Eight things every provost should know about the K-12 math debate
June 23, 2025, By Alexa Silverman, Senior Director, Student Experience and Well-Being Research
Over the past few years, EAB has had countless conversations with higher ed leaders about the growing achievement gap in quantitative skills. Many described students lacking basic math knowledge, like division with decimals or adding fractions.
To understand why math has been such a sticking point in academic recovery, we reached out to our K-12 partners to learn how to kickstart recovery before students reach college. We also took a deep dive into the scientific literature on how students learn math.
We learned not only proven pedagogical strategies for K-12 teachers, but also how lasting the impacts of math gaps can be on students’ lifelong success. While there isn’t a silver-bullet solution, schools can help students recover with an intensive, systematic approach to screening for skill gaps and re-training students on missed skills. Here’s what academic leaders need to know.
1. Two in every five eighth graders are behind in math. The percentage of eighth-grade students scoring below “basic” achievement on NAEP (the “nation’s scorecard” test of math proficiency) rose from 26% in 2013 to 39% in 2024. Research shows that math skill gaps only multiply with time: these eighth graders will arrive on your campus in a few years with an even greater gap to college-level math.
2. Covid-19 and smartphones don’t explain the gap. The US has the fastest-growing math achievement gap among PISA countries, even accounting for covid-related school closures. Students worldwide also spent more time looking at screens, just like American kids, but it didn’t have the same detrimental effect on math performance.
3. Math gaps aren’t just a headache for STEM faculty—they’re a roadblock to lifelong success. Students who do better in math are not only more likely to graduate high school and college (including after accounting for demographic factors), they’re also more likely to get good, high-paying jobs.
4. We know how to define math proficiency, but there’s plenty of uncertainty and debate about the right way to teach it. The National Research Council found five “strands” that add up to math proficiency: conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, problem solving, adaptive reasoning, and productive disposition (i.e., seeing the purpose and value of learning math). Where there’s still a live debate is in math pedagogy: how we teach. Is it better for students to learn by exploring on their own, or through direct instruction? There’s also a lot of imprecise science on math teaching: the majority of research doesn’t meet rigorous design standards. And furthermore, many K-12 district leaders we spoke to cited news articles and opinion pieces to justify the way they teach math.
5. This isn’t a call to revamp curricula all over again. Most states and districts use Common Core curricula that include all five of the NRC’s “strands”. Once again, our focus lands squarely on pedagogy.
6. Schools need to do systematic skill recovery. Most don’t. A strong core curriculum won’t make up for missed skills. Small group intervention works best when fewer than half have learning gaps, and many schools see math skill gaps among over 70% of their students. Schools have seen the most promising results through a process of systematic screening, skill intervention, progress monitoring, and doubling down where monitoring shows little progress.
7. We know which skills to focus on for recovery. Empirical research has validated a subset of math skills that are most predictive of future success. By screening for these skills each trimester of each year, and targeting these skills through a class-wide intervention protocol, schools can achieve sustainability and scalability in student math recovery.
8. There’s more higher education institutions can do to support tomorrow’s teachers. While teacher development alone won’t close math skill gaps, it’s still imperative for colleges to make sure those gaps don’t persist in the people teaching math tomorrow. Only 15% of undergraduate education programs give future teachers enough grounding in math content. If there’s one immediate next step for college leaders, it’s to look closely at teacher education and make sure future educators, too, know the science of math and how to help students get up to speed.
Even with these lessons and strategies in place, educators still have a lot of work to do to get students ready for success in college and beyond. The student readiness crisis will impact education for years to come. But by working together across K-12, higher education, and industry, we can collaborate to solve this crisis and help fulfill the promise of education for all students.
EAB’s Student Readiness Resource Center brings together research and recommendations from across EAB and Seramount to provide K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and employers with additional insight into the readiness challenge and its implications across the student lifecycle. Explore our range of resources on academic, socioemotional, financial, and career readiness.
