Education

Oklahoma House votes to increase length of school year

March 12, 2026

Ray Carter

Currently, Oklahoma has one of the nation’s shortest school years and some of the nation’s worst academic outcomes.

House lawmakers have now voted to increase the length of the school year, hoping additional instructional time will boost student learning as well.

Currently, Oklahoma mandates only 166 days of school each year, so long as school is in session for 1,080 hours. That’s far shorter than 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. Only one state mandates fewer days than Oklahoma.

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

House Bill 3151, by state Rep. Rob Hall, R-Tulsa, as amended on the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, would raise the minimum number of school days per year to 173 starting in the 2027-2028 school year, so long as lawmakers also provide another $175 million in funding over the next two years.

HB 3151 passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives on a 62-28 vote. The legislation now proceeds to the Oklahoma Senate.

Paxton, who is Senate author of the bill, said a longer school year complements other efforts to improve education outcomes in Oklahoma, such as measures designed to improve students’ reading abilities.

“We can have the best literacy program in the United States of America and we can fund it properly, but at the end of the day if those kids are not face-to-face with those teachers, it’s going to be hard to make that happen,” Paxton said. “And just to reiterate what I’ve said before, worldwide average kids are in front of teachers 200 days a year. United States’ average, kids are in front of teachers 180 days a year. Oklahoma is 166 with seven of those being wiped off of that with professional days. So that is a major problem.”

In a press availability the day after HB 3151 passed, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert noted the gap between some Oklahoma districts and schools around the country has become enormous.

Hilbert said one superintendent who contacted him in opposition to the bill has a school calendar that includes 17 virtual days this year (a practice that will be severely limited under state law starting next year).

In effect, that district has only 142 instructional days when students are in front of teachers, Hilbert noted. In Arkansas, schools are in session for 183 days with five weather-related days included, meaning at least 178 days of school occur.

“A student who finishes their freshman year in Arkansas, from preschool to their freshman year, has about as many days in front of teachers as a student who graduates high school from this other school (in Oklahoma),” said Hilbert, R-Bristow. “There are 2.83 years more of education in Arkansas than this particular school district. So why are we talking about days in the classroom? Because it’s no wonder that our education scores have dropped when our kids over the course of their career are having two and three years’ less instruction over the time that they’re in classes than their peers.”

NOTE: This story has been updated since publication to include comments from House Speaker Kyle Hilbert and Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton.