Would Longer Weekends Keep Teachers in Rural Schools? Evidence from Minnesota's Four-Day School Week Program

Teacher turnover is an issue that has long been a concern for rural educators. In parallel, the four-day school week has being introduced in several states and, despite the fact that it was never intended as a solution for teacher retention, several think that four day school schedules could be helping rural districts retain teachers. The aim of this study is to address this question using policy variation from 11 school districts in Minnesota that implemented this policy at different points in time since the school year 2008-09. We use three different approaches (Generalized Difference-in-Difference, event studies and duration analysis) to determine whether the four-day school week has an effect on teacher retention. Our data observe teachers that have worked in all public school districts in Minnesota at any point between the school year 2001-02 and 2018-19. We find that the average effect of introducing the schedule on retention is small and imprecisely estimated. However, we find significant heterogeneous effects; teachers who start working under the new schedule are more likely to stay than their peers who started in other districts or those who started before the schedule change. On the other hand, incumbents who had been working on a traditional district when the switch happens are more likely to exit after the change. Overall we do not find evidence that the four day week has large effects on rural teacher retention, but due to heterogeneous preferences of workers, allowing some districts to use the option may provide opportunities for sorting that increase efficiency in the labor market.