A student concentrating and taking notes while working in a classroom with her classmates. (Getty Images)
As Ohio math scores continue to be below pre-pandemic levels, a proposed bill would bring math interventions to Ohio school districts that score below certain proficiency standards.
Ohio Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, recently introduced Senate Bill 19 which would require school districts or individual schools to come up with a math achievement improvement plan if they don’t have at least 52% of students receive a proficient score in math comprehension. A student’s comprehension is rated at one of five levels of proficiency: limited, basic, proficient, accomplished, and advanced.
The bill would also require every district to create a math improvement and monitoring plan for students who qualify for math intervention services.
During the 2022-23 school year, almost a third of Ohio students scored “limited” on their math proficiency, Brenner said Wednesday during his sponsor testimony.
“Clearly, a disturbing number of Ohio children are in need of significant and prolonged academic intervention before it is too late to address their desperately-needed learning deficiency,” Brenner said to the Senate Education Committee.
He introduced a similar bill in the last General Assembly and it passed unanimously in the Senate, but died in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.
“It is still needed to address the critical need for learning acceleration for Ohio’s students most in need of additional academic support,” Brenner said in his sponsor testimony.
Under the bill, schools would be required to develop math improvement and monitoring plans for each student that qualifies for math intervention services within 60 days after getting the student’s third grade assessment math results.
A math improvement and monitoring plan would identify the student’s “specific math deficiencies,” describe the additional instructional services they will receive, offer a chance for their parent or guardian to be involved, outline a monitoring process and offer high-dosage tutoring at least three days a week.
Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee have enacted math legislation similar to what Ohio is proposing and those states have seen their math scores improve, said Lindsey Henderson, math policy director for ExcelinEd.
“It’s never too late to get policy in place to move the needle on math improvement,” she said. “It’s really exciting to see states really taking a leap and going after it like they did literacy.”
A lot of education policy at the state level has focused on reading in recent years.
Ohio’s 2023 budget included provisions that are going toward implementing the science of reading, which is based on decades of research that shows how the human brain learns to read and incorporates phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Forty states and the District of Columbia have passed or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading instruction since 2013, according to Education Week.
“Reading has taken a lot of oxygen, for good reason,” Henderson said. “Reading and writing is a skill you can’t be an engaged citizen without, but the next most important skill is going to be mathematics. … We would never say I’m not a literacy person, that’s not socially acceptable. But to say that I’m not a math person is a socially acceptable thing to say, and we’re really trying to change that narrative.”
S.B. 19 is not just limited to math. The bill would also require school districts to provide evidence-based academic intervention services to students based on their English language arts state assessment.
National Report Card
Ohio math and reading scores continue to be below pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest report from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The Nation’s 2024 Report Card was released this week and the only increase at the national level was a slight bump in fourth grade math. There was no significant change with eighth grade math and scores declined in four and eighth grade reading.
Approximately 235,000 fourth-graders from 6,100 schools and 230,000 eighth-graders from 5,400 schools participated in the 2024 math and reading assessments between January and March of last year.
For Ohio, the average fourth-grade math score was 239, two points higher than the national average and one point higher than the state’s fourth grade math scores in 2022. The scale for NAEP scores is 0-500.
The state’s average eighth-grade math score was 279, seven points higher than the national average and three points higher than the state’s 2022 test.
Ohio’s average fourth-grade reading score was 216, two points higher than the national average, but three points less than the state average in 2022.
The state’s average eighth-grade reading score was 260, three points higher than the national average, but two points lower than Ohio’s score in 2022.
Aaron Churchill, Ohio Research Director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, called the state’s NAEP scores a disappointment.
“Overall, these results indicate that far too many Ohio students are struggling to master core math and reading skills,” he said in a statement.
Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky.
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