How has a 4 day school week affected Diana Texas?
New Four-Day School Week Policy
Think back to your school days, that special feeling Friday brought every week was something to look forward to. The school district's new four-day school week policy is just another initiative for city leaders to help push Diana forward. For students in Diana Texas, that Friday feeling is now reserved for Thursday. This initiative was proposed in early 2023 to the New Diana ISD Board Of Trustees' council of 7, armed with a recent survey of staff, parents, and students the board would ultimately pass the resolution by a narrow margin of 4 to 3. The survey, however, could not be denied students overwhelmingly voted for a four-day school week at a whopping 76%, staff voted at an even higher 78%, and parents were the least receptive getting only 63% approval.
Initial Opposition
Parents looking to keep the status quo are not alone in their opposition to a seemingly favorable proposal, nearly half of the New Diana board voted against a change in the school week schedule. One factor brought up by those opposing the measure is attendance, the opposition argues that the decreased time spent in school would lead to a perceived autonomy without adult supervision that would result in problems for the residents whose school district implemented the policy. These concerns are backed by data like the 2018 study conducted by Stefanie Fischer and Daniel Argyle titled "Juvenile Crime and The Four Day Work Week" in which Argyle and Fischer argue that the data supports the belief that an implementation of the four-day school week would be at least part of the reason property damage increased 20% at the same time. Factors like income, however, tend to play a factor when analyzing data such as this. Low-income regions tend to have disproportionately low amounts of extracurricular programs, infrastructure, and available employment which contribute to the statistics levied against the proposal. Four-day school weeks are almost exclusively a phenomenon seen in rural school districts that lack the funding of major metropolitan school districts, cost-cutting initiatives such as this serve to direct funds more efficiently.
Improving Test Scores
Results are in after a year of the proposed change being in effect, following the implementation of Diana's new school schedule test scores have been at or above the level of school districts with substantially more funding like Austin and Dallas. According to US News. the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, a set of tests used to measure the readiness of incoming high school students showed that the students of the New Diana School District had a mathematical readiness level below the state average. Citing the AP and IB exams results US News reported that only 31% of the New Diana School District showed proficiency in the mathematical portion compared to the state average of 40%. At the same time, critics may point to this as a direct consequence of the school district's change, however, one can point to a lack of funding in the New Diana School District as a correlating factor. Recent fundraising efforts like those documented in the Yahoo article published on April 19 point to a school district looking to modernize with the help of the surrounding community, using tax increases for Diana residents, district officials devised a plan to expand the high school's lobby, gym, and locker room space in order to modernize alongside other school districts. School districts, for the most part, receive their funding from a combination of state as well as federal sources, however, districts with a higher population have access to more funds due to the amount of property tax compared to districts with fewer properties and lower populations. Reading proficiency, on the other hand, is nearly 6% higher than the state average. which sits at just 60%. Mathematics seems to be the only anomaly as the scores showed the New Diana School District's incoming high schoolers were above the state average in science.
