We updated this piece on the four-day school week, originally published in June 2018, on July 15, 2023 to include new research and other information.

More than 2,100 public schools in 25 states have switched to a four-day school week, often in hopes of recruiting teachers, saving money and boosting student attendance, researchers estimate.

Small, rural schools facing significant teacher shortages have led the trend, usually choosing to take off Mondays or Fridays to give employees and students a three-day weekend every week. To make up for the lost day of instruction, school officials typically tack time onto the remaining four days.

In some places where schools made the change, school district leaders have marveled at the resulting spikes in job applications from teachers and other job seekers. Teacher shortages, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, have plagued public schools nationwide for decades.

“The number of teacher applications that we’ve received have gone up more than 4-fold,” Dale Herl, superintendent of the Independence, Missouri school district, told CBS News late last year.

The impact on students, however, has not been as positive. Although peer-reviewed research on the topic is limited, focusing only on a single state or small group of states, there is evidence that some groups of students learn less on a four-day schedule than on a five-day schedule.

A new analysis of student performance in six states — Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming — finds that students who went to class four days a week, as a whole, made less progress in reading during the academic year than students who went five days a week. Kids on a four-day schedule earned lower reading scores on a spring assessment known as the Measures of Academic Progress Growth, on average.

However, the authors of the paper, published last month, also found that the condensed schedule had little to no effect on the rural students they studied, on average. Schools located in towns and suburbs, on the other hand, saw student performance drop considerably after adopting a four-day week.

The authors also discovered differences among student groups. For example, Hispanic students going to class four days a week made less progress in math during the school year than white students on the same schedule. White students made less progress in math than Native American students during the 11-year study.

“For policymakers and practitioners, this study addresses previous ambiguity about the effects of four-day school weeks on academic outcomes and provides evidence supporting concerns about four-day school week effects on student achievement and growth, particularly for those implemented in non-rural areas,” write the authors, Emily Morton, Paul Thompson and Megan Kuhfeld.

In the spring before the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 662 public school districts used the schedule — up more than 600% since 1999, Thompson and Morton write in a 2021 essay for the Brookings Institution. That number climbed to 876 during the 2022-23 academic year, they told The Journalist’s Resource in email messages.

In addition to studying the schedule’s effect on student achievement, researchers are also investigating its impact on other aspects of school operations, including education spending, student discipline and employee morale. To make the research easier to find, the University of Oregon’s HEDCO Institute for Evidence-Based Educational Practice has created the Four-Day School Week Research Database.

Anyone can use the interactive platform to sift through research completed as of May 2023. It’s worth noting that most research in the database is not peer-reviewed journal articles. Seventy of the more than 100 papers are student dissertations, theses and other papers.

If you keep reading, you’ll find that we have gathered and summarized several relevant journal articles below. To date, the scholarly literature indicates:

• Some schools cut instructional time when they adopt a four-day schedule.
• The impact of a four-day school week differs depending on a range of factors, including the number of hours per week a school operates, how the school structures its daily schedule and the race and ethnicity of students.
• The condensed schedule does not save much money, considering employee salaries and benefits make up the bulk of school expenses. In a 2021 analysis, Thompson estimates schools save 1% to 2% by shortening the school week by one day.
• Staff morale improves under a four-day school week.
• Fighting and bullying decline at high schools.

Both Thompson and Morton urged journalists to explain that the amount of time schools dedicate to student learning during four-day weeks makes a big difference.

“It’s pretty critical to the story that districts with longer days (who are possibly delivering equal or more instructional time to their students than they were on a five-day week) are not seeing the same negative impacts that districts with shorter days are seeing,” Morton, a researcher at the American Institutes of Research, wrote to JR in late 2023.

In a follow-up conversation with JR in July 2024, Morton pointed out that parents like the four-day schedule despite concerns raised by education scholars. In interviews with researchers, she wrote, “parents mention that they appreciate the additional family time and perceive other benefits of the schedule for their children, and they overwhelmingly indicate that they would choose to keep a four-day schedule over switching back to a five-day schedule.”

Morton would not recommend schools adopt a four-day schedule if their main aim is saving money, boosting student attendance or recruiting and retaining teachers. Research findings “do not provide much support for the argument that four-day school weeks are delivering the intended benefits,” she wrote to JR.

Keep reading to learn more. We’ll update this collection of research periodically.

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A Multi-State, Student-Level Analysis of the Effects of the Four-Day School Week On Student Achievement and Growth
Emily Morton, Paul N. Thompson and Megan Kuhfeld. Economics of Education Review, June 2024.

Summary: This study looks at how switching to a four-day school week affects student achievement over the course of the school year in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. A key takeaway: On average, across those six states, students on a four-day schedule learned less during the school year than students who went to class five days a week. However, students in rural areas fared better on that schedule than students in “non-rural” areas.

Researchers studied the scores that students in grades 3-8 earned on an assessment called the Measures of Academic Progress Growth, administered each fall and spring to gauge how much kids learned over the course of the school year. The analysis uses 11 years of test score data in reading and math, collected from the 2008-09 to the 2018-19 academic year.

Researchers found that students who went to school four days a week, as a whole, made smaller gains in reading during the academic year than students who went five days a week. They also earned lower scores in reading on the spring assessment, on average.

When researchers looked at the data more closely, however, they found differences between students attending rural schools and students attending schools located in towns and suburbs — communities the researchers dubbed “non-rural.”

Although adopting a four-day schedule had little to no impact on kids at rural schools, student performance fell considerably at schools in non-rural areas. Those children, as a whole, made less progress in reading and math during the academic year than children attending non-rural schools that operated five days a week. They also earned lower scores in both reading and math on the spring exam.

“The estimated effects on math and reading achievement in non-rural four-day week schools are ‘medium’ and meaningful,” the researchers write, adding that the difference is roughly equivalent to a quarter of a school year worth of learning in the fifth grade.

Researchers also discovered that student performance at schools with four-day schedules varied by gender and race. At schools using a four-day-a-week schedule, girls made smaller gains in reading and math than boys, on average. Hispanic students made less progress in math than white students, who made less progress in math than Native American students.

“The estimated effects on math and reading gains during the school year are not ‘large’ by the developing standards used to interpret effect sizes of education interventions, but they are also not trivial,” the researchers write. “For the many districts and communities who have become very fond of the schedule, the evidence presented in this study suggests that how the four-day school week is implemented may be an important factor in its effects on students.”

