The Independence School District in Kansas City Missouri is the most recent district to adopt of four-day week. Their goal is to increase teacher recruitment and teacher retention.
[Fox 4 News Story]
Although many of these adoptions are due to the defunding of public education especially under republican dominated state legislatures - they have provided an opportunity to shift how we think about teaching.
Teaching in the US has become a very challenging profession. In my state of Missouri, attracting teachers to the profession has become difficult. Professionalizing teaching is a key factor for the sustainability of our profession and the students that we serve. If we are to ever get to true equity in education where most of America's children perform well, we need a new model. The current model is not serving children well. Considering the ongoing teacher shortage things are likely to get worse.
Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels
To professionalize teaching, I believe a number of key elements need to change. The school schedule must change to give teachers more control over their time and more flexibility to get more professional development. Furthermore teachers need more time to really support and help the students they serve. The intense teaching load that currently defines the American system is not the path for more universal success.
School scheduling is only one small part of the model but evolving towards a more student-centered system is a long-term goal. Professionalizing teaching in the US is a long-term approach. This will not happen overnight. It will take lots of effort and it will take creativity. But I would like to suggest that we draw on the Finnish model for inspiration and push this from a district and state level.
The Coleman Report from 1966 provided a number of indications as to how to improve our systems. Of the many recommendations, the professionalization of teaching figured prominently. An important aspect of teacher professionalization is more professional development and training. Due to the ongoing intensity of classroom teaching, and the high teaching load, many teachers are not able to get the ongoing professional development that they need.
Certain elements have spent the last 50 years attacking the brand of public education and the teaching profession. It will take creative approaches to re-brand teaching to make it appealing to children. In countries around the world teaching is a respectable profession. There is no shortage because many young people wish to join the profession in order to make a difference. An incentive approach like the four-day week may be symbolic but it communicates to teachers that they are valued and have a degree of control over their profession.
States in the US do have to comply with school attendance and learning time requirements. However in states like Colorado, Missouri and Texas the law does have openings that allow for these districts to have a four-day week. In Missouri for example, the four-day week districts do comply with the state requirements because the law provides for 1044 hours of instruction. The 28% of Missouri School districts (146 school districts) have adopted the four-day week. To date, more than 70,000 students in the state go to school on this schedule.
Here are some districts with a sizable population, the years and duration of adoption. These districts have published calendars. I am sure that they have solved the issues above in different ways but solved them, nonetheless.
- Forsyth R-III 1204 students (3 years)
- Ava R-I 1372 students
- Reeds Spring RIV 1769 students (1 year)
- Auroura RVIII 1770 students (3 years)
- Warren Co. RIII 3078 students (4 years)
- School of the Osage 2000 students (2 years)
People outside the teaching profession will join teaching if and when we professionalize teaching. This is what the Finnish model tells us. In the 1960's they reformed their system. They increased teacher pay, they also increased teacher training, and they improved the brand of teaching. Today they have one of the top 10 school systems in the world.
The other aspect of professionalization is teacher pay. Although US teacher pay is low, it is not very far away from the Northern European model. Moreover as much as this is important incentives and professional conditions are as important as teacher pay. Missouri has recently voted to increase teacher base pay. The approx $38,000 base is low when compared to the national norm. It is however better than three of the six neighboring states. The Missouri Blue Ribbon commission on teaching rightly advocated for increasing teacher base salary. But even with that, the state has only approved a proposed base of around $38000 per year. That base is still lower than 3 of our 8 neighboring states: Illinois, Tennessee and Kansas; And is at par with Oklahoma and Iowa.
Regional Comparison of Teacher Salaries from the Missouri Blue Ribbon Report
However, there are a number of things that we have to do to professionalize teaching. The school level is one part, the college training level is another and the government/political aspect is another. Each area works in tandem with the others.
The engine of our teacher pipeline system is already seizing up. We are losing more teachers than we are gaining. And we are not building an effective pipeline.
The four-day week provides a platform that increases teacher well-being and student well-being. Yes, the research coming in says that this type of flexibility and autonomy for teachers (when done right) leads to greater retention. In fact, recent studies suggest that in some cases retired teachers return to four-day week districts.
The other important area is that districts need to support families in this mix by bringing in supplemental services. The most successful educational models try to foster high academic achievement for all learners. In order to do this, special services have to be provided to every student if that is what is required. We will discuss in this in another post.