Paul Cottle: Florida’s SAT scores tell educational leaders that it’s time to focus on math

math problems on graph paper with pencil

While the editorial boards of the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel decried the poor SAT scores earned by students in Florida’s high school graduating class of 2024, the picture is more nuanced than they described.

Florida’s students actually did all right on the English reading and writing (ERW) section of the exam, but they did very poorly on the math section. The math results should spur our state’s educational leaders to initiate a crash program to attract more individuals who are strong in math to enter the teaching profession.

According to the College Board, which administers the SAT, 95% of Florida’s graduating class of 2024 took the exam. That means that a very broad population of students took the exam, from our best and brightest to many of our most struggling students. We should not compare Florida’s results with those of states in which the SAT was taken by only a minority of students, which tend to be those headed for selective four-year colleges. Instead, we should compare Florida only to other high-participation jurisdictions.

In nine states, including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico and Rhode Island, the College Board said that 90% or more of the high school graduating class of 2024 took the SAT. That is also true of the District of Columbia. The best way to understand Florida’s SAT scores is to compare them with those high-participation jurisdictions.

Among the 10 high-participation jurisdictions, Florida ranked third for average score on the ERW section of the SAT, behind Colorado and Connecticut. That is not outstanding, but it is not tragic.

In contrast, the math result is indeed tragic. On this subject, Florida ranked ninth among the 10 high-participation jurisdictions, ahead of only New Mexico.

But do math SAT scores even matter, except for those relatively few students who aspire to become engineers and scientists? The answer is that math achievement matters for students pursuing a broad range of career goals. For example, math is important for nurses, not just to pass the licensing exam but also in daily practice.

Furthermore, our state’s educational leaders have been emphasizing career paths that do not require a bachelor’s degree, and many of the best of these opportunities require two-year associate degrees. But to earn such a two-year degree from a Florida College System institution, a student must pass a core general education college math course. Some associate degree paths, such as Building Construction Management and Radiologic Technology, require College Algebra, which many students find quite demanding.

Florida’s poor and declining math SAT scores mean not just fewer students prepared to become engineers but also fewer students prepared to become nurses, building construction managers, and radiologic technicians. Fewer students are also suited to fill many other roles necessary for Florida’s economy.

How would we fix Florida’s math crisis? First, our state’s education leaders must decide that they want to – that learning math matters for Florida’s students. Florida can no longer afford to be the “Just Read!” state, as it has been since Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan became law in 1999. If these leaders make that decision, they should focus on doing whatever it takes to attract more individuals who are strong in math into the teaching profession. It is true that there is a great deal more to being a great math teacher than being strong in math, but it starts with being confident with math.

According to the Florida Department of Education’s High Demand Teacher Needs report for 2024-25, the number of math teachers completing state-approved teacher education programs in the most recent year for which statistics were available (2021-22) was only 15% of the anticipated number of openings for public school math teachers during the 2024-25 school year.

What Florida is presently doing to recruit math teachers for the state’s public schools isn’t working, and it’s showing up in the state’s poor SAT scores and lost opportunities for the state’s students. It’s time to try something very different.

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Dr. Paul Cottle is a professor of Physics at Florida State University.