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When Emily Hynes looks back on school during the pandemic, it’s not her grades or which subjects were the hardest that she fixates on. Instead, she thinks about how the move to online school changed her outlook on it.
“After the pandemic, I didn’t like school at all, and I grew big habits of procrastination,” Hynes said. “Being at home and online all the time, my attention span became a lot worse, and so school work became a lot harder for me.”
Before that, Hynes, who was in 6th-grade when the pandemic forced classes to go virtual, said school had come naturally. She liked it. She was good at it. Yet, as at-home learning began and the separation between her teachers and peers grew, her motivation waned.
One of the subjects that was the most challenging to stay on top of — math.
Her experience during COVID is all too common, and it illuminates a symptom of a larger problem in Washington's education system. Math scores have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, reflecting a widespread gap in critical knowledge. Districts across the state are still struggling to recover from the drop in proficiency, even years after in-person learning resumed.
According to the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), in the 2017-18 school year, 73.4% of Washington students met grade-level standards as measured by annual Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBA), standardized testing for elementary, middle, and high school students. This percentage fell sharply after the pandemic began, dropping to 55.4% in 2020-21.
Scores have increased, but slowly and are still less than before the pandemic, at 63.3% in 2024-25.
That 7.9% increase represents nearly 21,000 students statewide who have caught up. At the same time, Washington state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, said, “We have gaps to close.”
In addition,the statewide ratio of students meeting grade-level standards remains below that of pre-pandemic classes. Washington still tests above the national average in math, but the sustained low test scores raise concerns regardless of country-wide comparisons.
Compared to other courses, math is one of the most punishing subjects to fall behind in because it builds upon itself. If a student misses a reading assignment, there are often ways to make up for it, but in math, it can work as a ladder, with each concept another rung to climb. One missed rung can throw a student off into academic freefall, with lasting impacts following them into the job market and beyond.
Where students fall behind
In Everett, Kalle Spear, director of secondary instruction for Everett Public Schools, said this is felt in their classrooms.
“With our sixth through 12th graders, they lost some of those math foundational skills,” Spear said. “If you don’t understand some of these basic concepts, it’s going to be really hard to apply them to algorithms.”
While students are catching up with rising test scores, Spear said engagement continues to be a challenge after the pandemic.
That challenge starts early on. Emerson Elementary kindergarten teacher and union representative for Snohomish Education Teacher’s Association, Elizabeth Borland, said students are learning the foundations of math in their early school years including counting, number recognition, shapes, sorting, learning about basic graphs, and getting a general sense of numbers.
Just as Spear has noticed in Everett, Borland said one of the biggest changes she has experienced since COVID is not in any specific skill, but in how students focus.
“What we are seeing is a huge change in their focus,” she said. “Their ability to sit and attend to a lesson. They’re very distracted.”
Although she does not attribute the challenge to a single cause, she ponders whether the years around COVID changed what early childhood looked like for many families.
“I think a lot of parents were just in survival mode and the kids picked up on that,” she said.
The hardships students and parents faced during shutdowns extend far beyond test scores. A student’s attention, routine, and confidence all affect whether they can stick with a lesson long enough to understand it.
How teachers are pivoting
In Borland’s classroom, some students arrive on their first day of school already comfortable with a few or all of those basic concepts. Others do not. Borland’s work begins by figuring out what each child knows and how to help them build on that knowledge.
Borland said that she instructs the entire class on a concept, then organizes students into small groups to practice specific skills for those who haven't fully grasped the concept.
At Borland’s school, teachers respond by looking closely at student work, comparing notes, and trying new ways when current methods are no longer working.
“We’re always looking at data… always adapting our teaching based on that,” she said.
For example, when a child is struggling with counting, they are then grouped with others who need the same practice. If another student is not understanding a different concept, the type of support changes. Although the curriculum keeps moving, the teacher is constantly trying to catch those who need more attention and bring them up to speed as seamlessly as possible.
This kind of work may not appear clearly on a statewide chart, but it is where much of the recovery is actually happening.
In Everett, some of that adaptation has meant changing how math is taught. Spear said one of the district’s biggest instructional shifts has been the use of Illustrative Mathematics, a K-12 curricular resource that supports consistent progression throughout grade levels.
A report on education technology from Gov Tech described Illustrative Mathematics as a problem-based curriculum focused on conceptual understanding rather than memorization. Everett is one of several Washington districts using it.
“It focuses less on rote memorization… It’s more collaborating about math, talking about math, figuring out patterns,” Spear said.
This is different from the old ways of memorizing multiplication tables or repeating the phrase “PEMDAS.” It encourages students to talk, reason, and solve problems together instead of just memorizing steps.
Everett has also invested in “Building Thinking Classrooms,” an approach centered on active participation and collaboration rather than simply receiving instruction. Spear said students are “working together in teams to problem solve and locate patterns.”
Not every district uses the same model, but many are rethinking how students experience math rather than focusing only on catching up.
That matters because weak math skills do not stay in math class. They can affect whether students see careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) as real options for themselves. And in Washington, where STEM-heavy industries are so relevant, that can become an economic issue as much as an academic one.
“For Washington state to maintain our economic excellence in software, engineering, advanced manufacturing, and other sectors, we have to make significant gains in elementary and middle school math...,” Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in an OSPI news release from 2025.
Still, this story is not one of collapse.
Signs of hope
Washington’s graduation rates have remained steady and even risen during the same time that math proficiency fell. In 2017-18, the state’s four-year graduation rate was 80.9%. In 2024-25, it went up to 82.6%, according to OSPI report card data.
That does not make the math problem less serious. It just means the picture is broader than a percentage point. Students are still graduating. Teachers are still finding ways to move them forward.
They are unwavering in their attempts to rebuild skills, restore confidence, and keep students on track.
That is probably the cleanest way to put it; the problem is real. The recovery is real, too. The gap is no longer moving drastically in just one direction, but it is not closed yet either.
For Borland, her persistent optimism always comes back to the people doing the work.
“It’s the educators and the kids,” she said. “Educators go into this profession because we want kids to be successful. And, you know, as long as that’s still there, then I think there’s always hope.”
That hope, for Spear, is the ground-level work happening daily in the classroom. It looks like checking in after a lesson. It looks like adapting the way math is taught, because the old way isn't reaching enough students. It looks like a teacher standing in front of a room full of children, working to guide them forward.
“[It’s] the kids themselves, honestly. I know it’s easy to say in this room that kids are disengaged and they're not doing what they're supposed to do. I wish I could take you into [a] classroom at one of our high schools,” she said, smiling, reflecting on what makes her hopeful about the future.
Ultimately, there is hope to be found at every turn. When reminiscing about her experience with at-home learning during the pandemic, Emily Hynes, a high school senior now preparing for college in the fall, reflects on her return to the classroom.
For her, the setback from COVID shutdowns did not last forever, and dedicated educators can make all the difference.
“Overall, [I’ve] had really good teachers,” Hynes said. “However, COVID did create a learning bump for me in math, and it took a little bit for me to get back into understanding things.”
Washington’s math scores have not fully recovered. But that is only part of the story. Teachers across the state are still in the room, still adjusting, and still working tirelessly to help students get back what they lost. And while that diligent effort continues in classrooms every day, scores continue to rise, leadership continues to push for resources, and our students continue to show up, put in the work, and progress steadily toward their goals.
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