Students in the nation’s capital posted gains in math and reading for the fourth straight year, according to the results of statewide accountability tests released last month. It was the latest piece of great news for Washington, D.C. schools, which earlier this year were named the fastest-improving in the country for both subjects.
But for D.C. education leaders, who’ve seen little improvement for students testing far below grade level even as the school system inched up from the bottom of the national rankings, there was an even more important data point: In 2026, 1,500 fewer students scored at Level 1 in math — 13% decrease in a single year.
That statistic is an early indicator of what’s possible when a city decides to tackle math with the same gusto it did literacy.
The Capital Math Collective, a $20 million citywide investment, supercharged smaller-scale efforts undertaken in response to urgent recommendations from the DC Math Taskforce for tackling achievement. Among other things, it will train more than 1,000 math teachers on innovative math practices and help over 700 educators earn graduate-level credentials to deepen their expertise. It establishes two school-based math centers dedicated to tutoring, coaching and math-themed events, expands high-dosage tutoring to some 6,000 students across the city and coordinates family activities to boost engagement.
Just seven months in, the collective has delivered more than 60,000 hours of high-dosage math tutoring to nearly 5,200 students.
What does this look like in the classroom? On a recent visit to MacFarland Middle School, it looked like eighth-graders standing in small groups at whiteboards, markers in hand, working through a question that sounded simple: If the perimeter of a rectangle stays the same, but the length of the sides are adjusted, what happens to its area?
Students sketched rectangles, erased them and tried again. One group built a table, while another plotted results and noticed the points rise, peak and fall. The observations gradually became conclusions: The area of the long, skinny rectangles was much smaller than the area of those most resembling a square. While students tested their ideas and debated, the teacher moved from board to board — not giving out answers, but pushing students to explain what they saw and why.
Around the perimeter of the room, clusters of educators watched her move from group to group, asking students questions and encouraging their productive struggle, all the while taking their own notes and drawing their own conclusions about teaching of complex concepts. That’s perhaps more important in eighth grade than anywhere else, as performance then often determines whether students can access Algebra 1 early and reach advanced high school math courses.
Yet today, almost 4 in 10 eighth graders score below basic in math, according to the most recent Nation’s Report Card — with students posting the lowest scores since the test began in the early 2000s. This must be treated as an all-hands-on-deck moment for a country that’s become math-phobic. As many experts have pointed out, students are struggling largely because of inconsistent and low-quality professional development and coaching for educators. Just as the science of reading movement exposed the gap between research and classroom practice, sparking a nationwide overhaul of early literacy instruction, math faces the same problem: The research has been largely ignored.
Data demonstrate that when high-quality instructional materials are implemented consistently and paired with sustained, rigorous teacher support, students’ math proficiency can improve significantly — even in schools starting with very low baseline scores. But meaningful academic progress does not come from compliance-driven professional development that emphasizes scripts, schedules that tell educators when it’s time to move on to the next lessons and one-size-fits-all workshops; it comes from respecting educators as professionals and equipping them with deep content knowledge, sustained coaching and structured opportunities to refine their craft.
At a moment most professional development for math is curriculum-based or assumes a certain level of teacher content mastery, it’s essential that investments focus on building that expertise — ensuring educators have the foundational knowledge, targeted support and ongoing development they need to use high-quality materials effectively and meet the needs of every student.
Commitments to changing reading instruction by adopting this model have had a profound impact on student literacy — from the “Mississippi Miracle” and the “Southern Surge” to the DCPS Reading Clinic, which has boosted the number of students reaching or exceeding grade level by 34 percentage points. Like other school systems across the country, D.C.’s literacy climb shows what is possible when a district commits to a strong curriculum, aligned training, embedded coaching and a relentless focus on instructional practice.
Now is the time to replicate that success in math and reimagine how to support educators — and, ultimately, students.
The stakes couldn’t be higher: Low math achievement is associated with a host of negative consequences for students later in life, including lower job prospects and economic earnings. The Urban Institute found that raising math scores by age 12 is associated with significantly higher earnings at age 30, even more so than comparable gains in reading. Conversely, students who struggle with math are more likely to be tracked into lower-wage jobs.
The good news is that while the math crisis is severe, it’s also solvable. As a recent report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education points out, math is highly sensitive to the quality of instruction in schools — even more than reading, as evidenced by steeper drops and quicker rebounds in math scores in certain settings. The report also showed that if schools are getting math right, there’s a good chance they have adequately prepared teachers who are delivering effective instruction based on a coherent, well-designed curriculum.
Education leaders rewrote the playbook for reading. Now it’s time to do the same for math — starting with the teachers who make learning add up.