Students at Robbins Elementary work in groups during a math lesson about scale.
Credit: Sydney Johnson
The state of California is at the global forefront of technological innovation and artistic inspiration. It’s also a powerhouse economy in its own right, currently the fifth largest in the world. We might expect — we should expect — such a place to deliver a world-class education to the 6 million public school students in its charge.
This is not the picture that emerges from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. These assessments found fewer than a quarter of California eighth graders performing at or above the “proficient” level in math. This represents both a decline from the state’s previous NAEP performance and a significant undershooting of the national average performance for eighth grade math.
But the good news is that California is on the verge of a major education…
