Social media, especially TikTok and X (previously Twitter), has been buzzing with rumors that President Donald Trump is going to shorten the school year to just six months via a new executive order. But a fact check shows that these statements are completely false, with no official record or statement from the president to back them up.
It appears that the rumors have spread among pupils, who want a shortened school year. One person on X said, “I heard on TikTok that Trump is making the school year only six months long, but I can’t find anything about it online.” Please let this be real, dude. I just want to get out of high school already. Another person tweeted, “Trump said school would only last six months from now on. I hope his orange head isn’t lying.”
There is no proof that this assertion was ever made, even though these posts became viral. The conversational AI model xAI bot Grok also said that the assertion was wrong, saying, “No, this claim is false.” There is no record of Trump saying that schools should only last six months. His latest education initiatives include cutting funds and changing the way the Department of Education works, but they do not change the duration of the school year.
Who Really Decides How Long the School Year Is?
The President or the federal government do not set the duration of the school year in the U.S. Instead, each state decides how many days of teaching are required, making education policy a state-level matter.
Most jurisdictions, including 27 of the 38 that require a minimum number of days, need about 180 days of teaching. This is just about six months of actual classroom time. The whole academic year usually lasts nine months, from late August or early September to late May or early June, to include weekends, holidays, and breaks.
The state of education in the U.S.
The viral rumor comes out at a time when U.S. education is having a lot of problems.
A 2024 research by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at Arizona State University concluded that U.S. pupils have not entirely recovered from the learning loss they suffered during the COVID-19 epidemic. Most students still aren’t even halfway back to the academic levels they were at before COVID.
Earlier this year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) said that math and reading levels for fourth and eighth graders were going down in a worrying way.
Even if things weren’t going well, a study of Gen Z students in June 2024 showed that they were more hopeful than ever. They gave their schools the best grades in years.
The Trump administration has suggested big changes to the education system, like firing people in the Department of Education, but they haven’t suggested cutting the school year. The government has also enacted executive orders that affect the Department of Education, but they don’t change the duration of the school year.