Schedule-Driven Productivity: Evidence From Nontraditional School Calendars

Abstract

Schools often overlook how structuring student and teacher schedules may impact educational outcomes. We analyze the impact of nontraditional school calendars on student and teacher productivity. These calendars differentially allocate mandated instructional time by choosing (1) the number of hours in the school day, (2) the number of school days each year, and (3) the distribution of school days throughout the year. To do this, we use administrative data on over 2 million students and exploit the staggered elimination of nontraditional school calendars that vary on these three dimensions. We find that while school schedules have little impact on younger children's learning, school schedules with longer and fewer school days have large negative effects on older students that are equivalent to decreasing teacher quality by nearly one standard deviation. Our results appear to be driven by changes in at-home study behavior and school start times rather than how school days are distributed throughout the year. In addition, school schedules with longer and fewer school days increase teacher turnover. Our results suggest an important role of daily schedules on school productivity.