During the October meeting of the State Board of Education, 59 Oklahoma public-school districts had their accreditation reduced to “accredited with warning” status because a majority of students in those districts performed well below grade-level expectations on math and reading tests for two years in a row.

Of those poorly performing districts, 53 (nearly 90 percent) operate on a shortened school year calendar of as few as 166 days, according to additional information presented to state board members during that same meeting.

Lawmakers say that trend bolsters their efforts to require Oklahoma schools to provide more actual days of in-person class instruction to students.

“The fact that a disproportionate number of accreditation downgrades by the state board were given to schools that were going less than the 181-day standard calendar reinforces the importance of the legislation we passed last session to raise the minimum number of instructional days for Oklahoma schools,” said state Rep. Rob Hall, R-Tulsa. “Oklahoma students deserve the best education we can provide them, and that starts with sufficient time in the classroom for teaching and learning to take place.”

“Every moment a child is in the classroom is an opportunity to learn and grow,” said state Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond. “Oklahoma students are spending less time in school than many of their peers in surrounding states. More time in the classroom means stronger academic outcomes and brighter futures for our kids and our state.”

Districts that choose to operate under the 166 day/1,086-hour instructional calendar rather than the traditional 181-day calendar are required to provide notification to the State Board of Education. During the October meeting, board members were provided a list of all districts that have formally notified the Oklahoma State Department of Education of their intent to implement the 166 day/1,086-hour instructional calendar this year.

Out of more than 500 public school districts in Oklahoma, 287 districts have submitted notifications to the department, including 53 schools sanctioned for continual poor academic performance. At those 53 schools, a majority of students’ performance on state tests landed in the “below basic” range on reading or math tests for two consecutive years, meaning students at those schools have not achieved even partial mastery of grade-level content. Roughly speaking, those students are performing around one year, or more, below grade-level expectations.

Schools using a shortened school-year calendar have slightly longer school days than districts that have school years of up to 181 days.

But experts have found that shorter school years are associated with worse academic outcomes.

“Time in School: A Conceptual Framework, Synthesis of the Causal Research, and Empirical Exploration,” published in the May 30, 2024, edition of the American Educational Research Journal, found that “large differences in the length of the school day and year across public schools are an underappreciated dimension of educational inequality in the United States.”

A second study, “A multi-state, student-level analysis of the effects of the four-day school week on student achievement and growth,” published in the June 2024 edition of Economics of Education Review, found that a four-day school week produced “significant negative effects” on spring reading achievement and fall-to-spring gains in math.

Researchers found “suggestive evidence that the negative effects of the schedule grow in magnitude over time.”

The minimum school year allowed in Oklahoma is significantly below the norm in most states.

According to the Education Commission of the States, 36 states mandate a minimum number of days per school year. The commission reports that 29 states set a minimum of at least 180 days. Neighboring Kansas requires 186 days.

Over time, the gap between students’ classroom time in Oklahoma and other states compounds. Before recent reforms, Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, noted that a child attending public school in Oklahoma from Kindergarten to 12th grade could be in class in front of a teacher a full year less than the child’s counterparts in many other states.

Making things worse, many Oklahoma schools that have operated on a shorter school year also reduced in-person instruction through significant use of virtual days, until lawmakers cracked down on that practice.

In the 2022-2023 school year, roughly one in five Oklahoma school districts shifted students to “virtual learning” for at least three work weeks of the school year, with many even going online for roughly a month combined, according to public records.

In many instances, lawmakers found that many of those “virtual days” involved no direct student-teacher interaction, and students were often given small assignments that could take less than an hour to complete even as the district was funded for a full day of instruction.

In recent years, Oklahoma lawmakers have voted to eliminate most virtual days, and they have voted to increase the minimum length of the school year.

In 2025, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 758, by Paxton and Thompson, which limited brick-and-mortar public schools to just two days (or 12 hours) of virtual learning as part of the 180 days of instructions/1,080 hours of instruction required each school year, outside specific emergency circumstances.

This year, lawmakers approved House Bill 3151, by Hall and Paxton, which raised the minimum number of school days per year from 166 to 173 starting in the 2027-2028 school year. Of the more than 500 school districts in Oklahoma, 176 reportedly did not meet the 173-day mandate during the 2025-2026 school year, according to Paxton.

The districts operating on a shortened school-year calendar who also have a majority of students scoring “below basic” in math or reading for two consecutive years include the following: Allen-Bowden; ASTEC Charter School; Belfonte; Billings; Blair; Bokoshe; Boswell; Cimarron; College Bound Academy of Tulsa; Comanche Academy; Dahlonegah; Davidson; Earlsboro; E-School Virtual Charter Academy; Forest Grove; Glover; Gracemont; Graham-Dustin; Hanna; Hardesty; Henryetta; Hominy; Hugo; Indiahoma; Insight Virtual Charter School of Oklahoma; Justice; Kenwood; Konawa; Lowrey; Midway; Midwest City-Del City; Millwood; Mounds; Oaks-Mission; Oklahoma City; Oklahoma Connections Academy Charter Virtual; Okmulgee; Olustee-Eldorado; Panola; Peavine; Quapaw; Shady Grove; Tulsa Legacy Charter School; Tulsa; Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences Charter; Tuskahoma; Wanette; Watts; Western Heights; White Oak; White Rock; Wilson; and Wynona.

While school funding is often blamed for poor academic outcomes and shorter school years, total revenue to Oklahoma public schools has surged in recent years.

An NEA Research report showed that Oklahoma public schools had $15,111 in revenue receipts per student, based on average daily attendance, during the 2024-2025 school year, the most recent for which national data was available for all states. That was an increase of 55 percent since the 2017-2018 school year, when a prior edition of the NEA report found Oklahoma public schools had revenue receipts per student of $9,724.

The school districts with two consecutive years of low academic outcomes for a majority of students often have per-pupil revenue exceeding the statewide $15,111 average cited by NEA Research, including at the two most prominent school districts on the list.

The Oklahoma City district had an average daily attendance of 29,388 students and $502,665,496 in revenue (not including savings) during the 2024-2025 school year, providing $17,104 per student.

The Tulsa school district had an average daily attendance of 30,101 and $515,511,499 in revenue, providing $17,126 per student.

Other districts on the poor-performing list had even larger amounts of per-pupil revenue.

In the 2024-2025 school year, Belfonte had average daily attendance of 126 students and $2,741,060 in annual revenue, providing an average of $21,754 per student.

Billings had an average daily attendance of 67 students and $2,043,497 in revenue, providing an average of $30,499 per student.

Bokoshe had an average daily attendance of 126 students and $2,614,475 in revenue, providing an average of $20,749 per student.

Wynona had 72 students and $1,576,295 in revenue, providing $21,892 per student.

Notably, at least 80 percent of Oklahoma private schools charged tuition rates lower than $15,111 this year.