{"id":193046,"date":"2026-02-25T13:16:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193046\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T13:16:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:16:06","slug":"californias-reading-reforms-drive-push-for-better-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193046\/","title":{"rendered":"California’s reading reforms drive push for better math"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dan Walters<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tMath Coach Erica Butkiewicz teaches a math lesson to sixth-grade students at Pioneer School in Delano on March 5, 2025. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters\/CatchLight Local<\/p>\n

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Last year, after decades of often bitter debate, California took an important step<\/a> toward raising the abysmal levels of reading ability among many of its public school students.<\/p>\n

The Legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom \u2014 who struggles with dyslexia \u2014 signed legislation that encourages phonics when teaching reading <\/a>to elementary school students.<\/p>\n

It stopped short of a phonics mandate, which would have been fully justified, to temper opposition from educators still clinging to discredited methods, such as \u201cwhole language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather, Assembly Bill 1454<\/a> requires the state to provide training for teachers and instructional materials centered on phonics, or the \u201cscience of reading,\u201d to use its current name. It would still allow local schools and their teachers to use other methods.<\/p>\n

The Legislature and Newsom acted when the low reading skills of California\u2019s kids, as determined by nationwide testing, became too obvious to ignore.<\/p>\n

Reading comprehension among California\u2019s fourth-graders ranked 37th among the states in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress<\/a>. Just 29% of the state\u2019s students showed proficiency, down two percentage points from 2022.<\/p>\n

Raising reading achievement is vital because it is the precursor to all other forms of learning. Thus, California\u2019s low reading levels may be partially responsible for the state\u2019s equally unacceptably low ranking on mathematics; just 39% of fourth graders were proficient<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why a new effort to upgrade math skills via legislation is \u2014 or at least should be \u2014 high on the Capitol\u2019s must-do list. State Sen. Dr. Akilah Weber Pierson<\/a>, a San Diego Democrat, introduced Senate Bill 1067<\/a>, backed by education reformers who supported the phonics bill.<\/p>\n

SB 1067 would require local school districts to screen primary school students for difficulty in math skills as a first step toward a statewide effort to upgrade instruction and comprehension.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia is facing a real and urgent math achievement crisis, and we cannot afford to wait until students are already far behind to act,\u201d the senator told EdSource<\/a>, an education website that first revealed the new effort. \u201cWe know the achievement gap in math is evident as early as kindergarten. We also know that students who miss foundational math skills in grades K through 2 rarely catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weber Pierson comes by her interest in improving education naturally. Her mother, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, was a persistent advocate of no-nonsense education while serving in the Legislature, often clashing with the state\u2019s entrenched education establishment \u2014 even the powerful California Teachers Association.<\/p>\n

Weber grew up as a sharecropper\u2019s daughter in rigidly segregated Arkansas but moved to California with her family in 1951, earned a doctorate and was a college teacher before running for the Legislature.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t fear that I\u2019m going to get lynched at night or that someone is going to bomb my house. I don\u2019t fear that,\u201d Weber told CalMatters in a 2017 profile<\/a>. \u201cWhat my predecessors stood for and fought for was a whole lot harder than what I\u2019m fighting for today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oddly, Southern states have lately been the most active in owning up to their educational deficiencies. Mississippi\u2019s success in improving reading skills inspired other states to improve reading. Alabama, meanwhile, has done the same vis-\u00e0-vis math skills, beginning with screening students to spot those in danger of failing, as EdSource notes.<\/p>\n

Weber Pierson\u2019s bill would confront math in the same way. The state Board of Education would appoint a panel to develop a list of screening instruments, leading to statewide adoption of screening.<\/p>\n

\u201cScreening is the right first step because you cannot effectively address a problem you have not identified,\u201d Weber Pierson told EdSource. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a process that California should adopt for all of its persistent issues, rather than the scattergun approach officialdom tends to take.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dan Walters, CalMatters Math Coach Erica Butkiewicz teaches a math lesson to sixth-grade students at Pioneer School…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,7898,964,4730,3478,22334],"class_list":{"0":"post-193046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-children-and-youth","12":"tag-commentary","13":"tag-k-12-education","14":"tag-legislator-card","15":"tag-public-schools"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}