Study sees disconnect between U.S. grad rates and math ability

On Board Online • May 18, 2026

By Sara Foss
Special Correspondent

There's a significant gap between New York's high school graduation rate and the percentage of graduates considered proficient in high school math, according to research released this month by the Collaborative for Student Success, a non-profit organization focused on improving K-12 education. Graduation rates are rising, but achievement rates are falling, according to the group.

Throughout the U.S., the percentage of students earning high school diplomas far exceeds the percentage who can demonstrate proficiency in high school math, often by 30, 40 or even 50 percentage points. Measures of math proficiency included state assessments, SAT scores and ACT scores.

In New York, 86% of high school students graduate within four years, but only 56% test proficient on the Algebra I Regents exam.

"Not all states show dramatic gaps in their published test scores, but that's likely because they have set the bar too low, not that their math achievement is dramatically higher," according to Chad Aldeman, an adviser to the Collaborative for Student Success who has worked for the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University and writes a column called Aldeman on Education on Substack.

Aldeman told On Board that the decline in math proficiency has serious consequences for high school graduates, who are more likely to be unprepared for college, career and technical training or entry-level jobs. He said New York's gap suggests that "New York's graduates may not be fully prepared for what comes next."

Aldeman recommended paying more attention to children who struggle with math in the early grades, because those students tend to fall further behind as they advance through school. "If kids struggle with their number sense, they will struggle with fractions, they will struggle in Algebra," he said.

He said that one drawback of the New York State Board of Regents plan to make Regents exams optional and create additional pathways to graduation is that less participation in the Algebra I Regents exam would reduce its value as a metric of the math ability of high school students.

He added, "We're finding that the disconnect between graduation rates and test results is worse in math than it is in English Language Arts, and it's worse for disadvantaged students than it is overall."

Another analyst of school achievement is Benjamin Solomon, an associate professor in the Department of Educational & Counseling Psychology in the School of Education at the University at Albany. He said that while the top 25% of students are doing just as well in math as they always have, test scores for the bottom 75% have been declining since the 1990s. "We're seeing a growing equity issue in terms of math achievement," he said.

Solomon noted that the way math is taught has changed. There is a greater emphasis on teaching students conceptual knowledge at an earlier age and less on memorization of basic math facts. The result, he said, has been more students with a shaky grasp of how to do math. "You need to have automatic math facts to understand the concepts," he said. "Algebra 1 is a nice gateway to very advanced mathematics, but we're seeing kids come in woefully underequipped for Algebra 1 because of a lack of practice opportunities on key skills."

For more information on the study, see weareallsolvers.org/how-big-is-your-states-graduation-gap .