Teacher Retention and the Four-Day School Week in Missouri

By Andrew M. Camp, Taylor Wilson, Yujia Liu, J. Cameron Anglum, Anita Manion, and Tuan Nguyen

This brief documents changes in Missouri public school teacher retention during the COVID-19 pandemic and examines changes in teacher retention in districts that adopt a four-day school week calendar.

Key Points:

• Missouri teacher retention decreased significantly in the 2022-23 school year, while having been stable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Simultaneously, adoption of four-day school week calendars has boomed throughout the state.

• Four-day school week calendars are an increasingly popular policy intended to keep teachers in the classroom.

• We use statistical models to determine the effect of these calendar changes on teacher retention in adopting districts.

• We find that four-day school week calendars have, at best, had small and imprecisely estimated positive effects on teacher retention for some districts.

• These results highlight the uncertainty surrounding adopting a four-day school week calendar to better recruit and retain teachers, and highlight the need for additional study in this area.