By Carolyn Jones, CalMatters
Just a few months after California overhauled the way it teaches children to read, a new bill takes on math education — and may be just as controversial.
Senate Bill 1067 would require schools to screen all kindergartners, first- and second-graders for basic math skills, and give them extra help if they’re behind. The idea is to help those children catch up to their peers who might have had much more exposure to math before starting school.
“A student’s early math skills are the most powerful predictor of their later success in school,” said Amy Cooper, a senior advisor at EdVoice, an education nonprofit that’s cosponsoring the bill. “We’re not talking about tracking kids. There’s no labels. It’s just about getting support to students so that they can get up to grade level.”
California students, in all grade levels, have long struggled in math. Last year, just 37% of students performed at grade level in math, with some groups of students faring far worse. Just 16% of Black 11th-graders, for example, met the state’s grade-level standard. Nationwide, California ranks 43rd in 4th grade math scores, behind Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and dozens of other states.
One reason for the poor performance, experts say, is California’s uneven early education landscape. Until transitional kindergarten became available to all 4-year-olds last year, children showed up at kindergarten with a wide array of abilities and skills. Some had years of exposure to early math — either at preschool or at home — and could count, do basic arithmetic and even read a little. Others, especially low-income children, had no prior exposure to the ABCs and 123s, and lagged far behind. Even now, TK and kindergarten are optional, so some students start first grade with no previous math instruction at all.
‘Critical tipping point’
Some of those children catch up eventually, but many continue to fall further and further behind, research shows. And because math is sequential, catching up becomes harder over time, and the gap widens. Some researchers found that early math skills can even be a predictor of how well students do in high school and college.
It’s still too early to gauge the impact of transitional kindergarten on students’ long-term math performance, but so far there’s still a gap between children who’ve had exposure to math — either through preschool or at home — and those who haven’t. Low-income children are far less likely to get that early exposure, said Alice Klein, a developmental psychologist and research director at the education research firm WestEd.
“It is a critical tipping point,” Klein said. “Unless those students get intervention, the gap will widen. It’ll be harder for them to access higher-level math classes later on, and this will have implications for future job opportunities and the economic future of California. It’s a continual closing of opportunities.”
Klein supports the math screening legislation because she said it’s an effective way to identify students who are struggling and provide them with support. At least 20 other states have math screenings and have seen positive results, she said.
“I’m so happy that California is considering passing this bill,” Klein said. “It’s a great start, and could be the next step” in improving math outcomes in California.
Numbers and objects
Districts would have their choice of several screening tests to choose from, each ranging from 10 to 20 minutes long and testing children’s knowledge of basic math concepts. For example, kindergartners might be asked to look at two groups of dots and decide which group has more. Or they’d be asked to identify certain numbers and show that they understand what the numbers mean — that “three” means three objects, for example. English learners would take the test in their native languages.
The bill is authored by state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, a Democrat from San Diego, and last week passed unanimously in the Senate education committee.
Its cosponsor, EdVoice, was behind the push for phonics-based literacy instruction in California public schools. That initiative passed, but only after a long fight with the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, and English learner advocates, who argued that it didn’t give teachers enough flexibility and that it wouldn’t be effective for students whose first language isn’t English. The final version of the bill doesn’t require schools to take advantage of state-funded teacher training, but it does require them to use phonics-based classroom materials.
Too many tests?
There might be a fight over the proposed math testing as well. The California Teachers Association opposes it, as well as California County Superintendents, the Association of California School Administrators and the California Mathematics Council.
They argue that the screening is unnecessary because the state already has a comprehensive new math framework and has made other big investments in early math. It’ll take time for those investments to show results. Also, the math framework emphasizes critical thinking and real-world math problems, and the screening might be too narrow and not take into account young children’s developmental differences.
They also argue that the testing will be pointless unless the state funds tutoring to help those students who are identified as needing extra help.
Nick Johnson, an associate professor of teacher education at San Diego State University, questioned whether schools need yet another standardized test. The federal education policy No Child Left Behind, adopted in the early 2000s, focused heavily on testing, and led to few improvements, he said.
“Since No Child Left Behind testing, we’ve assumed that (standardized testing) will improve student learning,” Johnson said. “But the evidence shows that’s rarely true. Is public education in a better place now than it was 25 years ago?”
Magic of math
Rachelle Bacong has been teaching kindergarten and TK for 30 years in National City, near San Diego. She weaves math into every activity the children do. When she sets up an art project, she asks them how many chairs are at the table and how many scissors they’ll need. When she makes smoothies with them, she asks them how much juice or how many chunks of bananas they should add. When the children wash their hands, she asks them how long they spent at the sink.
