Soon, I will be introducing legislation to return to “basic math” for Pennsylvania students.

While algebra, trigonometry and calculus are important high school courses, it is basic math that we use most in our everyday lives. Over the past few years, I’ve had many parents and teachers share the frustrations that our students are experiencing in the classroom, which is contradictory to what the goal should be: having our kids embrace learning.

This isn’t about “dumbing things down” but, instead, getting back to basics and getting back to teaching our kids what they will use in daily life; like adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying without calculators. These basic math skills will be essential no matter what path in life these students go on to take.  We need to give our children a strong math foundation, and the “new math” is doing the opposite, making students and parents frustrated to the point they end up hating math.

The current curriculum is an overly complicated way to learn math. Student frustrations are clearly hindering their day-to-day math skills, and our testing scores demonstrate that reality.  In short, “new math” related to the PA Common Core changes were intended to teach critical thinking, but all it is doing is making students struggle with math. It’s not improving educational outcomes, nor is it helping our students be prepared for life after high school.

Under Governor Youngkin, Virginia changed directions and implemented their own Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL) in 2023, which emphasizes application to real-world contexts in their instructional approach. Virginia’s math proficiency rate is now one of the highest in the nation at 68%, increasing 19% in just the past few years.

I hope you will join me in co-sponsoring this legislation to instill basic math skills and proficiency, and tailor the learning to our students’ needs, preparing them for the real world outside of the classroom.