While there is little research to determine the potential impact of this change, The Principals’ Partnership claims a four-day school week does not positively or negatively affect student achievement and offers the following pros and cons:

Pros:

• Student drop-out rates and disciplinary referrals decline
• Student and teacher attendance improves
• Longer classes with fewer transitions increase efficiency of instruction at all grade levels
• More time for extracurricular activities and personal business, such as doctor appointments
• School saves on utility bills, substitute teacher pay, buses, and building maintenance

Cons:

• Child care issues for working parents
• Concern about how younger students will hold-up during long school day

According to the Wall Street Journal’s, Schools’ New Math: The Four-Day Week, “Teachers who still work the same number of hours over four days, instead of five, generally don’t see a reduction in salary. But staff who can’t make up the lost time, such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers, are often hard-hit, losing as much as 20% of their pay.”

The parent trigger puts educational power into the hands of families. The law applies to schools in the third year or more of federal “program improvement” status, and makes the state eligible for as much as $700 million in federal funding under President Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative. If a majority of parents at an eligible school sign a petition, the district is required to make reforms.

Ellen Winn, Director of the Education Equity Project sums up the dire need for such reform:

“The grim reality is that the achievement gap in California is profound. In 2006, 42% of CA’s students scored proficient in English Language Arts, with startling sub-group break-downs: 27.4% proficient – Hispanic, 29% proficient – African American, 60.3% proficient – white, 64.3% proficient – Asian. The Education Trust West’s most recent analysis of the achievement gap in California found: “The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap exists across all subjects and remains largely unchanged over the past 7 years. For the huge numbers of low-income and minority students assigned to consistently failing schools, triggering any of these reforms will be the first possible step towards ensuring they receive a better education and all the increased opportunities we know accompany it.”

The report shows that more than half of California’s schools have yet to reach the state’s benchmark for english and math proficiency while forty-two percent are now at or above the overall statewide target API of 800, up six percentage points from the year before. This includes 48 percent of elementary schools, 36 percent of middle schools, and 21 percent of high schools.

The APR provides results for state’s the Academic Performance Index (API), a numeric index that measures year-to-year improvement and provides incentives to educators to support students at all performance levels; the federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which focuses solely on whether or not students are scoring at the proficient level or above on state assessments; and the federal Program Improvement (PI). Both the API and AYP are based upon results from the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program and from the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE).

Schools, school districts, and county offices of education that receive federal Title I funds and do not make AYP criteria for two consecutive years are subject to Program Improvement (PI). For the 2009-10 school year, 675 schools were newly identified for PI two and one-half times the number newly identified in 2008-09. Fifty-four schools exited from PI after making AYP for two consecutive years. Schools in PI must provide interventions, such as tutoring and other supplemental education services, to eligible students.