What the data shows
Across the states with comparable data, public-school students are more often proficient in reading than in math in most of the country. In roughly two-thirds of states the average school posts a higher reading proficiency rate than math; only about ten states lean the other way. The spread is wide. In Mississippi, the average school is about 7 percentage points more proficient in math than in reading. In Alabama, the average school is nearly 21 points more proficient in reading than in math. Most states fall on the reading-ahead side, joined at the far end by New Mexico, Maryland, South Carolina, and Illinois.
Why a within-school gap is comparable when raw scores aren't
Cross-state proficiency rates are notoriously hard to compare, because every state writes its own test and decides for itself where to set the bar for "proficient." A state can look strong simply by choosing an easy cut score. The math-versus-reading gap sidesteps that problem. Within a single school, the same students sit for both subjects under the same state's cut-score policy, so whatever makes a state's bar easy or hard applies equally to its math and its reading test. The difference between the two is a clean signal. That is exactly why national assessments like NAEP report math and reading separately, and why a persistent subject gap is one of the more reliable things you can read off a school's score sheet.
How to read the table
The table ranks every state by the average school-level gap between math and reading proficiency, in percentage points, using each school's most recent year with both results. A positive number means students are more often proficient in math; a negative number means reading. Click any state below to see the individual schools where the two subjects diverge most, in both directions.
Methodology
For each school we take its most recent year carrying both a math and a reading (English Language Arts) all-students proficiency figure on the state's native assessment, and compute math minus reading. The state value is the unweighted average of those school-level gaps. We use the all-students figure because 19 states publish only that aggregate; where states publish grade-level detail it rolls into the same all-students number, which keeps coverage uniform across the country. Specialized-population schools (state schools for the deaf or blind, therapeutic and juvenile-justice placements, and NCES special-education or alternative-education campuses) are excluded, because state proficiency is not a comparable metric for them. Sources: state assessment files loaded into allk12, joined to the NCES Common Core of Data school directory.
Limits
This is a gap, not a verdict. A state where reading runs ahead of math is not necessarily failing at math in absolute terms, and the reverse holds too. Differences in when each subject is tested, how many grades it covers, and how each state defines proficiency all feed into the number. Treat the gap as a starting question, not an answer.
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