Impacts of the Four-Day School Week on Early Elementary Achievement
Paul N. Thompson; et al. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2nd Quarter 2023.

Summary: This study is the first to examine the four-day school week’s impact on elementary schools’ youngest students. Researchers looked at how children in Oregon who went to school four days a week in kindergarten later performed in math and English Language Arts when they reached the third grade. What they found: Overall, there were “minimal and non-significant differences” in the test scores of third-graders who attended kindergarten on a four-day schedule between 2014 and 2016 and third-graders who went to kindergarten on a five-day schedule during the same period.

When the researchers studied individual groups of students, though, they noticed small differences. For example, when they looked only at children who had scored highest on their pre-kindergarten assessments of letter sounds, letter names and early math skills, they learned that kids who went to kindergarten four days a week scored a little lower on third-grade tests than those who had gone to kindergarten five days a week.

The researchers write that they find no statistically significant evidence of detrimental four-day school week achievement impacts, and even some positive impacts” for minority students, lower-income students,  special education students, students enrolled in English as a Second Language programs and students who scored in the lower half on pre-kindergarten assessments.

There are multiple reasons why lower-achieving students might be less affected by school schedules than high achievers, the researchers point out. For example, higher-achieving students “may miss out on specialized instruction — such as gifted and enrichment activities — that they would have had time to receive under a five-day school schedule,” they write.

Effects of 4-Day School Weeks on Older Adolescents: Examining Impacts of the Schedule on Academic Achievement, Attendance, and Behavior in High School
Emily Morton. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2022.

Summary: Oklahoma high schools saw less fighting and bullying among students after switching from a five-day-a-week schedule to a four-day schedule, this study finds. Fighting declined by 0.79 incidents per 100 students and bullying dropped by 0.65 incidents per 100 students.

The other types of student discipline problems examined, including weapons possession, vandalism and truancy, did not change, according to the analysis, based on a variety of student and school data collected through 2019 from the Oklahoma State Department of Education and National Center for Education Statistics.

“Results indicate that 4-day school weeks decrease per-pupil bullying incidents by approximately 39% and per-pupil fighting incidents by approximately 31%,” writes the author, Emily Morton, a research scientist at NWEA, a nonprofit research organization formerly known as the Northwest Evaluation Association.

Morton did not investigate what caused the reduction in bullying and fighting. She did find that moving to a four-day schedule had “no detectable effect” on high school attendance or student scores on the ACT college-entrance exam.

Only a Matter of Time? The Role of Time in School on Four-Day School Week Achievement Impacts
Paul N. Thompson and Jason Ward. Economics of Education Review, February 2022.

Summary: Student test scores in math and language arts dipped at some schools that adopted a four-day schedule but did not change at others, according to this analysis of school schedule switches in 12 states.

Researchers discovered “small reductions” in test scores for students in grades 3 through 8 at schools offering what the researchers call “low time in school.” These schools operate an average of 29.95 hours during the four-day week. The decline in test scores is described in terms of standard deviation, not units of measurement such as points or percentages.

At schools offering “middle time in school” — an average of 31.03 hours over four days — test scores among kids in grades 3 through 8 did not change, write the researchers, Paul N. Thompson, an associate professor of economics at Oregon State University, and Jason Ward, an associate economist at the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization.

Scores also did not change at schools providing “high time in school,” or 32.14 hours over a four-day school week, on average.

When describing this paper’s findings, it’s inaccurate to say researchers found that test scores dropped as a result of schools adopting a four-day schedule. It is correct to say test scores dropped, on average, across the schools the researchers studied. But it’s worth noting the relationship between test scores and the four-day school week differs according to the average number of hours those schools operate each week.

For this analysis, researchers examined school districts in states that allowed four-day school weeks during the 2008-2009 academic year through the 2017-2018 academic years. They chose to focus on the 12 states where four-day school weeks were most common. The data they used came from the Stanford Educational Data Archive and “a proprietary, longitudinal, national database” that tracked the use of four-day school weeks from 2009 to 2018.

The researchers write that their findings “suggest that four-day school weeks that operate with adequate levels of time in school have no clear negative effect on achievement and, instead, that it is operating four-day school weeks in a low-time-in-school environment that should be cautioned against.”

Three Midwest Rural School Districts’ First Year Transition to the Four Day School Week
Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe-Zarain. The Rural Educator, 2019.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of parents who live in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data from 584 parents in three rural Missouri school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis identifies significant differences in the perceptions of parents classified by the age of children, special education identification, and free and reduced lunch status. Strong parental support for the four-day school week was identified in all demographic areas investigated; however, families with only elementary aged children and families with students receiving special education services were less supportive than other groups.”

Juvenile Crime and the Four-Day School Week
Stefanie Fischer and Daniel Argyle. Economics of Education Review, 2018.

Abstract: “We leverage the adoption of a four-day school week across schools within the jurisdiction of rural law enforcement agencies in Colorado to examine the causal link between school attendance and youth crime. Those affected by the policy attend school for the same number of hours each week as students on a typical five-day week; however, treated students do not attend school on Friday. This policy allows us to learn about two aspects of the school-crime relationship that have previously been unstudied: one, the effects of a frequent and permanent schedule change on short-term crime, and two, the impact that school attendance has on youth crime in rural areas. Our difference-in-difference estimates show that following policy adoption, agencies containing students on a four-day week experience about a 20 percent increase in juvenile criminal offenses, where the strongest effect is observed for property crime.”

Staff Perspectives of the Four-Day School Week: A New Analysis of Compressed School Schedules
Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe–Zarian. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2018.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of staff that work in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data from 136 faculty and staff members in three rural Missouri school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis identifies strong support of the four-day school week model from both certified educational staff and classified support staff perspectives. All staff responded that the calendar change had improved staff morale, and certified staff responded that the four-day week had a positive impact on what is taught in classrooms and had increased academic quality. Qualitative analysis identifies staff suggestions for schools implementing the four-day school week including the importance of community outreach prior to implementation. No significant differences were identified between certified and classified staff perspectives. Strong staff support for the four-day school week was identified in all demographic areas investigated. Findings support conclusions made in research in business and government sectors that identify strong employee support of a compressed workweek across all work categories.”

