Ohio rated 'weak' on math elementary level policy instruction by new report
Ohio is 'weak' on policies to strengthen elementary teachers' math instruction, according to a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Ohio is one of 25 states that received a 'weak' rating by the NCTQ report that was released Tuesday. Only Alabama received a strong rating and seven states earned an unacceptable rating — Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, according to the report.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
The states earned their ratings based on these five policies —
Set specific, detailed math standards for teacher preparation programs.
Review teacher preparation programs to ensure they are providing robust math instruction.
Adopt a strong elementary math licensure test.
Require districts to select high-quality math curricula and support skillful implementation.
Provide professional learning and ongoing support for teachers to sustain effective math instruction.
A weak rating means a state has some of those policies in place, but not all. Ohio was strong in teacher preparation programs and received a moderate ranking in having a strong elementary math licensure program, according to the report.
'Ohio's made significant investments in professional learning for teachers in reading, but much fewer investments in financially supporting professional learning in math instruction,' said NCTQ President Heather Peske.
This past school year was the first year Ohio school districts were required to teach the science of reading curriculum, 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.
Some of the Ohio's 2023 two-year budget went toward the science of reading — $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.
'You can do two things at once,' Peske said. 'It's really important to kids that they have strong reading instruction and strong math instruction, so it's high time that Ohio focused on improving math instruction, especially at the elementary level.'
Student math scores predict future earnings better than reading scores, Peske said.
'Strong math skills add up to better reading scores, stronger college readiness, and eventually even higher earnings for students,' she said.
Ohio math scores are below pre-pandemic levels, according to the Nation's 2024 Report Card. 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.
In 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.
'If we want to improve student math outcomes, we really need to better prepare and support elementary teachers in their math instruction,' Peske said.
Ohio lawmakers are paying attention to student math scores. Ohio Senate Bill 19 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.
The bill has had three hearings so far in the Senate Education Committee.
Follow Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
07-08-2025
- Newsweek
Fact Check: Did Trump Say Kids to Only Attend School 6 Months Out of Year?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Rumors are circulating social media that President Donald Trump has said children should only attend school six months of the year. The Trump administration has embarked upon major changes to American education. In March, 2025, Trump signed an executive order to begin "eliminating" the Department of Education (DOE), marking a major change in the federal oversight of schools. A litany of concerns about the state of American education was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption that followed. A 2024 report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a research group at Arizona State University, found that the average American student is "less than halfway to full academic recovery" from the impact of the pandemic. In January, a report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that the reading and math skills of fourth and eighth grade students have declined in multiple states to below the national average. However, in June of this year, Gen Z students reported their most positive evaluations of schools in years. The standard U.S. academic or school year can vary slightly depending on the state, but the majority of states require 180 days per school year. The state with the lowest mandated school days is Colorado, which requires 160, while Kansas requires 186, according to the Pew Research Center. The Claim On TikTok, claims that Trump is trying to change the school year, making it only six months, have swept across the app. The claims differ slightly in different videos. Some social media users claim that Trump has announced this change, while others claim that he is actively trying to pass a law. One video, shared to TikTok by the account @uiort05 features a talking head of a man over images of Trump. That video has the text overlay "Donald Trump just announced kids only attend school 6 months Out of the year," and goes on to count six months of the school year as being from August to January. That video has been viewed over 200,000 times as of reporting. The audio of that TikTok has been widely shared across the platform. Another video, from the account @solyapp, claims "Donald Trump is tryna pass a law where kids only have to go to school for six months." That video has been viewed over 400,000 times as of reporting. Both of those videos were made by adults, not school aged children. The Facts The claim is false. There has been no wider reporting about the post, which would be the case if it were real. There is no record of Trump saying anything about changing the school year. The minimum amount of time that school must be in session is set by individual states, not the president. As it stands, children attend school for roughly 180 days each year. Per day, that amounts to six months. In practice, factoring in weekends and breaks for holidays, the total number of days is spread across approximately nine months, with the school year generally beginning either in late August or early September and ending in late May or early June. The TikTok from @uiort05 states in the description, "disclaimer for entertainment purposes only," indicating that it is false. The Ruling False. Trump has not said anything about changing the school year to six months. There is no evidence of the claims. The initial claim came from a source that is not reputable. FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
Los Angeles Times
04-08-2025
- Los Angeles Times
The White House intends to slash the education safety net
