In the 2018-2019 school year, 67% of Ohio eighth graders were proficient in math. In 2023-2024, 58% of Ohio’s eighth graders were proficient in math, but that metric was unchanged from the previous school year.
Eighth-grade math proficiency is a common metric used to mark success, because eighth grade math skills are key in achieving in high school and college. Students who don’t understand key math skills by the end of middle school will not have the foundation to build on during high school lessons like trigonometry.
Black students and English language learners have been hit hard by the loss in proficiency. Just 15% of Black eighth graders were proficient in math last school year, compared to 26% of economically disadvantaged eighth graders. Only 7% of English language learners were proficient in math in 2023-2024.
According to Learn to Earn’s annual 2024 report, during the 2020-2021 school year, 39% of Montgomery County eighth graders were proficient in math, a significant drop from 59% during the 2018-2019 year.
Since then, math scores have continued to improve. Stacey Schweikhart, CEO of Learn to Earn Dayton, said there are ways to continue to improve scores.
New Lebanon Schools, for example, went from 33% of eighth graders proficient in math to 67% of eighth graders proficient in math between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, a massive increase in one school year.
“Our hope is that policy makers, partners, educators and parents will explore the reports and use them to create opportunities that lead to improvement in academic achievement,” she said.
Last year, Centerville touted an increase in math scores using a new curriculum that went beyond their pre-pandemic gains. And other districts, like Northmont schools, are planning to adapt new math curricula for next school year.
Shannon Cox, the Montgomery County Educational Service Center superintendent, said Montgomery County schools are approaching the problem in four ways.
The first is making sure kids know how to read, so they can read and understand math concepts. The second is updating math materials and ensuring they are in line with new state standards for high quality instructional materials. The third is recruiting and retaining teachers who understand and can teach math well. The fourth is other supplemental items that could enhance ideas, such as using virtual reality to see a three-dimensional quadratic equation.
Cox said New Lebanon recently hired an eighth-grade math teacher who is an expert in her field, which has shown up in the district’s scores.
“We actually have just had conversations at the last superintendent meeting, since she is such a great teacher in the eighth grade, are there other school districts that could send their teachers into her classroom to observe how she does it, to see what kind of techniques, the best practices that she uses, so that they could take those back to their districts and replicate that,” Cox said.
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