Schools that are good at teaching math are also good in reading — and vice versa

The 74 // Getty images

 

Many people prefer restaurants that specialize and perfect a certain type of cuisine — they don’t want their barbecue restaurant to offer sushi, and see extensive menus as a worrisome sign of mediocrity.

On the other hand, they may not want a hotel that excels in only one area — they want every hotel they stay at to have clean sheets and towels, hot water and a quiet environment.

What about schools? Are they more like restaurants or hotels? At the high school level, they might be more like restaurants in that they can offer a variety of experiences that allow students to start to develop specialties. But elementary schools should probably be more like hotels and provide consistently strong services — and outcomes — for all kids.

When it comes to the basics of reading and math, how much within-school specialization is there at the elementary levels? That is, are there schools and districts that do a great job of teaching kids to read but maybe aren’t so good at teaching math?

To find out, The 74 looked back at projects that last year identified districts that did an exceptional job of teaching kids to read by third grade and be proficient in math by eighth grade. Among those positive outliers, 140 districts appeared on both of the lists. That is, these districts were producing outstanding results across subjects and grade levels.

In contrast, 14 districts were identified that were exceptional in one subject but significantly underperformed expectations in the other. Among those, 12 of the 14 were strong in math but weak in reading.

To look at school-level results,2025 test scores in the state of Mississippi were used as, a good test to see whether they specialized or were consistently strong, since the state has some of the best schools in the country.

First, reading scores were examined to see if they correlated with performance in math and science. A correlation of 1.0 would mean the two trends were moving in perfect lockstep, while a correlation of 0.0 would suggest that the two variables were not associated with each other at all. As seen in the table below, there were very strong correlations across academic subject areas. For example, the correlation across school-level reading and math scores was 0.87, which suggests a very strong relationship.

The 74

These results suggest that schools with high test scores in one content area are very likely to also have high test scores in another subject. (And the opposite.) But that doesn’t necessarily reflect how much the school contributes to a student’s scores. It could just be that the school happens to enroll higher- or lower-performing kids.

In Mississippi, the state measures growth using a model called a value table. Essentially, the state created eight performance levels, and schools receive points if they help students advance to higher tiers from one year to the next.

Do schools with high student growth rates tend to see improvement across multiple subject areas? The answer in Mississippi is yes. In the graph below, each dot represents a school that is graphed according to its reading and math growth rates. The closer the dot is to the diagonal line, the closer the relationship between the school’s growth rates in reading and in math.

The 74

Note: Data via the Mississippi Department of Education’s 2025 school accountability results for elementary and middle schools.

Although there are a few outliers on both sides, a “good school” tends to be good across subject areas. That is, there are no schools at either the bottom right or top left corners of the graph, where they would be if they were extremely strong in one subject but not the other. For example, among the 50 Mississippi elementary and middle schools that made the greatest gains in reading last year, none of them were below the statewide average in math growth.

The opposite was also true: Among the 50 schools with the lowest reading score gains, only two reached the statewide average in math.

Florida operates a similar accountability system to Mississippi. Similar correlations were found across subject areas.

Both Mississippi and Florida showed strong relationships between a school’s proficiency and student growth scores. However, that could be a function of the specific way those states have chosen to measure student growth, and it’s not always the case that a school with high proficiency scores will also have high growth. In fact, because proficiency rates are highly correlated with socioeconomic status, some researchers prefer growth measures that attempt to truly isolate a school’s impact on student learning.

While questions about how best to measure school performance can be thorny and technical, it does seem to be the case that schools that are strong in one subject tend to be strong in others as well. In an increasingly specialized world, it’s fortunately rare to find a school that’s doing a great job in one subject area and letting kids down in the other.

This story was produced by The 74 and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.