Donald Trump has it in for public education. Don't be fooled by last week's release of DOE billions for the coming school year. Education Secretary Linda McMahon claimed that since the surprise decision in late June to withhold the funding, the government vetted all the programs to make sure they met President Trump's approval. In reality, the White House was inundated by protests from both sides of the aisle, from teachers, parents and school superintendents all over the country. A week earlier, 24 states had filed suit against the administration for reneging on already appropriated education funding. The reprieve will be temporary if the president has his way. Shuttering the Department of Education, and its funding priorities, was a marquee Trump campaign promise. Already, about 2,000 DOE staff members have been fired or quit under duress. That's half the agency's personnel. On July 14, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction against the firings as lawsuits protesting the firings work their way through the courts. In essence, the ruling gives Trump a green light to destroy the department by executive fiat now, even if the Supreme Court later decides only Congress has that power. The high court majority did not spell out its reasoning. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, deplored the 'untold harm' that will result from the ruling, including 'delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.' McMahon touts what she considers her agency's 'final mission': ending federal funding for school districts that cannot prove that they have eliminated diversity, equity and exclusion initiatives, or what Trump calls 'critical race theory and transgender insanity.' The stakes are high: What's at issue is the withdrawal of nearly $30 billion in aid. The DEI threat rejects a 60-year bipartisan understanding — based on Title 1 of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act to the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act — that Washington should invest federal taxpayer dollars in closing the achievement gap that separates privileged youth from poor and minority students and children living in poverty. Those funds support smaller classes, after-school programs and tutoring. Research shows that Title 1 can claim credit for disadvantaged students' improved performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — NAEP — the nation's K-12 report card, which the administration is also targeting. The most innovative programs, including the Harlem Children's Zone preschool, charter schools and after-school and summer-vacation programs and one-on-one, face-to-face learning through Tutoring Chicago, have recorded especially dramatic results. Support for students with disabilities would also become history, along with the requirement that schools deliver 'free and appropriate education' to youngsters with special needs. That would have a disastrous impact on these students, historically dismissed as hopeless, because needs-focused special education can change the arc of their lives. In demanding that districts 'prove' they have eliminated DEI as a condition for receiving federal funds, McMahon claims that focusing exclusively on 'meaningful learning,' not 'divisive [DEI] programs,' is the only way to improve achievement. She's flat-out wrong. DEI initiatives, while sometimes over the top, have generally proven to boost academic outcomes by reducing discrimination. That's logical — when students feel supported and valued, they do better in school. Wiping out efforts designed to promote racial and economic fairness is a sure way to end progress toward eliminating the achievement gap. Clearly, the studies that show the gains made by DEI programs are irrelevant to an administration whose decisions are driven by impulse and ideology. Its threats to the gold standard test of American education, NAEP — an assessment that's about as nonpartisan as forecasting the weather — gives the game away. If you don't know how well the public schools are doing, it's child's play to script a narrative of failure. Tucked into Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a nationwide school voucher program, paid for by a 100% tax deduction for donations of up to $1,700 to organizations that hand out educational scholarships. There's no cap on the program, which could cost as much as $50 billion a year, and no expiration date. The voucher provision potentially decimates public schools, which will lose federal dollars. Since private schools can decide which students to admit and which to kick out, the gap between the haves and haves-less will widen. Students with special needs, as well as those whose families cannot afford to participate, will be out of luck. What's more, vouchers don't deliver the benefits the advocates promise. Studies from Louisiana, where 'low-quality private schools' have proliferated with the state's blessing, as well as the District of Columbia and Indiana, show that students who participate in voucher plans do worse, especially in math, than their public-school peers. Michigan State education policy professor Joshua Cowen, who has spent two decades studying these programs, reached the startling conclusion that voucher plans have led to worse student outcomes than the COVID pandemic. Vouchers 'promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety,' Cohen concludes. 'They can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.' The defenders of public education are fighting back. Twenty states have gone to federal court to challenge the Department of Education's demand that they eliminate their DEI programs. 'The Trump administration's threats to withhold critical education funding due to the use of these initiatives are not only unlawful, but harmful to our children, families, and schools,' said Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Andrea Joy Campbell, announcing the lawsuit. The White House may well lose this lawsuit. But litigation consumes time, and the administration keeps finding ways to evade judicial rulings, sometimes with the help of the Supreme Court. It could be years before the judges reach final decisions in these cases, and by then the damage will have been done. That's why it is up to Congress to do its job — to represent its constituents, who have consistently supported compensatory education programs and special education programs in public schools, resisting the siren song of vouchers — and to insist that the administration obey the dictates of legislation that's been on the books for decades. Will a supine Congress rouse itself to protect public education? After all, that's what the rule of law — and public education — requires. David Kirp is professor emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books on education, including 'The Sandbox Investment,' 'Improbable Scholars' and 'The Education Debate.'
