Passage 1
Passage 2
PASSAGE 1: Four Days or Five?
By Phillip Jones
State legislators often view the four-day school week as a technique for continuing to support education despite a strained budget. The basic concept is clear: by offering instruction four days a week, schools save money. Theoretically, savings can be derived from a reduction in transportation costs, the cost of heating or cooling buildings, food costs, and the cost of personnel salaries. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 21 states have school districts that operate on a four-day week.
Writing for the Times Free Press website during 2012, Tim Omarzu reported the financial success of a four-day school schedule experiment. With the principal objective of saving money, students in the experimental district would attend school about 160 days annually, rather than 180 days. In exchange, the students have longer school days. In one county, the shorter school week saved about $333,762 on salaries, $221,000 for transportation, $154,000 on power, and $88,000 for substitute teacher pay.
“Best thing in the world” was how Superintendent Jimmy Lenderman characterized the four-day week. “There’s a lot of positives that have come out of it we weren’t expecting,” Lenderman told Omarzu. The unexpected bonuses included improved test scores, reduced absenteeism from both teachers and students, and fewer student disciplinary problems.
Jazmine Anderson wrote about her experience with a four-day school week in her March 2016 article for the Odyssey website. Anderson went to school four days a week (Monday through Thursday) from first grade through 12th grade. One benefit of the schedule, she said, is that students do not have to miss class for sports and other extracurricular activities, which are characteristically scheduled for Fridays.
Anderson’s school day typically ran from 8:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., a schedule that she said was not very challenging. “In the four-day model, core classes (AKA the ones that require actual thinking) are set in the morning while students’ brains are still fresh,” she said. “Electives (the ones that don’t demand as much focus) are usually after lunch.”
However, the four-day schedule failed to prepare Anderson for the five-day schedule of college. “Only getting two days in during the weekend killed me,” she said, “and now, a semester and a half into my freshman year of college, I still haven’t completely adjusted.”
Proponents of the traditional five-day school week argue that the four-day schedule does not train students for college or the workforce. In addition, the shorter school week creates a dilemma for families with two working parents: leave the child unattended for a day or pay for supervision. Some people also argue that a three-day weekend gives a student more time to forget class lessons and fall behind.
What about the improved test scores with a four-day week? The results are unclear. Three studies of Colorado schools yielded different conclusions: one study showed some academic gains with the four-day week, one showed no difference between four-and five-day weeks, and one showed a possible gain for the five-day schedule.
3. Read this sentence from Passage 1.
However, the four-day schedule failed to prepare Anderson for the five-day schedule of college. “Only getting two days in during the weekend killed me,” she said, “and now, a semester and a half into my freshman year of college, I still haven’t completely adjusted.”
Based on this idea, which ONE of the paragraphs below from Passage 2 presents the strongest argument for the negative impact on students that occurs when switching to a four-day week?
A“In her June 2010 article for The Associated Press, Dorie Turner profiled a school district which switched to a four-day schedule while facing a one-million-dollar budget deficit. The modification saved about $400,000 per year and enabled the school district to avoid firing about 40 teachers. The four-day schedule reportedly creates other benefits: a rise in test scores, increased attendance of students and teachers, and a higher graduation rate. In addition, students can use the extra day for sports and other extracurricular activities without sacrificing class time.”
B“The obsolete purpose of the traditional school calendar with its extended summer vacation was to allow children to help harvest crops. Year-round schooling is another school schedule experiment. One popular year-round schedule has students attending school for 45 days followed by a three-week vacation. This cycle continues throughout the year with adjustments for important holidays.”
C“School districts across the United States are experimenting with different schedules. One experiment is the four-day school week: Students attend school four days a week with each day lasting around eight hours. Typically, the prime motivation for trying the schedule is to save money.”
D“The Macomb Public School District in Oklahoma also switched back to the five-day school week after students showed no improvement in performance. During a 2015 interview with Tulsa World reporters, Superintendent Matthew Riggs cited another reason to prefer the five-day schedule: About 76% of the students in the district live in households that qualify for free or reduced-rate school meals. “There were kids I firmly believe were leaving school on Thursday and weren’t getting a good meal until Monday morning when we served breakfast again,” Riggs told the reporters.”