The literacy crisis among Hoosier students is well-documented. I’ve written about it extensively myself. And the Indiana Department of Education, bolstered by the passage of recent legislation, has put a number of things in motion around third grade retention and the science of reading to turn things around.

But there’s another academic crisis on our hands that tends to get much less attention. The math crisis.

The gravity of the situation came into sharper focus for me recently when I came across yet another excellent piece by Chad Aldeman on a phenomenon he and the Collaborative for Student Success have dubbed the “graduation gap.”

This “gap” is the difference between a state’s high school graduate rate and a state’s high school math proficiency rate. Let me just say, Indiana’s floored me.

Our statewide graduation rate was 90% in 2025, according to the Collaborative for Student Success (who I’m pretty confident pulled that number rather than the 92% touted by the state because the 92% figure includes those who got a waiver in order to graduate).

Not bad. Quite good even when comparing ourselves to other states nationwide (even if I still find it alarming that approximately 10%, which is thousands of students mind you, don’t earn a high school diploma).

But our math proficiency rate for high school graduates? Just 25%.

That’s a 65 percentage point gap.

How Does Indiana Measure Math Proficiency for High Schoolers?

After picking my jaw, eyeballs, and forehead off the floor, I naturally asked: What does it mean for a high school graduate to be proficient in math? Well, the best statewide benchmark we have (which the Collaborative for Student Success was referencing to calculate our gap), is the SAT since every high school student is required to take it.

Those 25% of students who are considered proficient? That’s measured according to who meets or exceeds the SAT benchmark score in math of 530.

So there’s a natural next question: What does it mean to be proficient in math according to the SAT?

Are we talking advanced Calculus or basic algebra or something in between?

Hang with me because we’re going to dive into a few of the technical bits of the SAT. The test has two sections: Reading and Writing and Math. Each is scored on a 200-800 point scale. For a student to be considered college and career ready (i.e. “proficient”), they need to score at least 530 in Math (and at least 480 in Reading and Writing, but that’s for another day).

It’s a bit convoluted, but the SAT describes what meeting this benchmark means for what students are able to do after graduation by saying: “Students with an SAT Math section score that meets or exceeds the benchmark have a 75% chance of earning at least a C in first-semester, credit-bearing college courses in algebra, statistics, precalculus, or calculus.”

Translated into my own words: a student who meets the benchmark should be able to pass a first-semester, college-level math course and not need remediation.

The SAT calculates a student’s overall Math scored based on four areas: Algebra, Advanced Math, Problem-Solving and Data Analysis, and Geometry and Trigonometry.

That’s a pretty wide range of stuff. But to be considered proficient, you don’t necessarily need to have taken and excelled in Pre-Calculus or AP Calculus, given advanced math is just one domain. After all, the cut score is a possible 530 out of a possible 800. You need to know a range of math, but not all possible high school math.

And what students ought to know in those other three areas beyond “advanced math” does boil down to what I’d consider to be pretty essential stuff. Not just the kind of math you might need to succeed in college. But the kind of math that’s helpful for life, regardless of your aspirations for higher education (like, you know, if you want to head straight into a career).

We Need to Take Math Proficiency More Seriously

Let me be clear: I’m not poo-pooing the fact that we have a high graduation rate. As the Collaborative for Student Success wisely notes in their webpage documenting the “Graduation Gap” nationwide, “It’s a good thing for more kids to graduate from high school.”

But, they continue, “It’s disingenuous for states to continue to grant high school diplomas and send students off into the world as if they’re fully prepared for college or a career.” I’m going to think about that line forevermore every time I hear a school or district tout their high graduation rates.

While it’s hard to track down precise, current data, the result for many students is remedial math courses once they get to college. And students who end up in such courses graduate at much lower rates than their peers who dodge remedial courses altogether.

It’s good that Indiana woke up to our literacy crisis and starting taking steps to address it in recent years. Regarding math, we cracked our eyelids open with House Bill 1634 in 2025. Now it’s time for us to fully wake up and get after it as a state, as districts, as schools, and as a community that cares about the success of our youth.