The Economics of a Four-Day School Week: Community and Business Leaders’ Perspectives
Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe–Zarian. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2018.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools in the United States for decades and the number of schools moving to the four-day school week is growing. In many rural communities, the school district is the largest regional employer which provides a region with permanent, high paying jobs that support the local economy. This study collects data from 71 community and business leaders in three rural school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis is used to investigate the perceptions of community and business leaders related to the economic impact upon their businesses and the community and the impact the four-day school week has had upon perception of quality of the school district. Significant differences were identified between community/business leaders that currently have no children in school as compared to community/business leaders with children currently enrolled in four-day school week schools. Overall, community/business leaders were evenly divided concerning the economic impact on their businesses and the community. Community/business leaders’ perceptions of the impact the four-day school week was also evenly divided concerning the impact on the quality of the school district. Slightly more negative opinions were identified related to the economic impact on the profitability of their personal businesses which may impact considerations by school leaders. Overall, community/business leaders were evenly divided when asked if they would prefer their school district return to the traditional five-day week school calendar.”

Impact of a 4-Day School Week on Student Academic Performance, Food Insecurity, and Youth Crime
Report from the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s Office of Partner Engagement, 2017.

Summary: “A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) utilizes a variety of data sources and analytic methods to evaluate the consequences of proposed or implemented policy on health. A rapid (HIA) was chosen to research the impact of the four-day school week on youth. The shift to a four-day school week was a strategy employed by many school districts in Oklahoma to address an $878 million budget shortfall, subsequent budget cuts, and teacher shortages. The HIA aimed to assess the impact of the four-day school week on student academic performance, food insecurity, and juvenile crime … An extensive review of literature and stakeholder engagement on these topic areas was mostly inconclusive or did not reveal any clear-cut evidence to identify effects of the four-day school week on student outcomes — academic performance, food insecurity or juvenile crime. Moreover, there are many published articles about the pros and cons of the four-day school week, but a lack of comprehensive research is available on the practice.”

Does Shortening the School Week Impact Student Performance? Evidence from the Four-Day School Week
D. Mark Anderson and Mary Beth Walker. Education Finance and Policy, 2015.

Abstract: “School districts use a variety of policies to close budget gaps and stave off teacher layoffs and furloughs. More schools are implementing four-day school weeks to reduce overhead and transportation costs. The four-day week requires substantial schedule changes as schools must increase the length of their school day to meet minimum instructional hour requirements. Although some schools have indicated this policy eases financial pressures, it is unknown whether there is an impact on student outcomes. We use school-level data from Colorado to investigate the relationship between the four-day week and academic performance among elementary school students. Our results generally indicate a positive relationship between the four-day week and performance in reading and mathematics. These findings suggest there is little evidence that moving to a four-day week compromises student academic achievement. This research has policy relevance to the current U.S. education system, where many school districts must cut costs.”

Other resources

• The Education Commission of the States offers a 50-state comparison of public school students’ instructional time requirements. For example, students in Colorado are required to be in school for a minimum of 160 days each academic year while in Vermont, the minimum is 175 days and in North Carolina, it’s 185.
• The State of the American Teacher project offers insights into how teachers feel about their jobs and the education field as a whole. In early 2022, RAND Corp. surveyed a nationally representative sample of teachers, asking questions on topics such as job-related stress, school safety, COVID-19 mitigation policies and career plans. Survey results show that 56% of teachers who answered a question about their attitude toward their job “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “The stress and disappointments involved in teaching aren’t really worth it.” Meanwhile, 78% “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “I don’t seem to have as much enthusiasm now as I did when I began teaching.”
• Opinions about the four-day school week vary among school board members, district-level administrators, school principals and teachers. These organizations can provide insights: the Schools Superintendents Association, National School Boards Association, National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Looking for more research on public schools? Check out our other collections of research on student lunches, school uniforms, teacher salaries and teacher misconduct.

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As states and school districts consider closing public schools amid the coronavirus pandemic, educators are debating moving instruction from classrooms to families’ living rooms via the internet. But setting up online schools wouldn’t be easy and, according to research, moving from the actual classroom to a virtual classroom can hurt student performance.

As Education Week recently reported, “E-learning has been touted as a potential tool for minimizing disruption and keeping instruction flowing during an extended break — but significant gaps in access and resources mean not all schools are prepared to offer virtual classes, and not all students are equipped to learn online.”

Over the past 20 years, virtual schools have become a popular alternative to traditional, brick-and-mortar schools. School choice advocates promote them as a way for kids to complete lessons at their own pace in almost any location, a significant benefit for families in rural areas as well as students who need or want more flexible academic schedules.

Journalists and others, however, have raised questions about student performance and whether states are giving online schools adequate oversight. A 2016 investigative series published by The Mercury News found, among other things, that most California students attending a virtual high school managed by the for-profit company K12 Inc. do not earn a diploma.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of kids attend online schools. In 2017-18, 501 virtual schools served 297,712 students, according to a report released last year by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. The report also shows that, on average, 50.1% of virtual high school students graduate within four years, compared with 84% of high school students nationally.

As online schools have drawn more students, researchers have investigated their impact on instruction, student achievement and parent involvement. School district leaders who are weighing the possibility of closing campuses to prevent the spread of the coronavirus should read up on the potential pitfalls of online instruction for kids in kindergarten through twelfth grade, recommends June Ahn, an associate professor of learning sciences and research-practice partnerships at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Education.

“A growing number of studies show a negative impact on student achievement when K-12 students move to online formats compared to their usual in-school experience,” explains Ahn, who’s also co-editor of the academic journal Educational Researcher and associate editor of the Journal of Information and Learning Sciences. “I would pause before deciding to move to virtual schools as a first strategy.”

For schools that insist on pursuing online instruction, Ahn notes that putting educational content online fills but one need — access to content. The most important element of effective virtual learning, he says, is fostering interaction between teachers and students, between school support staff and families and among the students themselves.

He suggests district leaders think of creative ways that teachers can guide and support families using whatever technology is available them — for example, email, text messaging and phones. Lower-income families might not have access to computers, video conferencing and online learning platforms.

“Beyond merely ‘going online,’ thinking out of the box, in terms of how educators and staff can provide some level of personal interaction, support, and guidance to families, during this unique time, may yield some innovative ideas,” Ahn says.

As journalists examine the issue, they also would benefit from reading research on virtual schools and online education more broadly. Below, Journalist’s Resource has gathered multiple studies that look at the characteristics of virtual students, the reasons families choose virtual over traditional schooling and how children perform in online schools, including online charter schools.

