Leilani Cauthen 
In July 2020, Leilani Cauthen of the Learning Counsel described how districts were rethinking school scheduling options in the middle of the pandemic. Cauthen’s article appears below, followed by an updated section on the scheduling options districts weigh now and what research says about four-day weeks and block schedules.
It’s almost Fall, and the clock is ticking. Talk of time and space is swirling all around us, and confusion is rampant. How does this effect school scheduling options?
Some states aren’t open yet, and others are closing down. In the education biz, it feels like the Wild West out there. Discussions are happening everywhere about how to pull this hybrid learning model off. Some districts are just now getting around to surveying parents. Will it work for parents if we open only two days a week for elementary and two days for middle school? How are we going to do this? It is a tough time to make all these decisions.
New Spaces and Health Precautions
There are so many essential conversations out there, like contact tracing. It’s a scary term, but when it comes to health, it gets a little less scary and very important. Some districts are turning to micro-schooling. They are leasing some local retail spaces to put separate, smaller entities in place so the kids are more separated. Maybe this group goes over here, and this group goes over there. So suddenly, the network complications take on a whole new meaning because you’re not just using your buildings.
You might be using multiple buildings you hadn’t used before as part of your extended campus. How are you going to disinfect areas? How about separation and mask-wearing? Different states have different rules; kids under 12 in certain conditions don’t have to wear masks, but all the teachers do. Or maybe classrooms can only house up to 15 kids. And there’s more.
Buses and social distancing add a huge fly in the transportation ointment. How do you keep the kindergarteners apart? They like to run up to each other and hug very hard. We had one superintendent tell us when they put their kindergarteners on zoom meetings together for the first time, they all just got on screen and cried. They were so happy to see each other.
School Scheduling Options Across the Country
Scheduling options are all over the board nationwide, having to do the four-day week thing or going to A/B schedules, either by grade categories across a week or separate weeks. Some places are using a two-day model. The impact of partial week scheduling on parents is not known yet. There are a lot of places, even during quarantine, that still had to have a place for the first responders to send their kids because they were going to work. So, some of that’s already been happening. Then there’s the question of day-spacing of elementary kids going back first, then middle and then high schoolers, who spend much less time on campus.
There is the idea of homerooms or houses. Like in the Harry Potter world, courting or breaking grades into subunits of grades or subunits of multiple grades. It minimizes contact with the other cohorts, having people come into particular cohorts only through one door and exiting through another door assigned by a doorway. Lindsey Smith, on one of our webinars, shared their planning down to minutes by subject in remote learning. It was very sophisticated work. Kimberly Robinson from Prince George’s County also shared their alternate schedules across the district based on the school. It’s pretty wild stuff. The complexity and repercussions on curriculum and technology are enormous.
We played our Personalized Learning Twister game at our national gathering in Dallas this past year. It is a snapshot of what the future looks like for real hybridization and “uberization” of learning down to the personalized level. The change in structure, space, and time is enormous. When we first presented this, we had no idea that changes would be coming so fast and furiously.
Working Parents, Bandwidth and Devices
When you look at your schedule options, you think about one essential thing: a school needs to have appeal. You need to have people who want to be there. When you think about options and working parents, the issue is that when both parents work, they need someplace to put their child. They may not have a relative in the same city or anyone they trust. So that’s going to be huge.
These are simply human challenges. The complexity on the tech side has multiplied exponentially. Scheduling access for many combinations and permutations will be a logistical miracle. We still have the challenges of connecting every family with sufficient bandwidth and many devices.
With all these changes, there is only one thing I feel certain about. We can do this. During my seven years conducting on-site regional and national events, I have worked with hundreds of superintendents, state directors, curriculum directors, technology directors, principals, and teacher leaders. On the industry side, the Learning Counsel has gotten to know many of the top companies in EdTech. To a person the people I meet at these events are intelligent, capable, unbelievably passionate, and dedicated. Our challenges are tremendous, and we may not get everything right on the first try. But I am confident that our children are in good hands, and we will come out the other side of this pandemic even stronger than when we entered.
School scheduling options today: what districts weigh now that the emergency has passed
Leilani Cauthen wrote above in the summer of 2020, when school scheduling options were being rebuilt around health rules, buses and working parents. Those pressures have eased, but the questions Cauthen raises about time, space and families have not gone away. This section looks at the scheduling options that districts discuss now, and at what research can and cannot tell leaders about them.
Four-day school weeks
One option Cauthen mentions, the four-day week, has spread beyond the pandemic and has been studied more. A team at the University of Montana (Erica Allen, Bill McCaw, John Matt and Shirley Tang) analysed 15 years of student test data, and the university reported the findings in May 2025. Students in four-day districts trailed their peers in five-day districts: elementary math scores fell behind by as much as 14 percentage points and reading scores were up to 7 points lower. The researchers also found that promised savings often did not appear, because teacher pay, transportation and other costs stay the same or rise. The university page does not describe the study’s methods or say whether the finding shows cause, so leaders should read the full study before relying on a single number.
Results are not the same everywhere. A study of Oregon children by Paul Thompson and colleagues in Early Childhood Research Quarterly (2022) followed 95,221 students from kindergarten into third grade and found minimal effects: third-grade math about 0.024 of a standard deviation lower for four-day students (a difference significant only at the loose 10 percent level), and no significant difference in reading. The effects were not the same for all groups. Students who began with lower readiness scores, low-income students, special education students and English learners showed no harmful effects, while students who began above the median on readiness measures showed declines of roughly 0.03 to 0.04 of a standard deviation. The authors describe the study as observational, say that districts chose the four-day week themselves, and warn that causal conclusions are not certain. They also note that it covers Oregon only.
The fair summary is that the evidence is mixed and the effects are generally small to moderate, which suggests that a district considering the change should plan for what students will do on the fifth day, and should measure results year by year.
Block and A/B schedules for middle and high school
Secondary schools often consider block scheduling, in which students take fewer, longer classes each day. According to an EBSCO research starter, a 4×4 block has students take four classes a day, each for one semester, so they complete eight classes a year, while an A/B block has four periods a day with different classes meeting on alternating days. The same summary describes the research as inconclusive. Some studies found gains in attendance, honour roll representation and discipline, and some found students on traditional schedules scoring higher on tests. One synthesis it cites (Lewis and colleagues, 2005) found no difference in English and very slight negative effects in science and math, too small to treat as meaningful. In plain words, the schedule may change the feel of the day and the variety of teaching without reliably changing test scores.
What to weigh for elementary, middle and high school scheduling
Cauthen’s own point, that a school needs to have appeal, remains a sound starting place. A few questions can organise the decision:
- Elementary school scheduling. Young children need predictable routines, and families need dependable care. Ask what happens for children whose caregivers work on any day the school is closed.
- Middle school scheduling. Students are changing fast, and a schedule that gives teachers longer blocks may allow time for advisory periods and for closer relationships.
- High school scheduling. Credits, electives, career courses and dual enrolment all depend on the bell schedule. Review how any change affects the courses students need to graduate.
- Flexible school schedules. Flexible models that vary the length of class periods or the way students are grouped can support personalised learning, which Cauthen mentions, but they require careful planning for staffing and transportation.
Software, staffing and communication
Whichever model a district chooses, the scheduling software has to carry the complexity Cauthen describes: many combinations of students, rooms and teachers. Test the software with real data before the change, and give families early notice, in plain language and in more than one way. A district should involve teachers, bus staff and parents in the planning, since each group sees different problems.
Leaders working on a related topic can find more in the edCircuit chronic absenteeism guide, since the school calendar and daily schedule affect attendance, and in the types of schools overview.
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