Fox News
29-07-2025
- Fox News
The war on reading: Children in the crosshairs
When people talk about war, they picture overseas battlefields, not elementary school hallways. But America is embroiled in a civilian crisis – a war that's quietly destroying children's brains and our future. The battleground is our public school system. The casualties are the minds, dreams and potential of an entire generation. Leaving aside the tremendous indoctrination in our country's schools in the alphabet (LGBTQIA++) ideologies, the actual alphabet has suffered. Over the past century, America's literacy rates have cratered. A new study flags that 28% of U.S. adults perform at the lowest literacy level – around third-grade reading level. Worse still, the share of adults reading below a sixth-grade level clocks in at around 54%. Our kids fare even worse. NAEP reading scores dropped in 2024 – fourth- and eighth-graders lost two more points since 2022, deepening a trend that began before the pandemic marking the lowest reading proficiency in 32 years. That's not a blip – it's a nosedive. The fallout: weaker critical thinking, poorer job prospects and citizens unable to parse even basic news headlines. And while we're losing ground in literacy, we are paying a lot more money. Inflation-adjusted revenue for K–12 rose about 25% per student from 2002 to 2020. In 2020–21, public schools spent a whopping $16,280 per pupil, culminating in a staggering $927 billion overall. What a waste! The extra money built the bureaucratic administration while learning outcomes declined. It's like upgrading your Ford to a Ferrari with no engine. Despite billions spent on tech to teach literacy, reading is plummeting. Only 42% of 9-year-olds and 17% of 13-year-olds read for pleasure "almost daily." This marks the lowest in 40 years. We gave them Kindles and Chromebooks but forgot to court their curiosity. One in three eighth-graders can't read a textbook well enough to pass a history quiz. And that's just "basic," which isn't what basic used to be, either. Indeed, the "educators" degraded the very word "proficiency" so they could pile a bunch of lower achievers onto it to see if it floated. Then, to cover their tracks, they shifted the national conversation from "What do our kids know?" to "How do they feel?" They prioritized soft skills over hard knowledge. Participation trophies replaced performance incentives and inflated grades substituted for real learning. Kids left high school more emotionally confused than intellectually prepared. They even coined a new term, "adulting," because mature behavior became such a foreign concept. The schools have been producing eternal children for too long. They're also teaching kids to outsource thinking. (Just Google it.) Artificial intelligence and calculators might help with homework, but they also train in dependency. Students memorize less, understand less and rely more. The question becomes whether America can afford to outsource our intellect. The U.S. once led the world in innovation, from the cotton gin to the traffic light. Now most of our students are meandering toward complacency and mediocrity. Our unlimited imaginations were fueled by reading, not by consuming the visual pablum of our streaming services. This isn't a partisan jab. NAEP scores were falling before COVID, before any woke curriculum debates, before anyone warned about "too much technology." They've been falling since we started the Department of Education and since schooling began. Pandemic interruptions worsened things, but the rot was already there. If we don't reverse course, we're writing an obituary for American exceptionalism. We may be eclipsed by a world that takes competition seriously. There are simple steps to regain that entrepreneurial spirit that provided the engine for nearly the greatest triumph in human history. Instead of sending our healthy children into institutions that essentially mimic prisons, revert back to trusting children's intuitive and curious character – their natural drive to learn. Parents' voices must matter more in our schools. Parental involvement is the number one predictor of academic achievement. They must be included in any dialogue about children's learning. We must teach phonics instead of the failed "whole word reading method" that is pushed in our schools. Standards should be clearly defined: if you can't read above eighth-grade level, you don't graduate. No more participation awards for mediocrity. Show kids that effort matters, not just feelings. Money should flow to classrooms: textbooks, tutors, coaches – not more diversity officers. Streamline school budgets and cut costs to superfluous administrator overhead. Invest in logic, rhetoric and debate. Teaching kids how to argue and dissect arguments will train them to think deeply, which beats shallow scrolling every time. Make books sexy again. Family reading nights. Library trips. Book "flirtation," not forced indoctrination. We've effectively taught kids to edit their selfies, but not their sentences. We aren't doomed – but we're dangerously adrift. The war on reading – the war on thinking – is real, but the front line is in living rooms and school board meetings. America's destiny isn't lost. It lies in the courage to demand more – for our children, and our country. America's future shouldn't be scripted by bureaucracy – but by bright, curious, literate kids. Let's fight back.
