California’s reading reforms drive push for better math skills in early grades

Last year, after decades of often bitter debate, California took an important step toward raising the abysmal levels of reading ability among many of its public school students.

The Legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom — who struggles with dyslexia — signed legislation that encourages phonics when teaching reading to elementary school students.

It stopped short of a phonics mandate, which would have been fully justified, to temper opposition from educators still clinging to discredited methods, such as “whole language.”

Rather, Assembly Bill 1454 requires the state to provide training for teachers and instructional materials centered on phonics, or the “science of reading,” to use its current name. It would still allow local schools and their teachers to use other methods.

The Legislature and Newsom acted when the low reading skills of California’s kids, as determined by nationwide testing, became too obvious to ignore.

Reading comprehension among California’s fourth-graders ranked 37^th among the states in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Just 29% of the state’s students showed proficiency, down two percentage points from 2022.

Raising reading achievement is vital because it is the precursor to all other forms of learning. Thus, California’s low reading levels may be partially responsible for the state’s equally unacceptably low ranking on mathematics; just 39% of fourth graders were proficient.

That’s why a new effort to upgrade math skills via legislation is — or at least should be — high on the Capitol’s must-do list. State Sen. Dr. Akilah Weber Pierson, a San Diego Democrat, introduced Senate Bill 1067, backed by education reformers who supported the phonics bill.

SB 1067 would require local school districts to screen primary school students for difficulty in math skills as a first step toward a statewide effort to upgrade instruction and comprehension.

“California is facing a real and urgent math achievement crisis, and we cannot afford to wait until students are already far behind to act,” the senator told EdSource, an education website that first revealed the new effort. “We know the achievement gap in math is evident as early as kindergarten. We also know that students who miss foundational math skills in grades K through 2 rarely catch up.”

Weber Pierson comes by her interest in improving education naturally. Her mother, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, was a persistent advocate of no-nonsense education while serving in the Legislature, often clashing with the state’s entrenched education establishment — even the powerful California Teachers Association.

Weber grew up as a sharecropper’s daughter in rigidly segregated Arkansas but moved to California with her family in 1951, earned a doctorate and was a college teacher before running for the Legislature.

“I don’t fear that I’m going to get lynched at night or that someone is going to bomb my house. I don’t fear that,” Weber told CalMatters in a 2017 profile. “What my predecessors stood for and fought for was a whole lot harder than what I’m fighting for today.”

Oddly, Southern states have lately been the most active in owning up to their educational deficiencies. Mississippi’s success in improving reading skills inspired other states to improve reading. Alabama, meanwhile, has done the same vis-à-vis math skills, beginning with screening students to spot those in danger of failing, as EdSource notes.

Weber Pierson’s bill would confront math in the same way. The state Board of Education would appoint a panel to develop a list of screening instruments, leading to statewide adoption of screening.

“Screening is the right first step because you cannot effectively address a problem you have not identified,” Weber Pierson told EdSource.

It’s a process that California should adopt for all of its persistent issues, rather than the scattergun approach officialdom tends to take.