Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the first meeting of the Senate Education Committee here in the second session of
the 34th legislature. It is 3.32 p.m. here on Monday January 26th we are in
the Belts Committee room here, in beautiful snowy winter capital of
the Alaska State Juneau. I want to remind folks who are here
in this room if they could please mute their cell phones.
Copies of today's presentation are available on basis and additional copies are there by the door if folks are so inclined to follow along.
Members present today is Senator Keel, Senator Bjorkman, myself Senator Tobin, Vice President, excuse me, vice chair, Senate President Gary Stevens will be absent today and Senator Yunt is on his way.
Please let the record reflect.
We do have a quorum to conduct business.
I want to thank Susan and Kyla from the Juno LAO
for moderating today's meeting.
And Mary Gwen is always for joining us
from Senate records to document today s conversation.
On the agenda today is a presentation by researchers
from HEDCO Institute at the University of Oregon,
detailing their research on the effectiveness
of switching from a five-day school week
to a four- day schoolweek.
The HEDCO Institute works to inform a decision-making for K-12 education leaders through research
and evidence-based recommendations.
This topic has come to our attention as school boards across Alaska are searching to find
cost-saving measures as they face significant and substantial budget shortfalls.
Joining us on Microsoft Teams, our Elizabeth Day and Sean Grant.
Ms. Day is an Assistant Research Professor at HEDCO Institute,
and Mr. Grant is the Assistant Director of Research at the same institution.
Welcome to the Senate Education Committee.
If you could please identify yourselves for the record and at your discretion,
please begin your presentation.
Great.
Thank you so much for having us.
We're really excited to be here today.
I am Sean Grant.
I'm an associate research professor at the Head Co Institute in our assistant director
of research.
Elizabeth, if your voice isn't totally gone, did you want to introduce yourself?
Sure.
Hi everyone.
My name is Elizabeth Day.
I have a research assistant professor and director of outreach for the institute and
I was so sorry.
My voice left me this morning.
Thanks, Elizabeth.
So I'm presenting our joint work,
but I'll try and do her justice
with the great work she's on in this topic.
So we're speaking today on findings
from our team's research on the four-day school week,
which as you probably know,
is an approach school leaders take
to shorten the schoolweek by one day,
usually Friday, sometimes Mondays,
and then add on time per day
for the remaining four days of the School Week
to still meet minimum school time requirements
for this school year.
We welcome questions throughout, but given the variety of information we plan to share
and how many factors obviously weigh into a decision like student outcomes versus budget.
It might be best to wait until the end,
but again, we're flexible with whatever works best for you all.
Next slide.
So first, I wanted to give a very brief background on our Institute to be fully transparent on where we're coming from.
So our charge is to conduct systematic reviews of the research evidence, and that essentially means that we compile all of
the existing published academic research on a topic like the 40th school week, bring it into one place, look at trends,
statistically analyze findings across all those studies to get a summary of what the Research Evidence says.
When we studied the four-day school week, Elizabeth did in-depth interviews with four superintendents who made the switch or considering the
switch from five days to four days. That's because we're really invested in knowing how research findings relate to perspectives of
educational leaders themselves. We are funded by the Headco Foundation, which is based in California. Our funders are not involved in our
research or any decision-making around our research at all.
And most importantly, we are strictly nonpartisan.
We work with policymakers by presenting findings
from the entire body of research evidence
on a particular topic so that policymakers can make
informed decisions themselves.
We do not advocate one way or another on policy decisions.
Just try to present a summary of all the research
evidence on the policy or on topic of interest.
And with that, let's dive into the four days full week.
Next slide, please.
So, first we look to see if there were any empirical research studies that focus specifically
on Alaska, and unfortunately there aren't.
We know that relevance is really important for decision-makers.
So the next best thing that we could do is look for either topics that may be of particular
interests to your committee, like indigenous education or school finances, in studies
that most closely resemble Alaska geographically.
And so we'll have some focus on our student outcomes on rural school districts.
Next slide.
In terms of the four day school week in tribal communities, unfortunately, there's also not much research on indigenous education specifically. We literally, I think, identified every empirical research study that there is in the for a school we only found one study
that did interviews with families and schools on an American Indian reservation. And what they looked into is the impact on physical activity and found that schedule changes due to the fourth a
and tests, so more academic pressure, and prevented many children from participating
in after-school activities due to the longer school days.
We know that this isn't an ideal match for understanding Indigenous education in Alaska,
it might be very indirect evidence, but thought it would be helpful to share some unique
unsights on potential consequences of the extended school day, that is often that calendar
adjustments that a company is dropping one day.
We are of the understanding, as is the case of a lot of policy makers in this space, that you're interested in the impact on school budgets and of all the studies that have provided some cost information.
There are about three or four that provide an estimate of impact, on the four day school week on School budgets, comparing the budget changes in four days school weeks to budgets in five day, school, weeks.
And as you'll see in a second, we generally found small but potentially meaningful cost savings
across studies with one important caveat. So the first study was using data across the U.S. from
1999 to 2017. They found that district budgets decreased about one to two percent on average
with the four-day school week adoption. And in that study, it was primarily driven by reduced
support services expenditures due to decreased educational service provision.
And the second study was only data in Oklahoma.
That was from 2004 to 2017.
Again, a decrease of about 2% on average
for four-day school weeks.
And those decreases were concentrated
in operations, transportation,
and food services expenditures.
The third study we found was in Colorado specifically
from 2003 to 2022.
They found decreased spending.
and that was primarily driven by support services expenditures, specifically food services,
and salary expenditures specifically transportation salary
expenditures. So some common themes here with transportation and services expenditure.
They also noted a decrease in federal revenue in the years following the switch. That was due to
decreases in Federal per meal reimbursements for free or reduced price lunch students.
So that went hand in hand with the reductions in food expenditures
There was one study that provided data on school budgets post-2021,
that is after COVID blockdowns and from our experience,
that kind of recent and relevant data is of interest.
That was a study in just Montana from 2006 to 2023.
They actually found increased budgets after adjusting for inflation.
But this study did not control for differences in four-day school week and
five- day school-week schools as well as the previous three studies did.
So we provide it here, give an interest in post-COVID data.
But compared to the other three settings, we can't confidently attribute
those changes. And in this case increases in cost
due to four day, schoolweek versus other potential factors that drove costs.
Importantly, all the authors from these studies
caution that states, districts, and schools
consider whether potential negative consequences
on student outcomes are worth the potential cost savings
that you tend to find in the rigorous studies
estimating the impact on school budgets.
And so with that, we'd love to dig into some highlights
of the research on the Impact on Student Outcomes.
Next slide, please.
Overall we found there was no evidence clearly of any large positive effects for student outcomes
and really while findings varied a bit from there you'll see that we've found fairly consistent
small but meaningful negative effects from most student outcome. When we're talking about student
outcomes there are five domains that were really focused on that the literature focus on.
Those are academic achievement like test scores, academic attainment like graduation,
school attendance, including chronic absenteeism, criminal activity, particularly at the high school level, and disciplinary incidents on school grounds.
Next slide, please.
We first want to go through K through eight schools as we do see some variability depending on the school
level. And again, we're focusing here on findings in rural schools, as
We consistently found decreased achievement in both math and reading across studies looking at K through eight students in rural schools, and those came from studies, looking
at the impact across multiple states, so the most representative data we have of the US.
in standardized testing and that was in Colorado, they interestingly found increases in the
percentage of students in grade five math and grade four reading. And so I'm sure you're wondering
why did they find good outcomes and the other one's negative outcomes.
And the primary hypothesis for that right now is that their data mostly comes from before
the 2008 Great Recession. Their data set spans from 2000 to 2010. And before the recession,
a lot of schools that were choosing the four days school week were driven by a desire to
increase attendance. They had issues with students, particularly at the high school level,
rather than schools post the Great Recession who have tended to do this for cost savings reasons
and that might be some indicator for schools who are able to put cost
savings towards things that increase academic achievement. Hypothesis but that's the leading
one right now. Mr. Grant we have a question for senator keel.
Yes through the chair. Senator keels. Thank you, Mr Madam Chair. I appreciate it.
I'm trying to understand the sort of the magnitude of these.
And the top two charts are in SD units and the bottom is in percentage point change.
I don't want to percentage-point changes. Can you explain an SD unit to me, please?
Yeah, sure. It's a great question. Thank you. So, standard deviations are essentially a measure
And a standard deviation of anywhere from 0 to 0.1 is rather small. That might translate into
a percentage point or two. So a student who might be scoring 50th percentile in math or reading
might go down to the 48th, 47th percent tile.
So not massive shifts, but potentially meaningful shifts decreases in achievement and reading.
Especially at a time where I think folks are really focusing on not losing any traction
in achievement and trying to find ways to increase achievement.
Hopefully that's helpful.
So just to follow up.
So would I be correct to understand if point one is a small difference to see point zero
three and zero seven at the largest as opposed to on the other side on this percentage point
side 3.8 and 7.4, are we talking about statistically significant differences on
the on the decreased achievement side or are
we talk about rounding errors?
Back on the record here in Santa Education, Mr. Grant, can you hear us?
We can we cannot hear you.
We'll take a brief at ease and we'll send you the call in number so you can continue for your presentation. Briefities.
It is Monday, January 26th, it's 3.49 p.m.
And Mr. Grant, you were mid sentence
in answering a question.
If you could please continue.
Sure, can you hear me now?
We can.
Perfect.
Thank you all so much.
I apologize for that.
So if I remember the question correctly,
first are we talking about statistically significant differences.
And to answer that question, yes, we are.
The research here is feeling confident that these are not due to chance,
but these're real differences. What's their small effect? So it would be equivalent to an average
student who is scoring in the 50th percentile and academic achievement to go down to about the 48th
percentile. A small change, but still potentially useful.
Please continue with the remainder of the presentation.
Great, thank you.
So if we can go to the slide on rural high school, please.
So for rural High School students,
we have data from Oregon and Colorado,
and here we see some better academic results
than we do for K through eight students.
We see increased mass scores small,
but perhaps no change in English and language arts.
We see increased graduation rates and we see decreased dropout rates, but there were also
some studies that found some potential negative consequences for rural teams at the high school
level.
We identified increased absences and chronic absence.
We found increased on time suppression for the next grade and increased criminal activity
amongst juveniles in the areas around the school.
on the new first night of the weekend, so it's Friday was the fifth day that you can add off.
There is an increased time on Thursday night. Why did you create an app? There are two competing
hypotheses for this. One is that they're real. It's a real difference because missing one day
on a four-day school is missing 25% of a week. You're missing twenty-five or a quarter of your
instruction. Whereas on five weeks' school, you're only missing 20% or six of you instruction
And so that can add up both of the time.
It could also be a measurement issue.
It may be an artifact of schools not counting
extreme school activities, like a football game,
as app users in five days per week.
The students may the attending school the same amount,
and it's not just showing up in the data
based on the way it was selected.
Mr. Grant, I do have a question,
is one of dynamics of my own.
academic journey is that my senior year of school, I participated in work study on the fifth day of
the week. And so I'm curious about this increased criminal activity component.
I am assuming that the research did not necessarily capture or maybe didn't necessarily have the
information, but I hope it does. Were those students simply not attending school on
responsibilities that still were managed by an adult or observed by adult, or that they had to check in to or participate in?
Yes, thank you, Senator Tobin. This is a great question.
The study that we're referring to there did not unfortunately account for what the students were doing on the fifth day.
So we don't have direct evidence from that study.
We do from the general literature and from interviewing experts.
in the area that they're doing the primary research on this topic, do you believe that
these types of consequences can be mitigated by exactly the type of experience that you're
talking about? Is by offering things on that fifth day for the students, and so that will
involve thinking across what opportunities are available for them at the home, what
right if the school is not so dependent on the cost savings from the fifth day,
knowing that they are on average about one hundred percent, they might be able to reinvest those
back into things being offered on school like remedial classes for important educational
topics for clubs for sports. And then what is on offer in the community, and particularly at
the high school level, there is talk about things like work study or employment opportunities in
One thing that's really important to consider in deciding whether to
enable schools and district communities for the four-day school week is
essentially what's on offer on that this day. And the more that you're able to
have things on offers, developmentally tailored and appropriate,
right, it's important you get a kindergarten level,
you need more schools within high school that can mitigate some of these
And Mr. Grant, I do apologize.
