Key Takeaways
- Senate Bill 1067 would require testing all kindergartners on second-grade students’ math knowledge and provide support to prevent achievement gaps in third grade.
- Education groups have argued that increased state funding for training and support should precede a new mandate.
- Supporters counter that the new student budget includes money and that districts should prioritize math.
In an effort to give math the attention that early literacy has received, the Legislature on Monday approved a bill that would require schools to assess the math abilities of all students in kindergarten through second grade each year, starting in 2028-29.
The bill would also require districts to provide math support, such as additional coaching for elementary school teachers or group tutoring for students, to help children avoid falling behind and avoid potentially irreversible achievement gaps emerging by third grade.
The Assembly voted unanimously for Senate Bill 1067which is now headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, despite opposition from the California Mathematics Council and school lobbies, including the Association of California School Administrators and the California County Superintendents, as well as the California Teachers Association.
In an Aug. 12 letter, the groups argued that it would be premature to require assessments before the state adequately invests in teacher training and additional student aid. “A mandatory assessment is only as effective as the system that supports it,” they wrote.
But the bill’s author, Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, a San Diego Democrat, said it won’t be long before California faces “a real and urgent math achievement crisis.”
“We also know that students who miss foundational math skills in kindergarten through second grade rarely catch up,” she said.
Fourth graders in California performed lower than their peers in most states on a national test. On the 2025 California state tests, only 37% of students were proficient in math, compared to 49% on the language arts test. Disparities among students are significant, with 26 percent of low-income students and 20 percent of black students scoring proficient.
“Our state has not focused on math achievement,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group EdVoice, one of the bill’s sponsors. “The passage of the bill is a strong recognition by the Legislature that we need to focus early on and provide more support to students.
Newsom has not indicated whether he will sign the bill. Tuck said the State Board of Education and administrative advisors offered suggestions that were incorporated into a major revision of the bill.
Not all screeners are the same
The new math assessment would come three years after Newsom pushed for an early literacy screening tool, which took effect in 2025. But early literacy screening and AB 1067 are different. In fact, SB 1067 does not use the word “screener.” Weber and the sponsors exchanged all references to “diagnostic assessment” to distinguish them.
The literacy test is designed to identify students with potential reading difficulties, including dyslexia. Dyscalculia, its mathematical counterpart, is less common and more difficult to diagnose. The purpose of the diagnostic assessment is “to assess students’ mathematical knowledge and learning needs and to identify students who need additional support,” not to diagnose a disability, SB 1067 states.
Under the bill, the State Board of Education would establish criteria and guidelines for assessments by July 31, 2027, and the Department of Education would publish a list of approved assessments by January 31, 2028, from which districts could choose and use in the following school year. Opponents objected that the bill does not specify what the criteria will be. But many districts already use “formative” or diagnostic assessments to measure skills such as mastery, substitution values and two-step problem solving. As long as an assessment complies with the California Math Framework and meets the criteria, a district can certify its own assessment, according to the bill. Assessments must be available in multiple languages.
The bill also seeks to prevent assessments from being used to evaluate teachers, rate schools, or identify students as gifted or disabled. The primary audience for the evaluation would be parents; they would receive an explanation of the results and the support their child would receive. The bill does not require the results to be reported to the State.
A funding imbalance
Over the past five years, as state funding through Proposition 98 flowed in, Newsom and the Legislature allocated $1 billion to hire and train reading coaches in the state’s poorest schools, part of a broader effort to improve the way TK-3 reading is taught.
Mathematics received much less attention. In 2023, the State Board adopted a new math framework that emphasizes engaging students in classroom activities to develop an understanding of math concepts, but most teachers have not undergone intensive training to teach them well. A study included In the Getting Down to Facts 2026 research project, only a quarter of district leaders say the framework determines their math lessons, and 30% say it’s not a factor at all.
The Legislature allocated $100 million to develop a network of math trainers in all 58 counties. But Cole Samson, project director and deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, questions whether the state will commit to training teachers once the initial funding runs out. That’s one reason he continues to oppose the new assessment mandate while recognizing the improvements in SB 1067.
“We can’t just put something in place and say teachers will magically know how to do X without the proper training and support,” he said. “What supports can we start putting in place now so that school districts are ready for it when it arrives?” »
Proponents of early diagnostic assessment cite Alabama as the first state to adopt early math screening in 2022. According to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in 2024 it was the only state in which math scores exceeded pre-Covid scores.
“Alabama is getting the results that it is getting, I would say, because it has put a math coach on every campus from K-5,” Samson said.
Tuck points out that districts receive immediate funding in the 2026-2027 state budget. They could use their share of $737 million, the final installment of the $6.8 billion Emergency Learning Recovery Block Grant, which is the state’s version of federal Covid relief funding. There is also an unrestricted, multi-year block grant of $5 billion, or $937 per student.
Two researchers, two points of view
Two authors of the math analysis for Getting Down to Facts, H. Alix Gallagher and Elizabeth Huffaker, disagree on the value of early-year math screening.
Gallagher, director of education policy and outcomes for the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) research center, said the 40 percent student math proficiency rate highlights the need to integrate professional learning into the workweek of elementary teachers and “to also make major changes in teacher preparation.”
Few California elementary schools offer students struggling in math the intensive supports they’ve created for literacy, and schools that already administer diagnostic assessments, like iReady or STAR, “don’t seem to be using that data effectively” to monitor overall instruction, she said.
An additional screening measure — “especially if it’s not valid” — probably won’t help and “could actually be harmful,” she said.
But Huffaker, lead author of the math study and an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida, said a diagnostic test for young students “is a good idea.”
Supports such as high-impact tutoring to develop foundational numeracy skills in grades K-2 are important, she said, and “universality helps ensure no student falls through the cracks.”
While acknowledging that further increasing the testing burden “is always a concern,” she said that, subject to the state’s adoption list, a new monitor cannot add a new test for schools that already administer them.
Compared to Alabama’s more prescriptive and better-funded approach, Huffaker said, California districts “will have more flexibility in implementing and responding to the filter, but also less capacity support from the state.”
California needs to pay more attention to math, researchers say
May 13, 2026
While literacy policies are in place, advocates target early math
February 19, 2026
Mathematics crisis started a decade ago and has only gotten worse, report says
September 16, 2025
This story was originally published by EdSource.
