Third graders at Frank Sparkes Elementary School in Winton. Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

Proficiency in math, English language arts rose slightly, but remains below pre-Covid levels

By Zaidee Stavely, Lasherica Thornton, And Yuxuan Xie for EdSource.org. Republished with permission

Top Takeaways

• Student proficiency in math and English language arts rose slightly, though remains below pre-Covid levels, according to newly released California standardized test scores.
• Achievement gaps persist between Black and Latino students and white and Asian students.
• It’s likely still too early to see improvements from investments in early literacy.

California students’ proficiency in math and English language arts follows the same trend in 2026 as the past few years: incremental improvement from the year prior, with the majority of students below grade-level standards.

The state’s release of 2025-26 student test scores on Thursday showed slight growth in several areas, but California still hasn’t reached the elusive milestone of raising scores back to pre-Covid levels.

In English language arts, 49.3% of students scored proficient or advanced in 2025-26, up just a half percentage point from the previous year, according to the latest standardized test results released Thursday.

In math, the number of students earning a proficient or advanced score increased by 1.2 percentage points, with 38.4% earning proficient or advanced.

Prior to the pandemic, in 2018-19, 51.7% of California students met or exceeded state standards in English language arts, and 39.7% were proficient in math.

Fewer students — 36% — achieved a proficient or advanced score on the science test, though it was the subject with the most improvement. The portion of students meeting standards in science rose 3.3 percentage points since last year, and 6.1 points since before the pandemic.

“Today’s results tell a story of continued progress, but also of the work that remains ahead,” Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the State Board of Education, said in a statement. “Our responsibility now is to build on this momentum and ensure that progress reaches every student and every community.”

Black and Latino students made larger gains than white and Asian students but yawning racial and ethnic achievement gaps remain. Black students were the only group to surpass pre-pandemic proficiency levels in both math and English.

While education leaders are often encouraged by academic growth, the pace of growth — half a percent to a little over a percent in most cases — is “unacceptable,” said Troy Flint, chief information officer at the California School Boards Association.

“It does not suggest that we have the right strategic or operational infrastructure in place to properly support our school districts and county offices of education in accelerating student achievement,” Flint said. “We need serious reforms to state level education governance and operations and assessment, or we will never deliver for our kids at the level that we need.”

Disparities persist among different racial, ethnic, socioeconomic groups

The number of proficient Black and Latino students remains far below their white and Asian peers, and similar gaps exist between students based on income.

The number of Black students reaching proficiency in English language arts increased 0.9 percentage points from last year to 33.7%. The number of proficient Latino students rose to 39.6%, a gain of 0.8 percentage points from last year. Asian students’ proficiency fell by 0.9 percentage points to 73.5%. About 61.7% of white students scored proficient in English language arts, a figure essentially flat from the prior year.

In math, about 21.5% of Black students scored proficient, a 1.5 percentage-point improvement from 2025, the highest jump across the four student groups. About 27% of the state’s Latino students scored proficient, 1.2 percentage points higher than 2025. Asian students (70.5% math proficiency) and white students (51.4%) saw more modest growth.

Although socioeconomically disadvantaged students improved in both subjects, most still did not meet standards. About six in 10 (61.1%) did not meet the English standards. Nearly three in four (72.6%) did not meet the math standards.

The achievement gap between students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged and the rest of their peers remains at about 30 percentage points in both subjects.

Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, research director at EdTrust West, called the test scores “sobering.”

“Once again, the results show glaring gaps in outcomes for Black and Latino students, Native American students, English learners and students from low-income households, which suggests that our systems still aren’t providing the supports and opportunities they need to reach their full potential,” Valenzuela-Stookey said.

No improvement in early reading yet

The percentage of California third graders who scored proficient or advanced on the English language arts test stayed flat, from 44.2% in 2024-25 to 44.1% in 2025-26.

The state has invested millions in improving how schools teach children to read, but it is likely too soon to see many results from the new policies. Last year, schools began screening all students in grades K-2 for risk of reading difficulties to provide support for kids who need it.

The children who benefited from that last year won’t take standardized tests until this school year. The State Board of Education only recently approved a list of literacy training programs for districts to use.

“While the state has gotten a lot more focused on improving reading, it’s not surprising it wouldn’t have an impact yet,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice and one of the advocates that pushed for the reading reforms. “The earliest you would see impacts from those policies directly would be this school year.”

English language proficiency

More than 133,000 English learners —15.4% — tested as proficient on the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC) in 2025-26. Under a new state law, those students are now eligible to be automatically reclassified as fluent and proficient in English. The percentage of English learners who achieved proficiency was similar to last school year.

English learners who have not yet achieved proficiency in English tend to do poorly on standardized tests, but once they are reclassified as fluent in English, they often do better on tests than native English speakers.

In 2025-26, 60.9% of former English learners achieved proficiency in English language arts, compared to 53.5% of native English speakers.

Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, a nonprofit advocacy group for English learners, said the scores show that the state needs to do more work to make sure English learners have full access to the curriculum in all subjects and to move more students to proficiency.

“Students who become proficient in English do not stop becoming part of the English learner success story,” Hernandez said.

Dashboard released simultaneously

For the first time this year, the California Department of Education released the test scores at the same time as the “dashboard,” the state’s accountability system. The dashboard measures schools’ improvement over time on test scores and on other measures, such as graduation, college and career readiness, suspension and chronic absenteeism.

The state gives schools a color of the rainbow ranging from red (signaling the least achievement or improvement), orange, yellow, green and blue (signaling the highest achievement).

The state gave schools an overall score of orange for English language arts, and yellow for math and science.

Jessica Sawko, director of education at Children Now, advocated for science to be included in the state’s accountability system because she said science helps prepare students for college and career.

She said it was “heartening” to hear that there was improvement in science scores, but the percentage of students achieving proficiency is much too low.

“Here we are at not even 40% of kids achieving proficiency or better. That’s more than half of the kids not there yet, and yet we’re at a yellow?” she said.

Learn more about the California Dashboard by reading A parents’ guide to understanding the 2026 California School Dashboard  | EdSource.