your ‘flat’ could actually be a negative effect," Morton said. "States need to equip districts with what national research shows, because local data will never be able to answer these questions alone."