Over the past week, social media has exploded with claims that Donald Trump has signed a new law cutting the U.S. school year to just six months. The truth? It’s completely false. No such law exists, no executive order has been signed, and no official proposal is even in discussion.
The idea likely spread because most U.S. schools already operate on roughly 180 instructional days a year. When you break that down, it’s about six months’ worth of class time — but those days are spread across a traditional nine-month calendar, separated by weekends, holidays, and a long summer break.
In the United States, the length of the school year isn’t set by the President or the federal government at all. Instead, it’s decided by each state. Some states require as few as 160 school days, while others go up to 186 days. This variation is why the school calendar can look very different depending on where you live.
The Trump administration has made changes to education policy in the past, but none of them have touched the length of the school year. This particular rumor seems to be the latest in a string of viral misinformation waves that take a grain of truth — like the 180-day average — and twist it into something more dramatic.
Meanwhile, school schedule experiments are happening across the country, but at the local level. Some districts are testing four-day school weeks to cut costs or fight teacher shortages. Others are looking at year-round calendars that spread learning more evenly and reduce the long summer learning gap.
The bottom line is simple: there’s no six-month school law, no White House announcement, and no looming change to the national school calendar. Parents and students can rest easy — the school year you know is still the school year you’ll get.
