The great American math collapse

We've erased two decades of progress in math.

Drilling times tables may not be a fun way to learn math, but at least it gets the job done. (Photo by Antoine Boureau/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)

For decades, kids were getting better at math. The best measure of this — the National Assessment of Educational Progress Long-Term Trend assessment — displays a long climb from 1978 until 2012, when 13-year-old math performance peaked. By 2025, we had wiped out over three decades of gains and were roughly back to where kids were performing in the mid-1990s.

Relative to the literacy crisis — which has spurred endless think pieces, journalism, and legislative responses — declining math performance has received relatively little attention. But they’re part of the same narrative.

You’ve probably heard some version of the simple story about how America messed up reading:

It starts with a movement of educators arguing that the traditional approach was wrong, that instead of emphasizing phonics — which involves boring things like drilling letter sounds and explaining how letter combinations work — schools should embrace a “whole language” approach to learning.

Instead of doing drills, students were encouraged to look at picture books and guess the words from context clues.¹ The hope was that this would inculcate not just the skill of reading but the love of reading.

This did not work.

Reading scores declined precipitously until word got out. Excellent investigative journalism brought about mass awareness of how reading was (or wasn’t) being taught. Since then, 42 states (and D.C.) have adopted new laws and policy changes demanding that reading be taught in line with best practices.

Math education went through a similar trajectory: