California Kids Are Still Struggling With Math. Many Districts Haven’t Made It a Top Priority

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.

Top Takeaways

Students have yet to recover from pandemic learning losses in math.
Experts emphasized the importance of providing additional support for schools and teachers.
Students can benefit from a mindset of learning from their mistakes and focusing on growth.

In a week when California schools will get their report card with the release of state test scores, experts identified areas that hold students back from meeting math achievement standards.

They include not having enough teachers credentialed in math, and districts not adequately prioritizing the subject.

Possible solutions for change include instilling growth mindsets among students when it comes to math and providing teachers with additional support, said those testifying at an Assembly Committee on Education informational hearing Tuesday.

Between 2015 and 2019, math performance across California increased. Following the Covid pandemic, however, scores dropped sharply, and students have yet to fully recover.

On Thursday, the state is planning to release its 2026 Smarter Balanced Assessment scores, which assess students in math, English language arts and science. At the hearing Tuesday, experts discussed how 2025 results showed wide disparities in the share of students meeting grade-level math standards.

Just 37% of students in California met math standards in 2025, compared to roughly 40% in 2019 prior to the pandemic. But certain demographics of students perform differently, the experts testifying said.

For example, 70% of Asian students met grade-level math standards, while only 26% of Latinx students and 20% of Black students did.

Students with disabilities and English language learners had the lowest rates of meeting grade-level math standards, at 13% and 11% respectively.

The more students struggle in the early grades, the harder it becomes for them to catch up, experts said, largely because math concepts build on one another.

“Students move from arithmetic into increasingly complex material like algebra and geometry, with each step building on what came before,” said Iwunze Ugo, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

“A student who struggles to understand polygons, shapes, for example, doesn’t leave that difficulty behind as they move from one year to the next. The challenges compound when it’s time to learn about angles, and further still when advancing to sines and cosines,” Ugo said.

Supporting teachers

In a recent report as part of Stanford University’s Getting Down to Facts project, school district and state agency leaders were asked an open-ended question about top priorities. Two-thirds of school district leaders did not identify math as one of their top priorities.

Separately, when the leaders were asked to rank four priority areas, math came third, after literacy and students’ mental health and behavior.

District leaders also reported that many teachers lack the knowledge and skills to teach math in ways aligned with current state standards. Roughly 20% of districts failed to provide consistent math-specific professional development during the last academic year; and most of the time, it was optional.

Only 77% of the state’s math classes are taught by teachers fully credentialed to teach the subjects, students and grade levels they are assigned, said Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, the director of P-16 research at EdTrust West.

Linda Darling-Hammond, chief knowledge officer of the Learning Policy Institute, which conducts research to improve education policy, said teacher residency programs and Golden State Teacher Grants have helped increase the number of fully prepared teachers.

“We’ve had 30% more fully prepared teachers than we had had in the years previous, so we are making progress,” Darling-Hammond said. “But those are one-time funding, and we just saw that in the last legislative cycle, the Golden State Teacher Grant is now reduced to only preparing special education teachers.”

Supporting schools

The experts who presented at the informational hearing said the Legislature needs to help districts build a more coherent system for math instruction.

“The Legislature needs to lead the charge to improve quality, redefining the state role in local control as one where the state supports districts’ ability to make effective local decisions,” said Alix Gallagher, the director of education policy and outcomes at Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonpartisan research center, who co-authored the “Getting Down To Facts” report.

For example, Gallagher told EdSource that California could follow Southern states such as Louisiana and Mississippi and centrally train math coaches in ways that are in keeping with the state’s math framework — and then send those coaches to individual campuses.

The experts also stressed the importance of curriculum and instructional materials. California has approved 63 possible math curricula, a number that Steven Kellner, director of district leadership and state policy at California Education Partners, an organization that focuses on improving outcomes for underserved students, said makes it “impossible to design follow-up supports to implement.”

“In short, state mandates and structural additions create the target. Local systemic capacity provides the results,” Kellner said.

Supporting students

The experts also emphasized the importance of helping students feel safe making mistakes and building confidence in math. Many students come to believe they’re “not a math person,” but opportunities to redo assignments or retake tests can help them sustain a mindset focused on growth.

Hilda Villarreal Wright, the president of the California Mathematics Council, highlighted an approach that recognizes students’ skills, experiences and ways of thinking.

She also highlighted the importance of students making connections across concepts and grade levels rather than focusing solely on repetition, and making math culturally and personally relevant.

“Students do not come in as blank slates,” Wright said. “They bring lived experiences and vents of knowledge, wonderful experiences around mathematics from home, from being outdoors, and even from play. This means valuing what students know and the assets they bring, rather than focusing on what they lack.”