The math crisis narrative is now familiar: On the Nation’s Report Card in 2024, only two in five fourth graders were proficient in grade-level math. By eighth grade, proficiency drops to just one in four. Even in adulthood, too many Americans are struggling with the basics: only one in three adults can perform only simple calculations with whole numbers or money.
America’s math problem isn’t new. The gap between the U.S. and its peer nations has persisted since the first International Mathematics Study was conducted in the mid-1960s. For far too many students, math instruction in America isn’t working, and past approaches that worked for some left many others behind.
The stakes have never been higher. In a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence, data science, quantum computing, and other advanced technologies, getting math instruction right is both a moral and economic imperative.
As leaders of the nation’s two largest school districts, together employing more than 100,000 educators and serving more than 1.5 million students, we know the U.S. can and must do better. If we care about preparing our students for the technologically advanced world they’re about to inherit, we’ve got to root math instruction in the research about how kids actually learn math.
Both our school districts are betting on a new kind of math classroom that gets kids experimenting with math concepts, discussing problem-solving strategies with their peers, and learning math in a way that will serve them for life, not just standardized tests.
When many of today’s adults were in school, math class meant memorizing times tables and procedures.
Many adults recall the steps of long division, but not why it works. This “procedural understanding” is important, but on its own, it is fragile, easy to forget, and hard to apply in new situations.
What sticks is “conceptual understanding,” knowing not just how to solve a problem, but why a method works. Research shows that conceptual understanding, paired with procedural fluency, develops reasoning and problem-solving skills that build on one another over time. It takes both conceptual and procedural understanding to build skills that last a lifetime.
Conceptual understanding does not come from memorization. Most children cannot learn it by watching a teacher perform equations on the whiteboard. Children learn math by actually doing math. They gain a conceptual understanding of math only when they experiment with it themselves, talk about it with one another, and discover together what works and what doesn’t. Therefore, if we want all kids to have strong mathematical reasoning and problem-solving skills, math class has to look different.
That’s why New York City Public Schools and the L.A. Unified School District have adopted a high-quality curriculum designed to teach math the way kids learn it best. We have invested meaningfully not just in a high-quality math curriculum, but also in professional development and teacher coaching.
The effort is paying off.
Though still in its early stages, NYC Solves is showing promising results. Across the city, state math scores rose 3.5 percentage points in 2025, with even greater gains (4.6 points) for Black students. More than 70% of teachers and nearly 90% of principals reported that the job-embedded coaching and support we’ve provided have been helpful for implementation.
Teachers’ confidence is also growing, including when it comes to effectively supporting students with disabilities and multilingual learners, and our school and district administrators are observing a tangible shift, with students more engaged and talking about math.
For two consecutive years, every tested grade in L.A. Unified saw improvement in math scores compared with the previous year. For 2024-25, the percentage of students who met or exceeded the standard increased by nearly 4 percentage points on our primary measure, the Smarter Balanced Assessment.
In contrast to national patterns, LAUSD students across all grade levels have surpassed pre-pandemic levels and now have the highest math achievement since the adoption of the Smarter Balanced Assessment in 2015.
The math crisis in America should fuel us to redefine what an American math education looks like. If educators want students to be prepared for highly skilled, high-paying jobs here in the U.S., we have to engage with this problem like mathematicians — with curiosity, perseverance, and a genuine desire to solve it.
Aviles-Ramos is chancellor of New York City Public Schools and who has served as a teacher, principal, superintendent, chief of staff, and deputy chancellor. Gonez is a Los Angeles Unified School District Board Member for Board District 6 who has served as a teacher and policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Education.
