Can Ohio’s New Law Help Improve Math Rankings?

An important law for education and the future of Ohio was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine in June and is about to make an impact on the new school year.

Senate Bill 19, sponsored by state Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Republican, passed overwhelmingly.

The law is meant to improve math rankings, which have seen a dip in Ohio due to the pandemic. It’s a law that Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, calls “a very multifaceted approach to try to tackle the issue.”

Among other reforms, the law ensures that math proficiency starts with the teachers—meaning, elementary and middle school teachers have to be proficient in math before they can teach it.

Churchill stressed the need to start early through prospective teachers passing licensure tests. He called it “common sense” to ensure that teachers have “a baseline knowledge of math,” with early years being “so foundational for kids.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, shared coverage of the law from NBC 4 to call out the ongoing learning loss suffered during the pandemic era.

Brenner told the Daily Signal that the pandemic response hurt student learning. “I can tell you that we were improving up until COVID hit. The lockdowns, the masking of teachers and students, and the remote learning, it just went to a massive amount of learning loss,” he said.

The problem got so severe that institutes of higher learning have had to change their math curriculum, as is the case at the Ohio State University, which has “the need to remediate every kid coming in,” Brenner said.

“So not only are we paying taxpayer money to the kids to learn, who aren’t learning, these kids are now getting out, taking out student loans, going to higher ed, and needing to get remedial classes to learn what they should have learned in high school and all the way down,” he added.

According to Churchill, math scores “really tanked” during COVID, to the point where limited students, those scoring in the low 0-25% range, “probably went over 30%.” He added that math learning was especially bad, because it’s “such a sequential topic, where if you get lost, it’s hard to get back on track.”

“We’re spending a lot of money and we’re not getting the results,” Brenner insisted. “I’m saying no, if you have the right curriculum … and you’ve trained the teachers properly, you should be able to get some improvement in performance, and for all these students, regardless of their socioeconomic background.”

Brenner spoke of another provision of the new law. For this 2026-27 school year, a school must develop a math achievement improvement plan if 51% or less of the students who took the third-grade math achievement assessment achieved at least a proficient score. “We’re raising the bar for everybody in third grade for math,” he explained.

Still another provision requires schools to help with intervention services so that struggling students improve, with Churchill emphasizing the role the school plays.

“What we’ve seen in the past is that too many students just keep scoring limited. And by the time they hopefully graduate high school, they just don’t have very strong math skills,” he said. “[The new provision] does put some responsibility and requirements on our schools to make sure that students don’t fall through the cracks and that they do get some help the next year, and remediating some of the deficiencies in that.”

The law looks ahead to future years in a way that further puts schools on notice. Beginning for the 2027-2028 school year, the Department of Education will randomly select up to 5% of schools to review their intervention services. Schools with those services “are going to know that we’re going to be taking a look to see” if they’re actually being provided and doing their job, Brenner noted.

There is also a provision for gifted students with accelerated math programs, which Churchill praised. He sees it as addressing “an equity issue,” where students who deserve to be on that accelerated path might not otherwise be if they lacked “parent advocacy.”

This provision, Churchill continued, “makes sure that these high achieving students, no matter your race, your background, anything like that, plays a role in placement, but that your test score actually is what places you in the advanced course.”

As for how long it may take for the law to improve math rankings, analysts suggest that it’s anyone’s guess.

“Dramatic improvement doesn’t happen overnight in education; there’s no miraculous kind of thing that can just wave the wand and every kid can do math,” Churchill said. “It does require patience and a whole lot of effort and implementation, and making sure the implementation of these policies is done right.

“It is going to probably take some time and a lot of effort from the state to see the achievement move in a significant way in math. I can’t wait to see what happens.”