For the study, released in the Annenberg Institute’s December study series, Lawson and his colleagues analyzed 17 years of year-over-year data on the job changes of every Texas teacher working since 2006, tracking differences in teacher turnover and recruitment as districts moved to shortened schedules.
Turnover fell about 2.7 percentage points in districts that moved to four-day weeks, but Lawson said teacher retention remained a problem, with more than 1 in 5 teachers leaving each year in those districts both before and after the schedule changes. The study also found that it did not attract an especially skillful set of teachers—there was no significant improvement in the education or experience levels of teachers working in districts with adjusted weeks.