I didn't ask this question on the previous slide,
but it might have been more appropriate there.
Did any of the research talk about food security?
We have many schools in Alaska that are Title I schools
and provide free or reduced lunch and breakfast.
And was there any information gleaned
from researchers about reduction of a school week to four days
and how that might impact students' ability to get food?
Great question. It is a concern that is generally noted. I'm not aware of any
research that it's directly looking at or excavating the impact of the Florida
schools on food security. The discussion of literature on the topic,
particularly after the sort of lockdowns, as we urge school to try and continue any
sort a flexible food provision arrangement that they had in place during
invest any cost savings on my path to think about not just academic opportunities on that
this day, but health and social opportunities like Division of Food, particularly for students
who are very reliant on the food environment to get healthy in those every day.
And Mr. Grant, we have a question from Senator Keel.
Thanks, Madam Chair. Mr Grant. Your your concept of how one invests potential savings
a thought, districts in Alaska that are looking at this by and large aren't looking
at it out of hope for increased achievement or just generalized cost savings, they're
desperately trying not to raise their class sizes or close schools.
of how the magnitude of these educational attainment problems
compare to the educational attainement drop from, say,
an extra raising the pupil teacher ratio by three kids or five kids.
Thank you. That's an excellent question. I don't have that kind of translation off the top of my head that's something that we certainly can you directly after this and get to you my understanding from the literature is like in the call is that the effect sizes.
So that is something to consider that perhaps if it's a trade off the team, one less school day at least, and having a larger class size, that the tradeoff might be worth it.
It is worth noting that we don't know within the studies that are looking at the authority police, whether they in fact were in that same context.
But I think that that's an important thing to consider and we're happy to provide you
there to be effectively how big of an impact there is on academic achievement in research
specifically looking at changes in the class size to make sure that it's specific to the
needs and the impact of the policy.
Food for thought.
Thank you.
Thank thank you, Mr. Grant.
If you could follow up with our office and will get any additional follow-up and information
disseminated to members.
Thank you. And we do appreciate it. The last question that I have pertaining to
rural high schools and high school students. I see here that you have increased
graduation rates, but I do not see a correlating or another line that talks
about any change in career readiness or college bound students is any of the
research.
address students completion of their SAT or SAT, their admittance into university or colleges,
their participation in ASFAB or any career in technical education opportunities.
Do you see any change or additional information about that?
Senator Tobin, thank you. Excellent question.
We don't know of any research that has looked into that.
We're so clearly confident that we've identified all of it.
So I'm not sure that there's a single study that is what triggers
to get the impact of the four days,
four weeks on how it's readyness,
how its descendants, including standardized test scores,
career readiness, technical skills.
They focus fairly consistently on academic achievement
on standardized tests scores on attendance.
on chronic health and disease and progression for the next grade and graduation for school.
Beyond that, yes, and the other.
Thank you. Seeing no additional questions, if you could please continue.
Yes, great. The floor on the slide just says,
fee consideration. You'll see that you are all looped and
it predicts what we are going to say on next slide. So our main takeaway from all of the
studies that have looked at the impact of the four-day school,
we don't think now I'm going to credit and understand why we're seeing negative
effects when we do and positive effects on medium on different outcomes.
There are two main considerations that we think are within the control of state districts
and schools to look into.
The first is learning time.
So we like to say a lot of learning times with a loss of learnings.
There's clearly strong evidence that shows that schools and districts
trying to achieve just the minimum requirement
of still time of the year, see the worst outcome,
and the schools and districts that are able to maintain
the same or similar amount of instructional time
that they did on the five days.
So we tend to see little to no,
negative outcomes in the chain.
So maintaining that same amount
of learning time to clear the potential
to protecting academic achievement
and other academic outcomes.
So how does that schedule switch impact
over our instructional times?