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“Virtual Illusion: Comparing Student Achievement and Teacher and Classroom Characteristics in Online and Brick-and-Mortar Charter Schools”
Fitzpatrick, Brian R.; et al. Educational Researcher, March 2020.

Summary: In this study of virtual charter schools in Indiana, researchers “found that students who switched to virtual charter schools experienced large, negative effects on mathematics and English/language arts achievement that persisted over time and that these effects could not be explained by observed teacher or classroom characteristics.”

“Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2019”
Molnar, Alex; et al. Report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, 2019.

Summary: This 125-page, peer-reviewed report takes a broad look at the characteristics and performance of publicly funded online schools. Among the key findings:

• “The average student-teacher ratio in the nation’s public schools was 16 students per teacher. But virtual schools reported having 2.7 times as many students per teacher (44) compared to the national average.”
• “Of the 320 virtual schools with available school performance ratings, 67 (48.5%) were rated acceptable by their state education agencies.”
• Half — 50.1% — of high school students attending online schools graduated within four years, according to data collected in 2016-2017. The graduation rate was 48.5% at virtual schools managed by for-profit companies. Both fell below the national average of 84%.

“Online Learning, Offline Outcomes: Online Course Taking and High School Student Performance”
Hart, Cassandra M. D.; et al. AERA Open, 2019.

Summary: Researchers examine the academic outcomes of Florida high school students who attend brick-and-mortar high schools but take some of their courses online. A main takeaway: Students tend to receive higher grades in online courses. However, researchers could not determine whether that’s a result of better student performance or factors such as more lenient grading standards.

Researchers also find that student outcomes vary according to the reason students decided to take the course virtually. “Students taking courses for the first time tend to see less positive longer-term effects when taking courses virtually,” they write. “When compared with their same-school peers, virtual students are less likely to persist in school through the final term of  a projected Grade 12 year and are marginally less likely to take and pass the next same-subject course in the high school sequence. However, students retaking courses that they had previously failed see some benefits from online course taking, being more likely to pass the contemporaneous course, more likely to take and pass the follow-up course, and more likely to persist through 12th grade.”

“Student Enrollment Patterns and Achievement in Ohio’s Online Charter Schools”
Ahn, June; McEachin, Andrew. Educational Researcher, 2017. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X17692999.

Summary: This study examines the characteristics and performance of students who attend virtual charter schools in Ohio. The study suggests that in urban and suburban school districts, white students are more likely to enroll in online schools than minority students. It finds that virtual students may not be learning at the same rate as students in traditional public schools and charter schools. Also, even though “higher achieving students do better in e-schools than their lower achieving e-school peers, in most cases, they do not perform as well as they would have in traditional public schools.”

“Teacher Perceptions of Parent Engagement at a Cyber High School”
Borup, Jered. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 2016. DOI: 10.1080/15391523.2016.1146560.

Summary: This case study focuses on a cyber charter high school in Utah. Teachers are asked to describe the role parents play in monitoring and motivating their children in a virtual learning environment. Teachers “commonly found that parents lacked the knowledge and skills to provide students with the necessary instructional support. This was especially true in math and science courses.” In general, parents with homeschooling experience had difficulty giving up control of their children’s coursework to virtual teachers while parents whose children had only attended brick-and-mortar schools needed to become more involved.

“Virtual Schools: The Changing Landscape of K-12 Education in the U.S.”
Toppin, Ian; Toppin, Sheila M. Education and Information Technologies, 2016. DOI:10.1007/s10639-015-9402-8.

Summary: This paper looks at the challenges and benefits of online schools as a growing phenomenon in K-12 education. Among the benefits: Online schools cost less to operate than brick-and-mortar schools and students are able to do their work anywhere, any time. Some of the challenges: Inadequate government oversight, high student attrition and a lack of research about best practices.

“Students with Special Health Care Needs in K-12 Virtual Schools”
Fernandez, Heidi; Ferdig, Richard E.; Thompson, Lindsay A.; Schottke, Katherine; Black, Erik W. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 2016. www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.19.1.67.

Summary: This paper indicates a high number of virtual school students have special health care needs. The most common health issues include asthma, attention deficit disorder, depression and anxiety. The authors performed two separate analyses comparing student performance in virtual schools and traditional schools and got contrasting results.

“Why They Choose and How It Goes: Comparing Special Education and General Education Cyber Student Perceptions”
Beck, Dennis; Egalite, Anna; Maranto, Robert. Computers & Education, 2014. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.03.011.

Summary: This case study examines the reasons that special-education students and general-education students and their parents choose cyber charter schooling. The authors focus on a large cyber charter school that serves grades 7 to 12, with a large percentage of special-education students. Special-education students were more likely than general-education students to say they chose cyber schooling to avoid bullying and the commute to school. Parents of special-education students were more likely than parents of general-education students to say they chose online schooling because their children experienced behavior problems at their previous schools and their children’s special needs were not being met.

Other helpful resources:

• K12 Inc. is the country’s largest providers of online curriculum and online school programs. The company’s annual report shows its revenue exceeded $1 billion for the fiscal year that ended in June 2019.
• Connections Academy, another big virtual education provider, runs online schools in most states.
• Florida Virtual School (FVS), launched in 1997, is the nation’s largest and oldest state-funded online school. FVS saved Florida taxpayers more than $2,700 per student in public education costs in 2017-18, according to its 2017-18 Legislative Report. Florida high school students are required to take at least one online course to receive a standard 24-credit diploma.
• EducationNext, a magazine published by the Education Next Institute and Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard Kennedy School, has featured several opinion pieces from scholars on virtual schools. This 2013 piece, written by a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, criticizes earlier findings of the National Education Policy Center.

This article, originally posted in 2017, has been updated with new research, reports and other information.

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In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, the Journalist’s Resource team is combing through the Democratic presidential candidates’ platforms and reporting what the research says about their policy proposals. We want to encourage deep coverage of these proposals — and do our part to help deter horse race journalism, which research suggests can lead to inaccurate reporting and an uninformed electorate. We’re focusing on proposals that have a reasonable chance of becoming policy, and for us that means at least 3 of the 5 top-polling candidates say they intend to tackle the issue. Here we look at what the research says about the benefits and limitations of increasing public school teacher pay.

Candidates favoring higher teacher pay

Michael Bennet*, Joe Biden, Cory Booker*, Pete Buttigieg*, Amy Klobuchar*, Bernie Sanders*, Elizabeth Warren*, Andrew Yang*

What the research says

While bigger paychecks don’t guarantee greater job satisfaction, academic studies indicate that when teacher earnings rise, public school districts and students can benefit in a range of ways. The impact seems to vary, however, according to the structure and implementation of school districts’ pay systems.

