State Ed Tells Teachers to Scrap Timed Math Tests, Academics Ask for a Recount

New York’s new math teaching guidelines are triggering a heated debate over evidence, equity, and the elusive formula for effective learning.

Every June, New York’s public school students file in for the state math exams, pencils sharpened and nerves on edge. But in classrooms across the city, a different sort of anxiety is bubbling up—one prompted not by math problems but by arguments over how, and how quickly, students ought to solve them. The New York State Education Department’s latest math guidelines, released in May, now urge teachers to stop grading students on the speed of their calculations, to limit rote practice of math facts, and to trade explicit instruction for a less structured, more exploratory approach.

The Numeracy Briefs, authored with input from University of Michigan equity specialists, recommend against timed quizzes and drills—long a staple of math pedagogy—on the grounds these can foster stress and sap confidence. The guidance, which rippled immediately through the city’s roughly 1,800 public schools, has polarized educators and prompted a pointed letter of protest to State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa. Over 200 academics, researchers, and parents, led by Benjamin Solomon of SUNY Albany, warn that abandoning the fundamentals for “fuzzy math” portends a slide in student competence, not the uplift the authors intend.

The practical implications for New York City—which educates over a million children and defines national curriculum trends—are far from trivial. Should mathematics, as taught on the city’s Lower East Side or in the Bronx, shift from fast facts and formulas to looser, object-based exploration? Teachers, always hungry for new guidance but weary of shifting goalposts, now face increased uncertainty over what “good math instruction” even means. For parents, the reforms risk deepening existing suspicion that public schools are experimenting with pedagogy rather than inculcating essential skills.

Less tangible, but no less important, are the likely second-order consequences. Proponents of the new guidelines argue—quite reasonably—that equity in math outcomes demands attention to student well-being, reducing stressors that disproportionately harm vulnerable children. But critics retort that real fairness cannot be achieved by lowering, rather than raising, the bar. In a city where success in admissions to elite high schools and entry-level finance gigs can hinge on mathematical fluency, relaxing basic skill mastery courts long-term harm for those least able to supplement instruction outside school walls.

Economically, the stakes are nontrivial. New York’s knowledge economy is built on quantitative literacy, from algorithmic trading on Wall Street to logistics in city government. Declines in numeracy—already visible in plateauing NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) math scores nationwide—risk widening the gap between private-school graduates (who will doubtless continue drilling math facts) and their public-school peers. Politically, the reforms stoke a wider culture war: critics see “equity” jargon as code for lowering standards, while supporters decry “rote learning” as the enemy of engagement.

For teachers, the state’s posture complicates an already challenging job. The suggestion to move away from explicit instruction runs counter to decades of cognitive science, which consistently finds that novices learn best when given direct and clear guidance. As Solomon and his allies note, children cannot “figure out their own way” to algebraic skills they have not yet mastered. The state’s assertion that “explicit instruction doesn’t work as well” is, to put it kindly, not settled science. New York is, once again, conducting an unlicensed educational experiment—this time on arithmetic.

In the wider context, America’s math malaise deepens

New York’s move is not occurring in isolation. Across the United States, math results are stagnating or falling despite ever-more energetic reform efforts. California recently made waves with similar equity-minded reforms—curbing acceleration, emphasizing “real-world” math, and encouraging exploratory learning. But the international backdrop is more sobering: students from Shanghai, Tokyo, and elsewhere continue to outpace American contemporaries by substantial margins on the OECD’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, earned in part by relentless practice and explicit instruction that many American experts now find unfashionable.

There is little discomfort, though, with the historic pattern of American education: chasing novelty without much evidence. The state’s own Numeracy Briefs cite precious few robust studies favoring the abandonment of timed practice or explicit teaching. Scholars on both sides agree that “math anxiety” is real, but disagree whether stress is best addressed by removing challenges or by normalizing them. Anxiety, after all, also attends baseball tryouts and spelling bees—rarely with calls to ban the activities outright.

That New York seeks to tackle persistent achievement gaps is no matter for ridicule. Genuine equity in mathematics is both ambitious and urgent, especially as technology amplifies the rewards of quantitative skill. But the city—indeed, the country—would do well to avoid a false choice between fluency and fairness. Speed and flexibility in math need not be enemies. Most experts—and employers—reckon that foundational skills learned through explicit, incremental practice remain as critical as ever in the era of AI-powered workplaces.

Our appraisal, then, is sceptically optimistic but heavily caveated. Education benefits from periodic reassessment, and teachers are ill-served by rigidity. But overcorrection can be as damaging as inertia. In its zeal for reform and pursuit of well-meant equity, New York risks jettisoning methods that, while unfashionable, remain empirically robust. A city built on numbers should beware reforms that make arithmetic less certain and its mastery less common.

The underlying challenge—how to make math both less stressful and more effective—will persist well after these guidelines du jour. But as other states and countries watch New York for clues, the city’s policymakers would do well to heed the old admonition: show your work. ■