They also spend a good portion of their day playing with blocks, tiles and tubes, experimenting with shapes and dimensions. Bacon’s goal is to make math fun and easy to grasp, no matter where the child is developmentally.
“Math crosses all cultures, abilities and backgrounds. It’s accessible to everyone. It’s my job to design the learning environment to make it accessible to everyone,” Bacong said. “That’s what’s so magical about it.”
She also spends time every day explicitly teaching them math, although in a way that’s blended with play. She’ll teach them songs about numbers, show them how shapes fit together, and gently guide them when a solution might not be clear. Math instruction needs to come from several angles, she said, because children’s cognitive skills develop at such different rates.
She welcomes extra help for children who need it, but she’s skeptical that a test will reflect how individual children process math concepts. She already knows how her students are faring, and she fears that screening results will be used to stigmatize children, teachers or schools.
“My fear is that it’ll focus on a child’s deficits,” Bacong said. “Math needs to be joyful, fun and developmentally appropriate. We want to set students up for success, so they’ll be prepared for whatever they’re going to be designing or building in the future.”
There are many ideas of how to improve math education in California, and some of them are good. The best ones are about curriculum improvements, not testing. I believe an “all of the above” approach will have the best chances for success for the most students. But more rounds of standardized testing is definitely not going to work. It would be a classic boondoggle. Tests are very expensive to write, distribute, grade, and report the results of, but they do nothing to improve education. Tests mostly serve to raise the income level of the people getting paid to give the test, and even though they are expensive, they are the easiest thing in the world to do. One and done. The hard part is implementing good math curriculum. As sketchy as Smarter Balance data is, it’s enough to show where the needs are and schools don’t need any more.
Teachers need to be fired, government unions protect the bad ones.
With only 37% preforming at grade level this serms like a positive step.
Correcting people’s spelling isn’t an intelligence level; it’s a social disability.
Like being a MAGAT?
Remember, spelling AND grammar, from someone critiquing education.
CITIZEN – no, helping others use words correctly is a lot like helping others know that the things they are saying are false. We can’t keep dumbing ourselves down.
It should be incumbent on all of us to help each other at least sound more intelligent. This county is known for poor education and having a penchant for lies, especially MAGAts. Correcting lies and poor spelling/grammar helps our collective intelligence as a nation.
It has become common on social media for people to post a correction by simply posting the correct spelling between asterisks, e.g.,
*country*
It’s interesting how people respond … liberals mostly respond with a like or thumbs up. RWers mostly respond with hostile resentment.
Not proofreading your comments is one of your many social disabilities … like writing ridiculous (and rightly ridiculed) comments like that.
Here is is more thought out response —
Traditional math often focuses on memorizing formulas and procedures without understanding the why. The new curricula prioritize grasping the logic behind the numbers. If a student understands how area works, they don’t need to memorize a formula; they can derive it. By changing how math is taught, educators hope to reduce math anxiety, which is a primary barrier to reaching grade-level proficiency.
Take something simple like 9×9: instead of blind memorization, a student learns that 9×9 is just “nine groups of nine.” It’s much easier to calculate ten groups of nine (90) and then simply subtract one group (90−9=81). The 3rd-grade student who is not naturally good at memorization often unnecessarily develops math anxiety, which can hinder their progress for years to come.
OMFG, now try it in English.
> the logic behind the numbers
Tell us the logic behind “the numbers”. Don’t forget to include transfinites and quaternions.
> If a student understands how area works
Tell us how area works. At what age are you planning to start teaching integral calculus?
> they don’t need to memorize a formula; they can derive it.
Tell us how to derive the area of a circle. How about the surface area of a torus? Express the results as something other than a formula.
How about finding the roots of quadratic equations?
There’s a reason that people (including mathematicians) learn formulae. They also learn how to look them up and apply them.
> Take something simple like 9×9
How about something that *isn’t* so simple, like 86 x 47?
People who haven’t learned the single-digit multiplication and addition tables are hobbled, and totally helpless without a calculator.
> It’s much easier to calculate ten groups of nine (90) and then simply subtract one group (90−9=81).
It’s MUCH easier to simply KNOW that 9×9 is 81. With that base knowledge, people can then learn shortcuts like 85^2 is 7225 (8×9 ~ 25). (Which you can derive and prove with some basic knowledge of algebra.)
> The 3rd-grade student who is not naturally good at memorization often unnecessarily develops math anxiety, which can hinder their progress for years to come.
There are plenty of ways to deal with the psychological aspects without hobbling them with a paucity of knowledge.
