Washington superintendent says statewide test trends improved but urges $10M for math training and tools

OLYMPIA, Wash. — State Superintendent Chris Reykdal said Washington’s students showed year-over-year gains on most statewide assessment measures but warned of a persistent math shortfall and asked the Legislature for $10,000,000 to support math instruction.

Reykdal, who leads the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), said the state looks at 14 grade-by-subject metrics (third through eighth grade and tenth grade in English language arts and mathematics) and that 12 of those 14 metrics were stable or improved this year. "We've got to focus on math," he said, pointing to data that show more states outperform Washington in eighth-grade math than in past years.

The superintendent framed the results as trend data rather than judgments about individual students. He explained Washington uses the Smarter Balanced Assessment — a 12-state consortium used to satisfy federal testing requirements — and cautioned a one-day test is not a reliable measure of any single student's long-term learning trajectory.

Reykdal emphasized attendance as a primary lever for progress, citing OSPI analysis that students who perform at the highest level attend nearly 90% of the time and defining "regular attendance" as missing fewer than about 18 days per school year. He said strong attendance correlates with higher postsecondary enrollment and persistence: "Seventy-three percent of students who get a level 4 are attending college within a year," he said, while noting students at lower performance levels still find postsecondary pathways.

The superintendent described a broad set of societal pressures — from nutrition and reduced long-form reading to pervasive device use and nighttime gaming — that he said are compressing traditional test outcomes even as students show creativity and skill in other areas. He used the international PISA exam and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to place Washington’s results in national and global context.

To address the math gap, Reykdal said OSPI will seek a $10,000,000 request from the Legislature "as a down payment on this." He said most of the funds would target professional development for kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers, with a smaller initial allocation for statewide licenses for software tools that districts can use to support learning. Reykdal declined to name preferred vendors, saying procurement fairness matters; he cited Khan Academy and Mirra Learning as examples districts currently use.

In a question-and-answer session, Reykdal said OSPI is reviewing reported gender-gap findings at national scale and has not yet found an equally pronounced statewide gap in Smarter Balanced data; he urged early elementary interventions to push back on gendered narratives about math. On device policies, he said about three-quarters of districts have updated smart-device rules to limit classroom access and improve focus, but he warned bans alone do not solve out-of-school mental-health or screen-time challenges.

Reykdal asked reporters to treat the data carefully and said slides and a recording of the briefing are available on OSPI’s website. He characterized the year's results as an encouraging return to pre-pandemic growth rates while acknowledging persistent gaps by income and race and saying targeted investments will be necessary to close them.

What's next: OSPI will brief the Legislature on its proposals this winter, pursue the $10,000,000 request during the upcoming budget process and continue analyzing the tenth-grade English language arts dip and other subgroup patterns.