OSPI published the 2025-26 Smarter Balanced results in September, and they describe a system that has stopped recovering. Weighted by school enrollment, 40.6% of Washington students met standard in math, up from 40.1% the year before. In English language arts the rate was 52.2%, down from 52.7%. Both moves are inside the range of year-to-year noise. The pre-pandemic rates were 48.0% and 61.8%.
OSPI Washington State Report Card via data.wa.gov. School-level All-Students rates weighted by 2025-26 enrollment. 2019-20 and 2020-21 are skipped: the SBA was not given in spring 2020 and was replaced by a sampled interim test in 2020-21.
Four years past the 2021-22 trough, math has climbed 2.4 points and ELA has fallen 1.4. At math's pace of about 0.6 points a year, the state would reach its 2018-19 rate around 2038. ELA has now declined or held flat in three of the four post-pandemic years. The one-point uptick in 2024-25 that looked like the start of an ELA recovery reversed.
Half of schools moved up, half moved down
WA K12 Academic Atlas history.json; 1,936 schools with a complete math + ELA series in both years.
The median school's combined math-plus-ELA rate moved 0.1 points. 976 of 1,936 schools improved and 960 slipped. Elementary schools were dead flat at the median, middle schools moved down a tenth of a point, and high schools up half a point. The schools that moved by more than a few points are the subject of a companion piece.
Where the small gains came from
| Grade | Math 2024-25 | Math 2025-26 | Change | ELA 2024-25 | ELA 2025-26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 51.2% | 51.8% | +0.6 | 47.8% | 47.6% | −0.2 |
| 4 | 48.3% | 48.4% | +0.1 | 49.4% | 49.3% | −0.1 |
| 5 | 41.9% | 42.2% | +0.3 | 52.9% | 52.6% | −0.3 |
| 6 | 38.6% | 38.4% | −0.2 | 47.7% | 46.7% | −1.0 |
| 7 | 39.2% | 39.3% | +0.1 | 50.4% | 50.8% | +0.4 |
| 8 | 35.5% | 36.5% | +1.0 | 48.5% | 48.0% | −0.5 |
| 10 | 30.7% | 32.0% | +1.3 | 58.9% | 58.8% | −0.1 |
OSPI's published statewide rates, which weight by students tested rather than by school enrollment, so the all-grades figures run about half a point above the enrollment-weighted series used elsewhere in this article. Converted to the share of students expected to test who met standard, the definition OSPI used through 2024-25.
The only moves larger than half a point were in math at the top of the grade span: 10th grade rose 1.3 points to 32.0% and 8th grade rose 1.0 to 36.5%. Those are also the two lowest-scoring grades in the state. Sixth-grade ELA fell a full point, the largest decline anywhere in the table. Elementary math, where the earliest recovery would be expected, barely moved.
Still far from 2019
The median school is 6.4 points below its own 2018-19 math rate and 8.7 points below in ELA. Seven years on, the pandemic drop is still the dominant feature of nearly every school's trend line. The statewide line above understates how few schools have fully recovered, because the schools that did recover tend to be large and pull the weighted average up.
The gaps did not move
| Group | Math 2023-24 | Math 2024-25 | Math 2025-26 | ELA 2023-24 | ELA 2024-25 | ELA 2025-26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All students | 39.7% | 40.7% | 41.2% | 50.3% | 50.8% | 50.6% |
| Low-income | 24.1% | 25.0% | 25.3% | 34.6% | 35.0% | 34.3% |
| Not low-income | 55.3% | 55.9% | 55.8% | 66.2% | 66.3% | 65.5% |
| Asian | 67.4% | 68.3% | 67.9% | 72.5% | 72.8% | 71.8% |
| White | 46.2% | 47.2% | 47.8% | 57.2% | 57.8% | 57.6% |
| Hispanic / Latino | 22.4% | 23.5% | 23.9% | 33.6% | 34.1% | 34.0% |
| Black / African American | 22.0% | 23.2% | 23.8% | 35.0% | 35.6% | 35.3% |
| English learners | 15.2% | 14.7% | 14.0% | 15.5% | 14.9% | 14.0% |
| Students with disabilities | 15.0% | 15.5% | 15.3% | 18.7% | 19.2% | 18.7% |
OSPI statewide rows, same definition as the grade table above.
The gap between low-income students and everyone else is 30.5 points in math and 31.2 in ELA. Three years ago it was 31.2 and 31.6. That is a narrowing of less than half a point a year, and it came from the top edging down as much as from the bottom edging up. Hispanic and Black students each gained about a point and a half in math over three years. English learners are the one group moving clearly in the wrong direction: their ELA rate has fallen from 15.5% to 14.0% in two years, and their math rate from 15.2% to 14.0%.