Academic outcomes in Oklahoma’s public schools rank among the worst in the nation. Policymakers say that poor performance is, in part, the product of having one of the nation’s shortest school years.

“If you add up, for all the Oklahoma kids that start in kindergarten and finish in 12th grade, we are one year behind every other state in this nation in the amount of days those kids have been in front of their teachers,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle. “We have great teachers in Oklahoma. The best place is for those kids to be right there in front of them.”

“When you look at our standards, nationally we’re about a month-and-a-half behind the national average,” said House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, referring to the annual difference between Oklahoma’s school year and other 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.

But Oklahoma mandates only 166 days of school, so long as school is in session for 1,080 hours per year. Until last year, the state mandated only 165 days.

Among states that set a minimum number of school days per calendar year, only Minnesota currently mandates fewer days, with that state having a 165-day minimum.

Paxton, who has been a vocal proponent of having Oklahoma students in school for more in-person learning, noted the gap between Oklahoma and other states and countries is stark.

“Worldwide, the average is that students are in front of their teachers more than 200 days a year. In the United States, it’s 180 days a year,” Paxton said. “Oklahoma, we require 166 days a year.”

Oklahoma was not always a national laggard regarding school-year length.

For much of the state's history, Hilbert noted, Oklahoma’s school year was 180 days. But after a major ice storm forced the prolonged closure of many districts roughly 18 years ago, lawmakers voted to allow schools to operate based on a minimum number of 1,080 hours per year, allowing schools to meet the requirement with longer school days to avoid school running well into the summer months that year.

But school officials soon began exploiting the law, and a short school year became the norm in many districts, not an exception created by worst-case weather scenarios.

“Schools said, ‘Hey, we could go off hours. If we just add three minutes to our school day every day, we’ll just not come on Fridays after spring break,’” Hilbert said. “And then it was, ‘Well, we just won’t go on Fridays all spring.’ And then it was, ‘Well, we just won’t go on Fridays at all.”

At one point in recent years, Hilbert said lawmakers were told one school district had only a 136-day school year.

At times, schools have embraced a “longer” school day to maintain a short school year in ways that come close to parody.

For example, while Norman Public Schools recently announced that students would make up for recent snow days by attending classes on two additional days, school officials also announced they were making up snow days by adding two minutes to each school day for the remainder of the year.

Research indicates that students who spend more days in class also achieve greater academic success, as Paxton and others have argued, although other issues also impact learning.

A review of existing research, published in 2010 in the “Review of Educational Research” journal, reported that “findings suggest that extending school time can be an effective way to support student learning, particularly (a) for students most at risk of school failure and (b) when considerations are made for how time is used. Of note, the strongest research designs produced the most consistent positive results.”

In the summer 2025 edition of Education Next, Matthew A. Kraft, associate professor at Brown University, and Sarah Novicoff, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, wrote, “When it comes to time in school, both quantity and quality matter. Looking across 74 studies with causal research designs, we see a compelling body of evidence that increasing total school time leads to gains in academic achievement, on average. The most substantial impacts are at schools where longer days or years are part of wholesale reforms to maximize student engagement and instructional quality, such as turnaround or charter schools. Research also consistently shows that student achievement declines when districts reduce time in school by adopting four-day school weeks.”

Kraft and Novicoff also noted, “Students in states with the longest schedules spend 133 hours more in school each year, on average, compared to those with the shortest schedules, which is equivalent to 1.4 additional years of school over the course of a K–12 education.”

In Oklahoma, public-school funding has surged dramatically in recent years, yet academic outcomes have steadily declined.

Excluding cash forward and other savings, Oklahoma public-school funding from all sources—local, state, and federal—has increased by more than $3 billion in recent years, rising from $6,300,400,107 in the 2017-2018 school year to $9,586,994,906 in the 2024-2025 school year.

Since public schools reported average daily attendance of 653,114 during the first nine weeks of the 2024-2025 school year, that translates into per-pupil revenue of $14,678.

Yet, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests administered in Oklahoma and nationwide in 2024, Oklahoma fourth- and eighth-grade students’ achievement in reading and math remains lower than it was prior to the COVID pandemic.

NAEP tests show only 23 percent of Oklahoma 4th-grade students scored at or above proficient in reading in 2024. Only two states did worse.

When researchers at Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University analyzed “return on investment” data from 2013 to 2024, tracking NAEP 4th-grade reading and 8th-grade math scores alongside per-pupil spending, they found Oklahoma’s per-pupil spending increased 47 percent during that decade, but NAEP scores in both reading and math are far lower today than in 2013.

Oklahoma high-school students’ performance on the ACT college admission test has also steadily declined in recent years.

Even so, some policymakers shrug off concerns about Oklahoma’s extremely short school year and any associated negative impact on learning.

“I feel like adding days is just a distraction,” said Oklahoma Senate Democratic Leader Julia Kirt of Oklahoma City.

She said bringing the length of Oklahoma’s school year in line with national norms is “going to run off” teachers.

Other officials have argued Oklahoma’s school year should be lengthened only in exchange for millions in increased funding.

One commonly cited figure would bump school funding by $20 million to $25 million for each day added to the school calendar. That translates into an additional $350 million in spending to reach the national average of 180 days.

But Hilbert noted that Oklahoma’s school funding is, in effect, already set at levels that allow for a 180-day school year, and some districts are already doing so.

“School districts were never cut funds when they decided to start going less days,” Hilbert said. “In fact, I’ve got some school districts that are at and around 180 days in my legislative district, and they didn’t receive more funds for continuing to go 180 days.

“Ultimately,” Hilbert continued, “what we need to be talking about is what’s best for kids.”