Schedule‐Driven Productivity: Evidence From Nontraditional School Calendars
研究非传统校历（调整每天课时、每年天数及分布）对师生生产力的影响，发现更长但更少的上课天数对高年级学生有显著负面效应，相当于教师质量降低近一个标准差，并增加教师离职率。
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.