A rumor going around on social media is that President Donald Trump wants to reduce the school year in the United States to merely six months. Videos on TikTok and other platforms received hundreds of thousands of views, confusing parents and educators alike. But there is absolutely no proof that the President ever made such a proposal or statement.
Claim origins
In early August 2025, panel clips on TikTok purport to announce that Trump said schools would have a six-month academic calendar, operationally from August into January. Some posts contained a text overlay “Donald Trump announced kids attend school six months out of the year,” and others speculated that “a bill was in the pipeline” for such legislation to be passed. These attracted millions of views and had a lot of people believing such a story could really be true, despite the absence of an official confirmation.
One Tik Tok video, shared by the account @uiort05, shows a talking head of some man over images of Trump. That video had the text overlay, “Donald Trump just announced kids only attend school 6 months Out of the year,” counting six months of the school year as being according to August through January. The video has had over 200,000 views at the time of reporting. The audio from that Tik Tok went viral across the platform.
Another Tik Tok video from the account @solyapp states, “Donald Trump is tryna pass a law where kids only have to go to school for six months.” That video was reported to have received over 400,000 views.
What Trump really said
The long and the short of it is there was no public statement made by the President claiming that children should go to school only for six months annually. There is no reference on the official White House communication or speeches or interviews that will suggest shortening the school calendar in this way. The school policies in the United States are made at the state and local levels rather than by presidential decree, and changes in the academic year are established by legislative action, not through executive orders.
Fact-checker findings
Fact-checking organizations have investigated every one of the viral videos and have found no clear evidence that the President justified the school years as lasting for only six months. According to the Fact Check team of Newsweek, U.S.-bound students do have around instruction holidays that round up to form six months inside the classroom. However, this does not mean that the entire school year is under the limit of six months; it is normally about nine months minus weekends, holidays like Thanksgiving, and some scattered weeks’ vacation. The analysis by USA Today also confirmed the falsehood of the TikTok claims and stressed that the calendars of public schools are defined by state legislation and local school districts. There are neither executive orders nor any memo or even the official statements of Trump to support bringing about the shortening of the school year to exist in just six months.
The typical U.S. school year
Most states in the U.S. require about 185 days of instruction per year, although there are exceptions: for example, Colorado has a minimum of 160 days, while Kansas requires a maximum of up to 186 days. This matches roughly six months of classroom instruction, but in practical terms, the academic calendar is structured over about nine months to allow for weekends, holidays like Thanksgiving, and breaks like spring vacation. Local control is a key defining feature of education, as school boards partner with parents, teachers, and communities to comply with those minimum requirements by establishing their own calendars. Any modifications to the academic calendar must be made publicly reviewed and legislatively approved.
How the rumor spread
Several reasons make for the broken record of the rumor six-month school year. First, the nature of TikTok’s algorithm is in favor of exciting sensational content, so unverified stories can spread between an audience at lightning speed. Viewers with little knowledge of the distinction between instructional days and total academic calendar might confuse six months of in-class instruction as the whole school year. Political polarization adds salt to the wound, which creates an issue where one such drastic change can be aligned closely with a polarizing figure, such as making it easier for Trump to outrage and share.
Believing this ill-founded proposal would lead to mistrust on the part of the public against government officials and educational institutions-creating confusion among parents, educators, and even school superintendents in demanding or resisting those changes that are not being tested in reality. Finally, under such negative conjecture, school administrators may even spend more precious time and resources debunking misinformed interpretations than working to solve real educational problems.
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