Finally, there is vastly more to mathematics than arithmetic. I developed a fascination with it and a lifetime passion for it (math club and math team in HS, math/compsci major in college, career as a math-savvy software developer) from excellent (and of course underpaid) public school teachers who went above and beyond to expose us to its wonders, while not neglecting the nuts and bolts, and that led me to devour all the math books in the local library and Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Recreations columns in Scientific American. Nowadays there are great math video channels like
https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown
https://www.youtube.com/c/Mathologer
https://www.youtube.com/numberphile
etc.
Schools and teachers would do well to expose their students to these resources.
BTW, it’s not clear what the “more thought out response” has to do the with article, which is about screening, not “the new curricula”. As the article says
> A student’s early math skills are the most powerful predictor of their later success in school,” said Amy Cooper, a senior advisor at EdVoice, an education nonprofit that’s cosponsoring the bill. “We’re not talking about tracking kids. There’s no labels. It’s just about getting support to students so that they can get up to grade level.”
and
> Klein supports the math screening legislation because she said it’s an effective way to identify students who are struggling and provide them with support. At least 20 other states have math screenings and have seen positive results, she said.
IF this screening works the way they say it works then it seems like a good thing, and the opposition is missing the mark, e.g.,
> “My fear is that it’ll focus on a child’s deficits,” Bacong said. “Math needs to be joyful, fun and developmentally appropriate. We want to set students up for success, so they’ll be prepared for whatever they’re going to be designing or building in the future.”
but that depends on the students having the basic skills, and the purpose of the screening is to direct resources to students who don’t.
All this talk about how wonderful Cali’s education system is until we’re hit with a huge “truth bomb”:
“Nationwide, California ranks 43rd in 4th grade math scores, behind Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and dozens of other states.”
We can no longer pretend that nothing is wrong. Fourth largest economy in the world is of no use when our education system is churning out students who have no practical math skills and cannot read or write. Imagine sending your child to a piano teacher for 13 years and has trouble playing “Chopsticks.”
As always BEES, your comment relies on a lie. No one is saying public CA’s education is “wonderful.” Why can’t you just tell the truth for once?
13 years and struggling to play Chopsticks is a simplistic and poorly thought out analogy. It’s not anywhere close to the same. It’s not like kids are graduating without the ability to add 2 plus 2 or read Dr. Seuss. Some ARE reading at a lower level than they should be, but to suggest they graduate with ZERO academic abilities is just more right wing hysteria and lies.
Ignoring the fact that so many Cali public school students failing isn’t the answer. I find it hard to believe that our state is okay with our students doing worse than those in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and the list goes on and on. Behind Mississippi? Really? How can that be? Feel free to chime in….crickets!
BEES – your lying and deflection makes you sound astoundingly stupid. I have never said I am OK with our poor education system. Please learn to separate fact from fiction.
As for CA “doing worse than those in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi,” that is a lie. Where did you get that information? Per US News (a well known education ranking site), CA is #24, TX is #25, AL is #44 and MS is #34 in general education ranking.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education
Now, granted MS recently has surpassed all those state in 4th grade reading and math. It is also still ranked almost dead last in overall places for kids (https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2025/06/11/mississippi-worst-for-kids-education-getting-better/84148271007/). The education though is improving and that’s awesome, but to say CA is worse that those states in education is just another one of your blatant, ignorant LIES.
Finally, the “crickets” in the same sentence as asking me to “chime in” is just brainless. How am I avoiding answering a question that hasn’t even been published at the time of you asking it?
Of course though, YOU will probably be “crickets” and totally avoid responding with actual cites/facts to back your lies. Or will you? Up to you to prove yourself or just run away as usual.
BeeKnee further demonstrating the RepubliCONS have devolved into nothing more than liars and purveyors of misinformation. BeeKnee seeming a little dark today – perhaps the boxed wine was warm? Perhaps you should go live in Texas, Alabama, or Mississippi – all of those places are much nicer than Lamepoc.
Hey bozo, you’re responding to an article about how people are trying to address the problem, so who is ignoring it and who thinks that ignoring it is the answer? And you can’t ask people to chime in and then say “crickets” in the same sentence … not if you don’t want people to dismiss you as a clown.
Cali is in Colombia. What does that have to do with us?
Why does BeeKnee believe anyone wants to hear weird accusations, or get elemntary, unwanted and smarmy advice from someone who believes Lompoc is tourist destination?
California public schools have been performing poorly in all subjects. It’s been a steady downward trend for 20 years. It will take a complete overhaul of the teachers union, fat school district administrations, curricula, and parental involvement to right the ship. Until then, nothing will change.
Your schooling many decades ago was pretty obviously a failure, but you shouldn’t project that onto the present day.
If you give them each an iPad, why should they need to learn math?
There’s an APP for that.