Research conducted in recent years in various parts of the country and world has helped clarify the role of teacher pay. Many of these studies have found that increased pay — whether through salary hikes, one-time bonuses, college debt-forgiveness programs or other new forms of compensation — is associated with:

• Improved teacher retention.
• Gains in student performance.
• A larger percentage of high-achieving college students taking courses in education.
• An increased likelihood of hiring teachers who earned top scores on their educator certification exams.

Key context

In 2018 and 2019, frustrated teachers in multiple states held walkouts and protests over the controversial issue of teacher pay. School districts generally pay their teachers based on longevity and education level — a system that has long drawn criticism from those who say it’s unfair to pay top-performing teachers the same salary as mediocre teachers who’ve been in the field the same amount of time and have the same type of college degree.

Attempts to differentiate pay with performance-based incentives, however, have met strong opposition from teacher union leaders, who often argue that there’s no definition of a “good” teacher and that it’s unfair to pay teachers based on student achievement because many factors outside the classroom influence learning, including children’s health and home environments. In 2019, Denver teachers were on the brink of striking for the first time in 25 years to fight the district’s performance-pay program, which offers teachers additional money for meeting goals such as completing a training course and demonstrating students have made gains in learning core academic subjects.

As policymakers and elected officials have debated the best way to compensate educators, who often use their own money to buy things they need for the classroom, average teaching salaries have fallen. When adjusted for inflation, full-time, public school teachers earned an average of $58,950 annually during the 2016-17 academic year, the most recent year for which data was available from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That’s down from a national average of $61,804 in 2009-10 and $59,426 in 2015-16.

Average earnings for full-time teachers vary considerably from state to state, and even within states. Salaries are lowest in Mississippi, where educators made $42,925 in 2016-17, on average. New York paid the highest average salary — $79,637, NCES data show.

But comparing salaries by state doesn’t allow for an accurate comparison of how well teachers’ take-home pay covers their basic living expenses. Cost of living also can differ drastically from place to place. In some parts of the United States, experienced teachers are able to live within their means while in other areas, they work side jobs or commute long distances to make ends meet, a USA TODAY analysis in June 2019 determined. There are few metro areas where an entry-level teacher can afford the median rent, the news outlet reported.

Starting salaries fell below $40,000 in about 70% of the states during the 2017-18 academic year, according to the National Education Association, one of the largest teacher unions. The national average for first-year teachers: $39,249.

When comparing teacher pay across states, a team of researchers at Oklahoma State University found that differences narrowed once they adjusted salaries to take into account such things as cost of living, tax rates and teachers’ personal characteristics, including age, race and marital status. To better understand teacher pay and put it into context, it’s important to compare it against the earnings of other college-educated professionals in the same state, the researchers explain in a paper published recently in the Public Finance Review.

“The most meaningful comparison is that between the federal tax-adjusted pay of public school teachers and college-educated nonteachers,” they write, adding that state officials should monitor differences between these two employee groups over time.

Over the past year and a half, several national polls have found that a majority of the public thinks teachers are not paid what they’re worth. Nearly 60% of Americans who participated in a USA TODAY/Ipsos poll in August 2018 said teachers are not compensated fairly. An Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of NPR in April 2018 found that 1 in 4 Americans think teachers are paid fairly.

Meanwhile, a survey administered for Education Next magazine suggests Americans who have up-to-date information about how much their local teachers make are much less likely to support a higher salary.

In May 2019, a nationally representative sample of 3,046 adults answered a series of questions about education topics, including whether teacher salaries should increase, decrease or stay the same. When survey participants were informed of the average annual teacher salary in their state before they were asked whether teacher salaries should change, 56% said pay should rise. When adults were asked whether salaries should change, without being provided any salary information, 72% supported a raise, the survey found.

“The higher level of endorsement for boosting teacher salaries among the ‘uninformed’ respondents reflects the fact that most Americans believe that teachers are underpaid and earn far less than they actually do,” four researchers write in Education Next’s Winter 2020 edition. “When asked to estimate average teacher salaries in their state, respondents’ average guess came in at $41,987 — 30% less than the actual average of $59,581 among our sample of educators.”

Formative findings

Early studies of teacher pay attempted to gauge whether and how student achievement was impacted by teacher salaries and school spending more broadly. More than 30 years ago, researchers examined dozens of studies on the relationship between school expenditures and student performance but found conflicting results. They decided to analyze the data collected from 45 individual studies and synthesize the findings to determine whether the amount of money spent on education influences student test scores.

The resulting analysis, published in the Journal of Education Finance in 1986, indicates the relationship between student achievement and educational expenditures “is minimal, with the expenditures which relate directly to instruction, such as teacher salary and instructional supplies, having the most positive relationship to student achievement.”

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, released in 1999, examines teacher pay in Texas in the early and mid-1990s and concludes that the relationship between salaries and student test scores is complicated and nuanced. When scholars restricted their sample of students to those who do not switch schools, higher salaries seemed to be linked to improvements in children’s math and reading scores. The research team found the strongest effects of salary in a limited number of schools that had no teacher turnover and no teachers with two or fewer years of work experience.

The study also finds that teacher mobility, teachers moving from job to job, is more strongly impacted by the characteristics of the student body — for example, students’ academic ability and demographics — than by salaries.

In the paper, the authors call the results “perplexing,” but explain that, overall, their analysis suggests that “as currently employed, salary policies do not appear to offer much promise for improvement in student performance.”

A study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics in 2000 finds that boosting teacher wages reduces high school dropout rates. That paper focuses on national school data collected from 1969 to 1989. After adjusting for labor market factors, the researchers estimate that boosting teacher pay 10% lowers dropout rates by 3% to 4%.

The researchers note that they were able to detect changes in student achievement tied to teacher pay by analyzing changes over time. “The magnitude of the estimated effects is quite a bit larger for 1989 than for the earlier years,” they write. “Most previous studies of teacher wage effects have used data from the 1970s and early 1980s, however, and our results for those years are consistent with the failure of earlier research to find robust evidence that teacher wages matter.”

Recent research

While earlier studies provide mixed results, those conducted in more recent years help clarify the role teacher compensation plays on public school campuses.

A 2010 working paper from the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, a joint effort of the American Institutes for Research and scholars at multiple universities, sheds light on how schools can leverage higher salaries to attract teachers with the strongest qualifications. The study examines data from North Carolina public schools between 1995 and 2004 and finds that offering better pay improves a school’s chance of hiring teachers who earned high scores on their teacher certification exams.

A paper published in 2012 in the Economics of Education Review also suggests higher teacher pay draws stronger job candidates. The researcher looked at the test scores of individuals entering teacher education courses in Australia over a span of 15 years. He matched scores from college-entrance exams with data on teacher salaries to gauge how changes in pay affect the quality of students entering the education field.

The study finds that college students with higher test scores take teacher education courses when average teacher pay increases. “The relationship between average pay and teacher aptitude is positive and significant: a 1 percent rise in teacher pay (relative to other occupations requiring a college degree) is associated with approximately a 0.6 point rise in the average percentile rank of potential teachers,” the author writes.

Also in 2012, a case study of teacher pay raises and teacher retention in San Francisco from 2002-03 through 2010-11 was released. The study finds that public school teachers were more likely to remain in their jobs after their salaries rose. However, the author also concluded that the change was most likely the result of an economic downturn that occurred at the same time.

A researcher who looked at teacher pay and retention in Texas around the same time found different results. That paper, published in the Journal of Public Economics in 2014, analyzes teacher and student data for a whole state over a longer period — 1996 to 2012. A key takeaway: An increase in base teacher pay reduces teacher turnover, a “pay effect [that] is largest for less experienced teachers, decreases with experience, and disappears once a teacher reaches about 19 years of experience,” the author writes.

A larger study involving dozens of countries, including the U.S., attempted to more clearly demonstrate the connection between teacher ability and student achievement and between teacher ability and salary. The study, which appeared in the Fall 2019 edition of the Journal of Human Resources, relies on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an association of countries that assess reading and math ability among both adults and youth.

The researchers collected data from the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to quantify differences in teacher skills in numeracy and literacy across 31 countries. They used that information along with student scores on the math and reading sections of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to estimate the relationship between teacher cognitive skills and student achievement.

The authors explain that teacher cognitive skills and student achievement levels differ substantially across countries. But their analyses show that student test scores are higher in countries where teachers have more advanced skills.

The authors note that country-by-country differences in student PISA scores could be narrowed if countries with lower student scores had a larger share of high-skill teachers. “Our results suggest that the dispersion in average PISA scores across our 31 country sample would be reduced by roughly one-quarter if each country brought its average teacher skills up to the average in Finland, the country with the highest measured skills of teachers,” they write.

When the researchers investigated the reasons some countries have a larger share of teachers with strong math and reading skills, they found that teacher pay is a primary factor. “We find that cross-country differences in women’s access to high-skill occupations and in wage premiums paid to teachers (given their gender, work experience, and cognitive skills) are directly related to teacher cognitive skills in a country,” they write. “The estimated wage differentials for teachers are directly correlated with student outcomes across our sample countries.”

Offering teachers bonuses and other financial incentives also is associated with improved student outcomes, studies show. A 2017 review of the existing research on teacher merit pay programs finds that when teachers have participated in these programs, their students saw modest gains in test scores. That report, from scholars at the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, provides a systematic analysis of 44 studies published or released between 1989 and 2016 on the impact of giving teachers additional pay for achieving certain goals.

In the studies reviewed, some of which were conducted outside the U.S., merit pay came in the form of one-time bonuses, gifts and permanent salary increases ranging from $26 to $20,000.

“In substantive terms, the effect is roughly equivalent to 4.5 additional weeks of learning,” write the authors, who also note that effects differ according to a program’s design and implementation. “Our evidence, for example, suggests that group incentives result in larger positive effects on average than incentives given to individuals.”

In late 2018, the Economics of Education Review published a study that failed to find a link between student achievement and a financial bonus offered to Washington teachers who had earned certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and agreed to work in high-poverty schools.

In Washington, all teachers with National Board certification — an honor reserved for the most accomplished educators — receive a financial bonus. At the time of this study, they also got another $5,000 a year if they took positions at schools with a high percentage of students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

The additional $5,000 helped boost teacher quality at these campuses. When the bonus was implemented in 2007, 2% of teachers working in high-poverty schools were National Board certified. By 2013, 11.3% were.

While the researchers’ analysis shows that the bonus was associated with a slight rise in student math scores and a slight dip in reading scores per year, those results were not statistically significant.

Another study published in late 2018 investigates whether short-term bonuses and college loan forgiveness programs encouraged Florida teachers to take and remain in jobs that school administrators had difficulty filling. Among the study’s key takeaways: Both seem to curb teacher attrition in difficult-to-staff areas such as special education and high school science. However, direct payments appear to be more cost effective that loan subsidies, the authors note in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

“We find that relatively modest payments of $500 to $1,000 per year can reduce attrition in some high-need subjects, although in some subjects, such as special education, only payments on the order of $2,500 per year appear effective,” they explain. “A one-time bonus of $1,200 reduced teacher attrition more than loan repayments of comparable magnitude.”

A working paper the National Bureau of Economic Research released in 2019 offers new evidence that school districts will raise salaries for their most effective teachers when they no longer need to negotiate with local teacher unions — and those teachers, in turn, will increase their efforts in the classroom. For this study, the researcher determined teachers’ effectiveness based on changes in their students’ test scores.

The paper focuses on how school districts in Wisconsin responded after a landmark state law known as Act 10 took effect in 2011, limiting the influence of teacher unions and allowing districts to make major changes to their pay schedules. The author studied districts through 2015, after many had adopted “flexible pay” schedules, which allowed them to pay teachers based on their performance, and abandoned “seniority pay” schedules, which have been favored by teacher unions and compensate teachers based mostly on their years of experience.

The author learned that in a subset of Wisconsin districts, high-quality teachers left districts that maintained seniority pay to work in districts that began to use a flexible pay system. Lower-quality teachers, on the other hand, either moved to districts that kept the old salary structure or left public schools altogether. “As a result, the composition of the teaching workforce improved in FP [flexible pay] districts compared with SP [seniority pay] districts,” she writes.

In addition, the author found a moderate increase in student test scores in districts that implemented flexible pay systems — an indication, she writes, that teachers began to put forth more effort.

Further reading

A Meta-Analysis of Research on the Relationship Between Educational Expenditures and Student Achievement
T. Stephen Childs and Charol Shakeshaft. Journal of Education Finance, 1986.

