Last week, I spent the afternoon with state education leaders, researchers, legislative champions, and practitioners from across the country for a working group focused on math state policy. The energy in the room was infectious—the policy landscape in math is more active than it has been in years.
Yet, the core question underneath every breakout discussion was the same one I’ve been asking since my time at the Tennessee Department of Education nearly a decade ago: What happens when we graduate more students, reduce barriers to postsecondary entry, and yet still find significant gaps in math readiness?
In 2015, Tennessee launched the Tennessee Promise program, making it the first state in the country to offer free community and technical college—a bold, bipartisan bet that removing the financial barrier would change outcomes for students. And in many ways it did. Enrollment climbed. More students showed up.
But more than 70% of students entering Tennessee’s community colleges that fall weren’t ready for college-level math. The state removed many of the barriers to entry, but too many students arrived without the math competencies they needed to immediately earn credit.
Tennessee didn’t abandon the plan. Instead, the state restructured how it handled math preparation, shifting students into co-requisite support models rather than standalone remedial courses. But a decade of follow-up research found that graduation rates didn’t increase as a result of this restructuring, and the lowest-achieving students were more likely to drop out.
The lesson: Math skill deficits are persistent and start far earlier than the first day of college. That’s why the current momentum in math policy matters—and why it must be sustained.
In 2026, States are Taking Math Seriously
With virtually every state adopting science of reading policies, math has lagged behind. About 10 states had comprehensive policies in place ahead of 2026 and more are now moving in that direction. Unlike reading, as described by Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, there is not yet a national blueprint for scaling math reform, making state professional development investment especially critical.
- Georgia: Georgia’s Math Matters Act (H.B. 1030) is awaiting Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) signature. The bill includes automatic enrollment in advanced math courses and requires math instruction for 60 minutes per school day in K-5. The bill also requires Educator Prep Programs (EPPs) to focus on evidence-based math instruction and intervention.
- New Mexico: Under S.B. 29, signed by Gov. New Mexico Lujan Grisham (D) in March, New Mexico will develop a statewide math instructional leadership framework to support professional learning (PL). The law directs local education agencies (LEAs) to develop math PL plans, requires screening for K-3 students with math plans for those not on grade level, and mandates that Educator Prep Programs (EPPs) must strengthen math-focused coursework.
- Other early adopters, like Alabama, Kentucky, and Louisiana, are investing in coaching infrastructure, high-quality instructional materials and intervention, and algebra access.
Go deeper: Our analysis of the 2026 legislative session shows that the top trending state policy priorities in math are automatic enrollment in advanced math, screening and intervention systems, and evidence-based professional development. Reach out to us to learn more about our research subscription.
State education leaders and policymakers increasingly view math policy as a system design challenge. Proposed legislation aims to break math’s role as a “social sorting machine” (as described by New Classrooms’ Joel Rose during last week’s working group) through skill-level diagnostics and differentiated pathways, rethinking the delivery model rather than layering new approaches onto old structures, and bringing durable skills fully into rigorous math education rather than treating them as add-ons.
Tensions remain:Standards revisions are happening across multiple states, but there is not yet the national coherence in math that would help the market respond at scale. High school pathways are being reimagined, but the risk of creating new forms of tracking—even unintentionally—requires ongoing vigilance. Educator capacity remains a binding constraint: teacher shortages, uneven coaching infrastructure, and the genuine difficulty of shifting instructional practice all slow the translation from policy to classroom.
Districts Are Leading, Too—and Showing What it Takes to Drive Change
State policy sets the conditions. But learning happens in classrooms every day, and the districts responsible for that instruction are not waiting for states to catch up.
New research from the National Math Improvement Project (NMIP) documents what pre-implementation looked like in two of the nation’s largest urban districts. In both districts, the year before a new math curriculum launch—AKA “Year 0”—proved more consequential than the launch year itself. [K-12 Dive]
- New York City Public Schools: NYC Solves began with Algebra I across 260 high schools—not because that was the easiest place to start, but because the urgency was greatest there and coherence was most lacking. Schools across the system were using a patchwork of materials, sometimes varying from classroom to classroom. Year 0 was about building shared language, aligned professional learning, and communities of practice before the curriculum arrived, so that when it did, educators were ready to use it rather than simply comply with it.
- School District of Philadelphia: Philadelphia committed $70 million to its first-ever districtwide investment in high-quality instructional materials. The district’s approach was people-centered from the start: teachers, families, and community members helped design the RFP, evaluate materials, and develop scoring rubrics. The result was both improved curriculum and a stronger sense of collective ownership. In 2023-24, math scores on the state assessment increased, with historically marginalized groups making notable gains.
Math Needs Equal Emphasis and Investment as Literacy
More states are making policy moves in math than at any point in recent memory. The conversations happening in statehouses, district offices, and working groups reflect genuine urgency and growing sophistication about what solving the math problem actually requires.
But as Student Achievement Partners’ Aly Martinez noted during the working group last week: “…this cannot just be the year of math. It needs to be the decade.”
The results of Tennessee Promise are instructive not because the program was a failure (it wasn’t), but because it illustrated how long the lag is between investment and outcome, and how far upstream the real work has to go.
We are graduating more students than ever. We are not yet ensuring they have the math they need for the futures they deserve. Closing that gap will take the kind of sustained, coherent, cross-sector commitment that literacy reform required—and math is still early in that arc. [The 74]
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