Conventional scheduling facilitates horizontal and vertical articulation between schools. Opportunities for individualization of instruction and meaningful interaction between students and teachers are hard to come by. The literature describes the four-day week schedule in a cursory and undocumented way. This approach simply means that five days of instruction are crammed into four. It is not a widely spread practice.
Academic achievement appears to be neutral.
Assessment of the four days per week schedule, as in many areas of scheduling, is testimonial. In one instance, Jack McCoy, Deputy Director of Learning Services at the New Mexico Department of Education, claims that four days of instruction had little if any negative impact on nationally normed test scores, increased attendance of teachers and students, or made recruitment of teachers easier. Of 52 million American school children, about 2 million attend year-round schools. Researchers observed that a year-round schedule was introduced to relieve school districts, at least temporarily, of new building costs. The system prompted a more intensive use of existing school buildings.