How much longer are you extending the school day or you're spending the full year to make sure
that we're doing the same number of hours or not the student thing in the target?
Then within that, we've also seen some evidence that the amount of time of the 40th school week
matters. So there's some estimates to suggest that immediate negative impact on academic achievement
scores holds steady. It's not increasing some pounds over time among schools that stand the
where a school that transitions back to the five days a week after a few years
tend to go back for their baseline levels of achievement.
So amount of time without maintaining the same learning time
really compounds they figured out. And then secondly, a lot of what we've
been discussing about maintaining activities that foster healthy youth
development on the fifth day is crucial for minimizing other negative impacts.
what's available in the community, what is available at home for students on that fifth day.
And they're not left with their own devices. They're thinking
holistically across homes, school, and community environments.
And we're speaking about various activities that are
developmentally tailored to various ages from the state to 12.
Next slide.
We just wanted to highlight that our poll report.
Thank you, madam chair
Mr. Grant one thing I've noticed about schools across our state as well as schools cross the country is that the amount of time
per day that a student would spend at school from
the first bell
To the last bell very significantly
Some schools in Alaska here might have just over
six hours of their school day, while others would have close to seven and a half hours
a lapse between the first bell and the second bell in a five-day school week.
Have any of your studies or literature review contemplated the change and difference in
that amount of time from a 5-Day schoolweek to a four- day considering those differences
Thank you, Senator.
This is the chair.
Another excellent question.
I'm not aware of any study that I've sort of directly answered that, but based off the
studies that have looked at the importance of instructional hours on academic achievement
generally, and then on these switches to the four-day series specifically, I feel fairly
More instructional time to begin with, whether they're five-day foods or four-days, four weeks, are associated with better academic achievement outcomes.
And then schools that make the transition from the five days to the four days, two weeks and maintain the same number of instructional hours over the course of the academic year are the ones that don't seem to have the negative outcomes on academic achievements.
And this is why, first and foremost, folks who work on this topic in the Academic Area.
really emphasize the amount of instructional time being made
for schools that are better and better for those schools.
Very well, thank you. Thank you please for seeing.
We just wanted to flag that our report on student outcomes is really available
on our website. Please download and share. We'd love for your
thoughts on that. we also have a real-time interactive
When we update that regularly, we last updated that through all research published through 2025,
so that it was up to date, that's a month ago. So if there are any topics you want to do,
dive into deeper and geographical areas, school levels,
we have various filters you can use to try and see if they're a search that is correctly relevant
to you with context and to your problems interest.
And that was what we would use to follow up with any questions that we've had today that
we wanted to get back to you on my suggestions out to the class size.
But feel free to sell for your staff to better the resources for you as well.
With that, the last slide just has our e-mail and we cannot thank you enough for
you to announce to us who's going to be opportunity to send our work and
hopefully help out all of our videos out there.
So happy to take any service what PG has today.
Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Grant. Any additional or final questions for Ms.
Day or Mr Grant? Seeing none, I do just want to note that there is a two-pager
available on basis again from the HEDCO Head Co-Institute that
provides some additional review of the systemic analysis they did of
the 12 highest quality studies on a four-day school week.
It is a very well laid out document that is easy to
synthesize and I encourage folks to go onto
basis aka ledge.gov and download this two-page summary.
You will also be able to download the full report
on the summary page. Seeing as there is no other business before the Senate Education Committee,
this concludes our agenda for today. I want to again thank Ms. Day, Mr. Grant, for joining us
and for sharing their their insights and the research. And I do know that...
folks will probably be reaching out if not only to follow up on some of the
questions but also to continue to explore some
of these dynamics around how do we best support students but
also continue keep our finger on the fiscal dynamics that are state
faces when it comes to funding public education.
The upcoming schedule for the Senate Education Committee is that on Wednesday,
we will hold the first bill hearing for Senate Bill 204, sponsored by Senator Mike Cronk.
This bill is in regards to substitute teaching and the qualifications for school board members.
I want to again thank everyone for joining us.
As there is no other business before the senate education committee, I will adjourn us here at 4.07 PM.