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Trump to reduce school year to 6 months? Here's the truth about executive order today
Rumors about President Donald Trump signing an executive order to reduce the school year to just six months have surfaced on social media
Rumors about President Donald Trump signing an executive order to reduce the school year to just six months have surfaced on social media, particularly TikTok. This comes as the administration has proposed several major changes to the education system, including firing several Education Department employees.
Trump saying he wants to cut the school year to six months?
Claims about Trump's latest executive order surfaced on social media this week. “I heard on TikTok that Trump is making the school year only 6 months but I can’t find anything on the internet about it. Please let this be true bruh I js wanna get out of ts fuck ahh high school already🙏” one person noted on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.
“trump said school only for 6 months for now on i hope his orange head a** not lying,” another one tweeted.
Fact check
There is no record of Trump making any such claim. No executive order of this kind has been signed. Elon Musk-led xAI's bot Grok also clarified, saying: “No, this claim is false. There's no record of Trump stating schools should be limited to 6 months. His recent education policies involve funding cuts and restructuring the Department of Education, but not altering school year length.”
Who determines the length of the school year?
A 2024 study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at Arizona State University, revealed that US students remain significantly behind in recovering from pandemic-era learning loss, with most still not even halfway back to pre-COVID academic levels.
Earlier in January, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported troubling declines in math and reading scores among fourth and eighth graders across several states, with many now performing below the national average.
Despite these setbacks, a June 2024 survey showed a surprising uptick in optimism among Gen Z students, who gave their schools the most favorable ratings seen in recent years.
Additionally, the length of the school year in the US is not set by the president or the federal government. Education policy is determined at the state level, including decisions about how many instructional days are required.
While most states mandate around 180 instructional days, roughly six months of active classroom time, the full academic calendar typically spans closer to nine months. This includes weekends, holidays, and scheduled breaks, with classes generally running from late August or early September through late May or early June.
