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Rural four-day students generally learned as much as rural five-day day students. Statistically, both groups’ test scores rose by about the same amount every year.

small town and suburban students who switched to four-day weeks were far worse off than other students in the state

One possible explanation, Morton says, is sports. Many rural athletes and young student fans leave school early on Fridays or skip school altogether because of the great distances to travel to away games. In effect, many five-day students are only getting four-days of instruction in rural America.

The four-day work week is an attractive work perk in rural America that may lure better teachers.

By this theory, four-day schools may make it easier to hire better teachers, who could accomplish in four days what a less skilled teacher accomplishes in five days.

five-day weeks have their own drawbacks in rural America: hidden absences, skipped lessons and lower quality teachers.

Hispanic students, who accounted for one out of every six rural students in this study, suffered much more from four-day weeks than white students did. (Native American students, who made up one of every 10 rural students, did relatively better with the four-day week.)

biggest surprise to me in this review of the research is how tiny the cost savings are: 1 to 2 percent.  It does save some money not to run the heat or buses one day a week, but the largest expenses, teacher salaries, stay the same.

But the most meaningful geographic separation in our society is no longer as tidy as North and South, or East and West. It is the familiar divide between urban and rural, or to update that a bit: metro versus non-metro.

for now we're less a nation divided into 50 states than we are two nations that are both present in each of those states.