The gist: The relationship between student achievement and educational expenditures “is minimal, with the expenditures which relate directly to instruction, such as teacher salary and instructional supplies, having the most positive relationship to student achievement.”

Do Higher Salaries Buy Better Teachers?
Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain and Steven G. Rivkin. Working paper from the National Bureau for Economic Research, 1999.

The gist: “In analyses both of teacher mobility and of student performance, teacher salaries are shown to have a modest impact. Teacher mobility is more affected by characteristics of the students (income, race, and achievement) than by salary schedules.”

Examining the Link between Teacher Wages and Student Outcomes: The Importance of Alternative Labor Market Opportunities and Non-Pecuniary Variation
Susanna Loeb and Marianne E. Page. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2000.

The gist: “Once we adjust for labor market factors, we estimate that raising teacher wages by 10% reduces high school dropout rates by 3% to 4%.”

Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field
Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor. Report from the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, 2010.

The gist: “Teachers with stronger qualifications are both more responsive to the racial and socioeconomic mix of a school’s students and less responsive to salary than are their less well qualified counterparts when making decisions about remaining in their current school, moving to another school or district, or leaving the teaching profession.”

Teacher Pay and Teacher Aptitude
Andrew Leigh. Economics of Education Review, 2012.

The gist: “A 1 percent rise in the salary of a starting teacher boosts the average aptitude of students entering teacher education courses by 0.6 percentile ranks, with the effect being strongest for those at the median.”

Salary Incentives and Teacher Quality: The Effect of a District-Level Salary Increase on Teacher Retention
Heather J. Hough. Case study, 2012.

The gist: “Studying a policy in the San Francisco Unified School District, the author investigates whether teacher retention increased for those teachers targeted by salary increases. The author shows that teacher retention did increase in the time period, but that increases are most likely due to the economic downturn that occurred simultaneously.”

Does It Pay to Pay Teachers More? Evidence from Texas
Matthew D. Hendricks. Journal of Public Economics, 2014.

The gist: “I show that paying teachers more improves student achievement through higher retention rates. The results also suggest that adopting a flat salary schedule may be a cheap way to improve student performance. I find no evidence that pay effects vary by the teacher’s gender or subject taught.”

Teacher Merit Pay and Student Test Scores: A Meta-Analysis
L.D. Pham, T.D. Nguyen and M.G. Springer. Report from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, 2017.

The gist: “Overall, we find a modest, statistically significant positive association … between teacher merit pay programs and student test scores. In substantive terms, the effect is roughly equivalent to 4.5 additional weeks of learning.”

Do Bonuses Affect Teacher Staffing and Student Achievement in High Poverty Schools? Evidence From an Incentive for National Board Certified Teachers in Washington State
James Cowan and Dan Goldhaber. Economics of Education Review, 2018.

The gist: “We study a teacher incentive policy in Washington State that awards a financial bonus to National Board certified teachers in high poverty schools … The policy increased the proportion of board certified teachers through improved hiring, increased certification rates, and reduced turnover.”

The Impact of Incentives to Recruit and Retain Teachers in “Hard‐to‐Staff” Subjects
Li Feng and Tim R. Sass. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2018.

The gist: “Our findings suggest that educational subsidies, particularly ex-post loan forgive-ness for early-career teachers, can be effective tools in promoting the retention of teachers in high-need areas.”

The Value of Smarter Teachers: International Evidence on Teacher Cognitive Skills and Student Performance
Eric A. Hanushek, Marc Piopiunik and Simon Wiederhold. The Journal of Human Resources, 2018.

The gist: “We find substantial differences in teacher cognitive skills across countries that are strongly related to student performance … Observed country variations in teacher cognitive skills are significantly related to differences in women’s access to high-skill occupations outside teaching and to salary premiums for teachers.”

Adjusting State Public School Teacher Salaries for Interstate Comparison
Dan S. Rickman, Hongbo Wang and John V. Winters. Public Finance Review, 2019.

The gist: “This is the first study to show and test that teacher salary comparisons across states should be based on a comparison of public school teacher salaries with nonteacher college graduates in the states, adjusted for differences in personal characteristics and effective federal tax rates.”

The Labor Market for Teachers Under Different Pay Schemes
Barbara Biasi. Working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019.

The gist: “A switch away from seniority pay toward flexible pay in a subset of Wisconsin districts, following the interruption of CB [collaborative bargaining] on teachers’ salary schedules mandated by Act 10 of 2011, resulted in high-quality teachers moving to FP [flexible pay] districts and low-quality teachers either moving to SP [seniority pay] districts or leaving the public school system altogether.”

Subject experts

Barbara Biasi, assistant professor of economics, Yale School of Management.

James Cowan, researcher, Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research.

Li Feng, Brandon Dee Roberts Excellence Assistant Professor of Economics, Texas State University.

Dan Goldhaber, director, Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and the Center for Education Data & Research at the University of Washington.

Eric Hanushek, Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Matthew D. Hendricks, associate professor of economics, University of Tulsa.

Marc Piopiunik, postdoctoral researcher, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

Dan Rickman, Regents Professor of Economics, Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

Tim R. Sass, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics, Georgia State University.

Matthew G. Springer, Robena and Walter E. Hussman Jr. Distinguished Professor of Education Reform, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Hongbo Wang, lecturer in economics, Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

Simon Wiederhold, professor of macroeconomics, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstad.

John V. Winters, associate professor of economics, Iowa State University.

*Dropped out of race since publication date.

Need more help covering teacher salary issues? Check out our tip sheet on covering teacher unions and our collection of research on how teacher unions affect school district spending and student achievement.

This image was obtained from the Flickr account of Alliance for Excellent Education and is being used under a Creative Commons license. No changes were made.

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Public school administrators are continually looking for ways to boost student achievement. In recent decades, some school districts have lengthened school days and others have experimented with school start and end times to try to improve student learning. In various parts of the country, high schools have begun implementing later start times, a response to complaints from parents and educators who say teenagers need more sleep and have trouble getting to class on time. In late 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics took a stance on the issue, recommending that middle schools and high schools start classes at 8:30 a.m. or later to “align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents.”

Academic scholars have studied the relationship between time of day and student learning to better understand the opportune time for teaching core subjects such as reading and math or administering high-stakes standardized tests. A growing body of research examines the issue from multiple angles. A 2016 study published in PNAS, for example, suggests that students aged 8 to 15 years are more likely to do better on standardized exams in the morning because, over the course of a school day, children may experience cognitive fatigue. Meanwhile, a 2011 study led by scholars at the University of California, Davis indicates that college freshmen’s grades tend to be lower when they study certain subjects — chemistry and computer science, for instance — very early in the morning.

