Ohio’s Next Education Fight Could Be Over How Kids Learn Math

Ohio officials are tackling the math struggles of students with an effort resembling its science of reading push, but have yet to deal with perhaps the most fundamental issue — how instruction should change.

That decision won’t come until next April when the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce chooses between competing visions of how math should be taught and names textbooks and other learning materials low-scoring schools will be forced to use.

---

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

---

In the meantime, schools will be in a holding pattern of what lessons to use while advocates and state education officials duel behind closed doors over which approaches win out.

With Ohio’s math scores still below pre-pandemic levels, the Ohio legislature and Gov. Mike DeWine passed a law this summer that mirrors Ohio’s 2023 law mandating the use of the science of reading in classrooms by requiring schools to better track math skills and give students extra help. 

The new law also requires elementary school teachers to show they are proficient in math skills before they can teach math.

But unlike the science of reading law which sets a clear path for how schools should teach, there is no consensus — both nationally and in Ohio — on how students can best learn math, with ongoing debate nationally between a self-proclaimed science of math movement and more holistic approaches favored by many educators.

The differences in math approaches are nuanced — simplified by some as focusing on teaching concepts versus teaching procedures — and have not become a full public debate in Ohio, at least not yet.

But educators are watching cautiously as the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce follows the model of the reading law and creates a list of “high quality” math textbooks and other learning materials by April 2027.

Most schools can still pick their own textbooks, but an estimated 450 schools with low test scores will have to use only books from that list. 

The department won’t clear up concerns by saying which studies or resources will guide its evaluation of materials. Asked by The 74, if the science of math was under consideration, the department did not respond, only saying it is still in the planning stages.

“It would be premature to speculate on those details,” the department told The 74.

Both the state superintendents association and the Ohio Federation of Teachers union said during debate over the law they oppose letting the state, not each local district, decide what to use.

Ohio’s math teachers also object to the state taking that control.

“I don’t like the state telling me I have to use a certain textbook,” said Mike Lipnos, president of the Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 

Lipnos wants the state to follow a state math learning plan he helped create last year that prioritizes teaching math concepts and making sure students develop problem-solving and reasoning skills. But he sensed some opposition within the department to the plan and worries the state will instead approve science of math books he believes teach math as a set of procedures to memorize.

His organization has criticized the science of math as trying to “capitalize” off of the science of reading.

“We want to say clearly to all mathematics stakeholders that OCTM rejects the outdated and inappropriate instructional practices that are being repackaged and promoted as some sort of new ‘scientific’ ideology,” the group states on its website.

The science of math wasn’t an issue in debate over the bill: Backers did not testify and have not made any public comment. University of Texas professor Sarah Powell, leader of the movement, also told The 74 she is not talking with Ohio officials to promote her approach.

The movement’s website calls criticisms like Lipnos’ a “misconception.” While backers favor teacher-led lessons with explicit instruction on how to solve math problems — prioritizing them over lessons on concepts that Powell has said can “ waste students’ time” — they say schools need a balance.

How schools teach reading has become a major issue nationally in the last several years, with the majority of states passing laws mandating use of phonics-heavy science of reading lessons. Low math scores on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress then focused states’ attention on math. 

Ten states have passed policies to change math instruction just this year, said Lindsey Henderson, the senior policy director for math of the ExcelinEd nonprofit education advocacy group.

ExcelinEd has identified 11 ways it believes states can improve math, such as having math coaches, teaching math at least 60 minutes a day, or making sure students can take advanced math classes. Alabama, an early adopter of some of the policies, leads the way with eight of the 11 approved and Ohio, as one of the ten states setting math policies this year, is also a leader in the effort, Henderson said.

But Henderson and other experts concede that math research is a few years behind where reading was when the science of reading caught on.

“Math doesn’t have a nice short term like the science of reading, and everybody knows what it means and everybody knows where to look for the research,” Henderson said.

The Center for Reinventing Public Education, another nonprofit research and advocacy group, characterized the two sides of the “math wars” as favoring “traditional” teacher-led classes as opposed to “reform-oriented” classes in which student exploration takes priority. 

In a recent survey of states, CRPE found that as of late last year 18 states and Washington, D.C., have passed math policies, “many of which emphasized priorities associated with the science of math.”

But the report notes that both sides claim to be “evidence-based,” which makes it hard to decide what’s best.

“The Science of Math has not achieved the academic and professional consensus that the Science of Reading eventually did, and the gap matters,” the report states. “Whether the field will eventually reach comparable agreement, remains unclear.”

In Ohio, the bill enacted this summer by the Ohio legislature and Gov. Mike DeWine comes as just 55 percent of students across all grades scored as proficient or better in math in 2025, while more than one in four scored at the lowest level, the state equivalent of F grades on state tests.

“This problem has not developed overnight, but its severity grows ever more prevalent as students who were knocked off track by the impact of the pandemic, or who were already struggling academically, continue to be promoted to the next grade despite showing very clear signs of needing significant intervention,” said State Sen. Andrew Brenner, the law’s author and chair of the Senate Education Committee.

The law passed this summer has drawn praise for several changes, including requiring tutoring of students who struggle, schools where fewer than 51% of third graders score proficient in math to develop a plan to improve and letting high-scoring middle school students combine seventh and eighth grade math into one year and start algebra in eighth grade.

The bill has been praised widely for calling attention to math and for taking steps to help improve math skills.

The law falls far short of Ohio’s 2023 science of reading bill in a few important ways, however. The reading bill budgeted over $160 million to pay for new teaching materials and teacher training, while the math bill provides no new money.

The reading bill also mandated that teachers learn the basics of the science of reading, while the math law only requires the Department of Education and Workforce to develop training by December.

Good training in how to teach math is considered crucial by wide-ranging advocates, including ExcelinEd, Lipnos’ math teachers association and its national organization.

The portion of the law that could lead to debate going forward — the requirement that the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce approve a list of “high quality instructional materials” in math — did not spark much discussion during hearings for the law.

In the end, the final law calls for all schools required to set math improvement plans — the 450 schools with fewer than 51% of students testing as proficient in math on state tests — to use only state-approved books and other materials.

And unlike with the reading law, which specifically banned some discredited teaching approaches and mandated phonics-heavy lessons, the law offers no definition of “high-quality.” The new Ohio law only requires that books help students build their math skills toward mastery.

The department declined to answer questions from The 74 about whether schools are using bad textbooks, whether bad books are leading to bad scores or which methods of math teaching need to be added or cut.

“That’s precisely the gap,” Steve Dackin, the department’s director told The 74 by email.

“Historically, the Department has not been able to collect data on math materials, and there is currently no approved list to compare materials against in Ohio,” Dackin said. “As a result, we are not in a position to characterize what districts are using.”

Dackin and the department declined to say what it would base its “high quality” judgment on, saying only that books should have “coherent learning progressions, strong alignment with standards, embedded assessments that inform instruction and help teachers identify student needs, and evidence-based strategies that create more opportunities for students to engage deeply with core concepts.”

“It’s not about stopping certain materials,” he said. “It’s about ensuring classrooms use resources that truly support strong instruction.”