When Grades Go Up but Learning Goes Down: Understanding America’s Math Crisis
Scholars who want to hear the fuller conversation should also check out my Boogie Down Scholar podcast and YouTube episode on this same topic. I recorded an in-depth discussion with a friend of the show where we unpack how the math crisis shows up in real classrooms, real families, and real policy debates. The episode keeps the tone conversational so listeners can follow the argument without jargon or academic detours. My blogs serve as the companion space to those episodes. This is where I extend the ideas raised on the mic, add data and credible sources, and build out the context behind the points we touched on in conversation. The goal is simple: connect the personal, the political, and the structural in a way that stays clear, grounded, and useful.
Introduction
A friend recently sent me the Plain English podcast episode, “The American Math Crisis.” It raises a point educators have been warning about for years: the collision between grade inflation and achievement deflation. Students are earning higher grades while learning less. It is a broad generalization, but many educators will tell you it reflects what they are seeing in classrooms. That gap is reshaping the country’s literacy and numeracy outcomes in ways most people do not yet grasp. If the trend continues without real intervention, the United States could slide even further in global rankings for math and literacy performance.
At first glance the situation feels contradictory. How can students be doing better on paper while doing worse on assessments? But emerging national data reveals the pattern and helps explain how we arrived at this moment. It also shows why the crisis is far more complicated than any single political talking point.
The Convergence of High Grades and Low Preparedness
Across the United States, A’s have become the most common grade in high school classrooms. Yet reports from the National Center for Education Statistics (https://nces.ed.gov/) show long-term declines in math performance. As GPAs climb, test scores fall. Colleges see the impact immediately. The University of California San Diego highlighted in its internal math preparedness review that many straight-A students still place into remedial courses. These are classes meant to reteach skills students should already have mastered. This is more than a mismatch. It signals a breakdown in how grades represent actual learning.
Why Grades No Longer Signal Mastery
Grade inflation explains part of the story: earning an A is easier than it used to be. But the deeper problem is achievement deflation, the steady erosion of fundamental math skills.
The Plain English episode touches on this convergence. I share the general assessment. When grades stop measuring readiness, the entire educational system loses a compass. Yet the episode also opens the door for listeners to walk away with oversimplified conclusions about the causes of the problem.
Avoiding the Wrong Blame
Some arguments in the episode could point listeners toward blaming liberal education policies. That is a familiar reflex in national debates about schooling, where “progressive reforms” often get cast as the root of every problem. But the math crisis does not respect political boundaries. Grade inflation and declining achievement are showing up in conservative districts that proudly reject progressive curricula, in charter networks built on strict discipline, in elite private schools with sky-high tuition, and in affluent suburban systems that often serve as political showcases for both parties.
The ACT annual readiness report makes this unmistakable. Scores are sliding across every region of the country, regardless of whether the local school board leans red or blue. Students from wealthier communities are not insulated. Students in rural districts are not spared. Students in states with traditional standards and states with modernized standards are experiencing the same downward trend. When a pattern repeats this consistently, political ideology is not the explanation.
The story is structural, not partisan. It reflects pressure on teachers to give higher grades, a digital environment that competes with attention spans, unequal funding between communities, and the quiet lowering of expectations even in high-performing schools. Blaming one ideology might feel satisfying, but it sidesteps the real work: building systems that are honest about student learning and accountable to long-term outcomes rather than short-term optics.
The Social Media Distortion Field
Another driver is the digital environment shaping how students learn and where their attention goes. According to the Pew Research Center, teens now spend hours each day on platforms engineered to keep them scrolling. These apps reward quick hits of content, rapid dopamine cycles, and constant novelty. None of that supports the kind of slow, focused thinking math requires. Algebra does not compete well with a feed that refreshes every few seconds.
Policy groups such as The Brookings Institution have also raised concerns about how platforms like TikTok present different types of content depending on the country. In places with strict educational norms, TikTok’s recommended videos are more likely to include STEM topics, language learning, and civic education. In the United States, the feed has leaned heavily toward entertainment, trends, and sensational content, although this may be changing. That difference matters. What young people repeatedly consume becomes part of their information diet, and just like any diet, quality determines outcomes.
