California is weighing a new approach to early math instruction as it struggles with student performance gaps: Senate Bill 1067 would require schools to screen kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders for basic math skills and provide additional help for students who are behind, setting up an early-education debate that mirrors earlier fights over reading instruction. The proposal arrives only months after California overhauled how it teaches children to read, and it is now advancing through the state policy process amid disagreement over whether screening will improve learning or simply add another assessment for young students.
Senate Bill 1067 is sponsored by state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, a Democrat from San Diego, and last week passed unanimously in the Senate education committee. The bill would offer districts a choice of screening tests that each take about 10 to 20 minutes and assess basic math concepts, including skills like comparing groups of dots or identifying numbers and what those numbers represent, with English learners able to take the tests in their native languages.
EdVoice, an education nonprofit that is cosponsoring the bill, is part of the effort to support students who begin kindergarten without the same early exposure to math. Amy Cooper, a senior advisor at EdVoice, said in support of the measure that “A student’s early math skills are the most powerful predictor of their later success in school,” adding, “We’re not talking about tracking kids. There’s no labels. It’s just about getting support to students so that they can get up to grade level.”
Backers point to uneven early education as one reason California’s math performance has been persistently weak, and they argue that gaps become harder to close over time because math builds sequentially. The Associated Press reported that last year, 37% of students performed at grade level in math in California, and that among Black 11th-graders, 16% met the state’s grade-level standard. Experts cited in the reporting also pointed to the wide differences in how prepared children are when they start kindergarten, including whether they had years of exposure to math in preschool or at home.
Alice Klein, a developmental psychologist and research director at WestEd, argued that screening can help determine who needs intervention early enough to prevent a widening gap. Klein called early math a “critical tipping point” and said, “Unless those students get intervention, the gap will widen. It’ll be harder for them to access higher-level math classes later on, and this will have implications for future job opportunities and the economic future of California. It’s a continual closing of opportunities.” Klein also said she supports math screening because it can identify students who are struggling and connect them with support, and she noted that at least 20 other states have math screenings and have seen positive results.
Opponents argue the state already has investments aimed at improving early learning, and they question whether screening is necessary. The California Teachers Association opposes the measure, along with the California County Superintendents, the Association of California School Administrators and the California Mathematics Council. Their arguments include that the state’s new math framework and other early math investments may take time to show results, and that a screening approach could be too narrow for young children whose developmental differences may vary widely.
The opponents also say screening will not help if tutoring and extra support are not funded for students identified as needing help. Nick Johnson, an associate professor of teacher education at San Diego State University, questioned whether schools need another standardized test and argued that evidence since the early-2000s era of heavy testing has not delivered sustained learning gains. Johnson said, “Since No Child Left Behind testing, we’ve assumed that (standardized testing) will improve student learning,” and added, “But the evidence shows that’s rarely true. Is public education in a better place now than it was 25 years ago?”
Some teachers who work directly with early childhood instruction said they welcome support but worry that a test could misread how young children process math or could lead to stigmatization. Rachelle Bacong, who teaches kindergarten and transitional kindergarten in National City near San Diego and has taught for 30 years, described weaving math into everyday activities, from asking children about quantities during art projects and smoothies to using songs and blocks to make concepts concrete. Bacong said, “Math crosses all cultures, abilities and backgrounds. It’s accessible to everyone. It’s my job to design the learning environment to make it accessible to everyone,” and she called it “magical” that math can be made joyful for children.
Bacong said she spends time explicitly teaching math while blending instruction with play, and she suggested that children may need instruction from multiple angles because cognitive skills develop at different rates. She welcomed extra help but expressed skepticism about whether screening results would capture individual children’s learning processes. “My fear is that it’ll focus on a child’s deficits,” Bacong said, adding that “Math needs to be joyful, fun and developmentally appropriate” and that supports should aim to set students up for success rather than identifying weaknesses in a way that could follow them.