{"id":"res-hs-four-day-week-study-brief","audience":"high-school","category":"research","technique":"audience","title":"Explain a four-day school week study to your classmates","free":false,"task":"Your district is voting on a four-day school week on December 10, and you're writing a short brief for the student newspaper. You want at most 3 sentences in plain text that say what the study actually found about test scores, name one limit of the study, and mention the December 10 vote. Use the full report, not the press release headline, and skip research jargon like \"standard deviation\" or \"cohort\".","materialLabel":"The study's press release and report summary (attached to your prompt automatically)","material":"PRESS RELEASE - Ridgeline Policy Institute, Sept 2026\nHEADLINE: \"Four-Day Weeks Raise Test Scores, New Study Shows\"\n\"Our study of four-day school weeks shows promising results for rural communities,\" said institute director Paul Ames.\n\n-----\nREPORT SUMMARY - \"The Four-Day Week in Rural Districts: A Three-Year Look\"\nRidgeline Policy Institute, Sept 2026\n\nSample: 14 rural districts in Colorado and New Mexico that switched to four-day weeks in 2022, compared with 20 similar districts that kept five days. All districts had fewer than 1,500 students.\n\nFindings after three years:\n- Math scores in four-day districts fell slightly compared with five-day districts (about 0.05 standard deviations). Reading scores showed no clear change.\n- Student attendance did not change.\n- Teacher turnover fell by 9 percentage points.\n- In surveys, students in four-day districts reported about 25 more minutes of sleep on school nights.\n\nLimits: The study looked only at small rural districts, so results may not apply to larger or suburban districts. Districts chose to switch on their own, so the study cannot prove the four-day week caused these changes.\n\n-----\nMy notes: our district (Eastfield, 9,800 students, suburban) votes Dec 10 at the board meeting. Newspaper brief due Friday.","rules":[{"type":"maxSentences","max":3},{"type":"plainText"}],"mistakes":[{"title":"Trusting the headline","why":"Press releases spin results, and the AI often repeats the headline because it's the first thing in the material.","fix":"Say: \"Use the report findings, not the press release headline.\"","checks":["r0"]},{"title":"Dropping the caveat","why":"A short summary cuts the limits first, so readers think the study applies to your district.","fix":"Add: \"Name one limit of the study.\"","checks":["r1"]},{"title":"Forgetting the reader","why":"The AI writes like a research summary, with jargon your classmates skip, and doesn't know why they should care now.","fix":"Say: \"For high school readers, no jargon, and mention the Dec 10 vote.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Not capping the length","why":"The AI writes several paragraphs by default, far more than the reader will take in.","fix":"Say: \"at most 3 sentences.\"","checks":["maxSentences"]},{"title":"Getting markdown back","why":"AI defaults to bold labels and headings, which show up as stray symbols in the newspaper's layout file.","fix":"Ask for \"plain text, no bold, no headings.\"","checks":["plainText"]}],"promptHints":[{"label":"Ignores the headline spin","patterns":["press release","headline","report (findings|summary)","not the (release|headline)"]},{"label":"Asks for a limit","patterns":["limit","caveat","can't prove","cannot prove","rural"]},{"label":"Says who it's for","patterns":["classmates","students","newspaper","high school","teen"]},{"label":"Mentions the vote","patterns":["dec(ember)?\\.?\\s*10","vote","board"]},{"label":"Caps the number of sentences","patterns":["\\d+\\s*sentences","(two|three|four|five) sentences","sentence"]}],"hint":"A press release and a report can disagree. Tell the AI which one to trust, who's reading, and the one caveat and local detail that make the brief useful.","rubricLabels":["Says math scores fell slightly (or reading didn't change) and does not repeat the press release claim that scores rose","Names at least one limit from the report (only small rural districts, or the study can't prove the four-day week caused the changes)","Mentions the December 10 board vote and uses no research jargon (no 'standard deviation', 'cohort', 'statistically significant' or 'percentage points')"]}