This ecosystem shapes not only what students pay attention to, but how long they can sustain attention in the first place. Math requires patience, pattern recognition, and the ability to wrestle with an idea longer than a minute. When a student’s daily environment is built around fast switching and instant gratification, it becomes harder to stick with a challenging problem or to build deep understanding. The suggested math crisis cannot be separated from an attention-economy crisis. The habits formed online walk into the classroom with every student, and they change the way learning unfolds.
The Equity Gap Driving Literacy and Numeracy Decline
The most overlooked cause is inequity, even though researchers have documented it for decades. Schools serving low-income communities often carry the heaviest burdens: larger class sizes, fewer experienced math teachers, outdated textbooks, and limited access to tutoring or enrichment opportunities. These schools also face the harshest effects of the national teacher shortage. The best and brightest candidates often avoid high-need schools or leave early because of low pay, scarce resources, and a maze of shifting policies that make teaching harder than it needs to be. When a school struggles to keep qualified math teachers, students lose continuity, support, and the depth of instruction that builds real learning.
Research from the Learning Policy Institute (https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/) and EdBuild (https://edbuild.org/) shows how these structural disparities shape math and reading outcomes long before students reach middle school. Children who start with fewer resources are essentially forced to run a steeper academic hill. By the time they are tested in third grade, the gaps are already visible. From there, they compound year after year. No amount of motivational speeches can offset the reality that some students walk into classrooms with far fewer tools, supports, and opportunities than their peers across town.
If the nation wants true academic recovery, it must invest in the communities that have carried the least for the longest. That means stable funding, better teacher pay, smaller class sizes, reliable materials, and strong support systems for struggling learners. Without addressing these disparities, the country will keep rearranging the furniture in a house with cracked foundations, assuming our nation’s leaders truly want an educated population. The inequity problem is not a side story in education; it is a longstanding issue that dates back to the very inception of educational institutions in this nation. It is the central narrative that shapes who succeeds, who struggles, and who gets left behind. For reasons I cannot explain the move, Trading Places.
When Affluent Schools Inflate Their Own Signals
In wealthier districts, another dynamic emerges. Grade inflation often becomes a shield used to maintain college competitiveness and after college job competitiveness. Families with resources and social capital know how to advocate aggressively. They can request grade changes, pressure teachers, and push administrators to “reconsider” marks that do not match their expectations. The result is an environment where grades rise even when mastery does not. Students may earn A’s that reflect effort, personality, or parental influence more than true understanding of the material.
There is a deeper irony here. Some of the same voices that later argue against “unearned opportunities” or claim that certain groups “lack merit” benefited from a system that lowered standards for them starting as early as middle school. Their pathway to selective colleges, internships, and early career opportunities was supported by grade padding, private tutoring, and institutional leniency. I name this not to start a fight but to challenge narratives that paint certain communities as inherently incapable [hard eye roll]. Many students who struggle simply never had access to the supports, resources, or stability that affluent families take for granted. That is a much larger conversation and one I will return to in a future blog and podcast.
The pressure to keep GPAs high shapes teacher behavior. It creates an unspoken expectation that students in these districts must maintain top marks because it protects the school’s standing and the community’s brand. When this happens, expectations soften even when students are not mastering the content. These districts still look strong on paper because outside resources hide the academic decline. Families can pay for private tutoring, enrichment programs, college prep services, and weekend math courses. These supports boost standardized test performance and create an image of academic strength. Inside the classroom, however, rigor may be slipping, and teachers may feel less able to hold firm to high standards.
This creates a two-sided national problem. Underfunded schools struggle with real achievement loss because they lack the tools to keep up. Affluent schools struggle in a different way because grade inflation hides the loss. One side is dealing with visible gaps. The other is dealing with invisible ones. Both outcomes weaken the country’s overall academic health.
A Crisis with Many Roots, Not One
The American math crisis is not the result of one policy or one political ideology. It stems from misaligned grading practices, digital environments that weaken attention, resource inequities in low-income communities, and accountability gaps in wealthier districts. To protect the country’s future literacy and numeracy, we need to name these forces clearly and address them honestly.
Reflective Questions
- How should schools balance the need for accurate grading with the pressure families and communities place on teachers?
- What investments would make the biggest difference in improving math outcomes for students who have historically been underserved?
