Aaron Lefller via Unsplash
By Peter Hancock | Capitol News Illinois
Each year, the Illinois State Board of Education releases an annual report card with data showing how students are doing in the basic subjects of reading, writing and math.
And each year when those numbers come out, reporters, teachers, parents and school officials sift through the data looking for evidence to show whether scores are improving, holding steady or getting worse.
But one trend has been so consistent over the years, it rarely draws much public attention. Overall, students score lower in math than they do in English language arts.
That was true on the 2025 report card, which showed only 38.4% of Illinois students overall scored proficient or better in math, compared to 52.4% in English language arts.
Illinois students are not unique in that regard. Nationwide, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “nation’s report card,” 59% of eighth graders in 2024 scored at or above the “basic” level in math — the achievement level most closely aligned with grade-level expectations — compared to 66% who did so in reading.
Even on the international stage, American students do not perform as well in math as their counterparts in many other industrialized democracies. Scores from the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS exam — a project of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics — showed eighth grade students in the U.S., on average, scored below their peers in countries like Singapore, Japan, Sweden and Australia.
In Illinois, officials at the State Board of Education hope to close the gap through the development of a statewide, comprehensive “numeracy plan.” The document will direct not just the way math is taught in the classroom, but how math teachers are trained in the profession and math programs are administered in school districts.
Read more here.
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