A 2016 study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics sought to determine whether scheduling math and English courses at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day would result in higher grades and test scores for adolescents. For the study, “How the Time of Day Affects Productivity: Evidence from School Schedules,” Nolan G. Pope of the University of Chicago analyzed the grade-point averages and standardized test scores of nearly 2 million students enrolled in grades 6 through 11 in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He examined data collected between 2003 and 2009, including scores from the math and English sections of the annual California Standards Test (CST). For the middle school students and high school students in the study sample, the school day typically started around 8 a.m. and ended around 3:10 p.m.

The study’s key findings include:

• Students who had a math class during the first two periods of the school day earned higher scores on the CST math section than students who had math class during the last two periods of the day. The average math CST score of students who had math during periods 1 and 2 was 309.8. The average score of students who had math during periods 5 and 6 was 304.5. Students who had math class early in the day also had slightly higher grades in their math courses.
• Students who had English during first or second period had slightly higher grades in the subject than students who had English class late in the day. There was no significant difference in English CST scores.
• Advanced Placement (AP) courses — advanced-level courses that high school students can take for college credit — were almost three times more likely to be scheduled during the first or second period of the school day than during the last two periods of the day.

This study suggests that students tend to be more productive in the morning than they are in the afternoon, especially in math. While the author cannot say for certain why, he identifies three possible causes or contributing factors: changes in the quality of instruction over the course of the school day, changes in students’ learning ability during the school day and differences in student attendance at the start and end of the school day. The author states that “rearranging school schedules can lead to increased academic performance,” but notes there are constraints to how much school administrators can alter those schedules. One constraint is the supply of teachers at a given school who teach a particular subject.

Related research: A 2015 study published in Learning, Media and Technology, “Synchronizing Education to Adolescent Biology: ‘Let Teens Sleep, Start School Later,’” examines the consequences of an early school start time. A 2011 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, “A’s from Zzzz’s? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents,” looks at how starting the school day later influenced academic achievement among U.S. Air Force Academy students. A 2006 study in the Review of Educational Research, “An Analysis of Research on Block Scheduling,” offers a review of 58 empirical studies on high school block schedules, including their effect on student performance.

Keywords: education, high school, middle school, learning, adolescence, class schedule, school schedule, math, reading, academic achievement

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Americans’ political opinions have become increasingly polarized over the past 50 years, with voters’ views more often being determined by party ideology. One cause of that polarization is the public’s changing relationship with the media.  A fragmented media environment allows people to choose the news coverage that supports their views. Meanwhile, social media lets them view news stories chosen by like-minded friends and connections.

Though the Internet may be contributing to the problem, it also has given voters access to more information than ever before. The deluge of data may not, however, change voter preferences. A 2015 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science suggests that partisanship affects factual beliefs about politics. The study notes that people’s opinions about the condition of the economy sometimes depends more on the political party of the sitting president than on concrete economic data. Voters can seize on any factor in forming their opinions about an issue or person. For example, less-informed citizens tend put more weight on how attractive a political candidate looks on TV, according to a 2011 study by political scientists at MIT.

But if voters are personally presented with objective information on a subject, will it cause them to reevaluate their mistaken beliefs about that issue? A December 2015 study published in the Journal of Public Policy, “Public Information, Public Learning and Public Opinion: Democratic Accountability in Education Policy,” examines the reactions of residents who learned that their beliefs about the performance of their public education system were wrong. Researchers Joshua Clinton and Jason Grissom of Vanderbilt University surveyed 1,500 people in Tennessee to determine how presenting people with student testing data affects their evaluations of the state public school system as well as their evaluations of local school boards and education policy reforms. Survey participants were asked questions related to student achievement on Tennessee’s end-of-year math tests. They also were asked about gaps in achievement for black students and white students who took the tests.

The study’s findings include:

• Before being presented with data, survey participants generally knew little about Tennessee students’ math test performance. Only 20 percent of the Tennessee residents surveyed gave the correct answer when asked to identify the approximate percentage of students who scored at grade level or better on math exams. Only 8 percent were able to correctly identify the true amount of the achievement gap separating black students and white students.
• Tennesseans tended to overestimate student performance. More than half (54 percent) thought student performance was higher than it actually was.
• Many participants tended to overestimate that size of the achievement gap between black and white students. More than one-third of respondents (36 percent) thought the racial performance gap was larger than it actually was.
• Respondents who overestimated student testing achievement tended to assign high letter grades to Tennessee schools and the state Department of Education but not necessarily to their local school boards.
• After receiving testing data, residents’ opinions changed. The authors wrote that “the average effect of receiving the informational update containing the true student performance level is negative” with regard to opinions about Tennessee schools, the state Department of Education and local school boards.
• Tennesseans who thought there was no achievement difference between black students and white students and Tennesseans who estimated the performance gap to be larger than 35 percent gave the same letter grade to educational institutions.
• Receiving information about student test scores had no impact on the probability that residents would support any of the six policies designed to improve student performance with which the residents were presented.

The study suggests mixed implications. Survey participants were able to reevaluate their views about Tennessee schools, the state Department of Education and local school boards after receiving objective information about statewide student performance. This indicates that assessments were driven by student achievement rather than an ideological leaning. However, the fact that Tennesseans were not more supportive of education reforms after realizing student performance was lower than they had realized is “potentially sobering for the prospects of citizen-led policy change,” the authors state. Residents’ opinions about education policies, in this case, appear to be driven mostly by ideological and partisan affiliations. It also appears that opinions related to education policy might not be influenced by concerns about achievement gaps between students of different racial groups.

Related research: A 2013 study in the American Journal of Political Science, “Informing the Electorate? How Party Cues and Policy Information Affect Public Opinion about Initiatives,” examines the impact of political endorsements and policy information on voter decisions. A 2014 study in Political Psychology, “Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Public Opinion Formation,” considers the influence of political parties on the public’s political opinions. A 2012 study published in Political Psychology, “Who Deserves Help? Evolutionary Psychology, Social Emotions, and Public Opinion about Welfare,” looks at how culture and perceptions drive public opinions about public welfare programs.

Keywords: education, education reform, school boards, test scores, public opinion, public support, media, accountability

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