Jim Cowen is a Navy Veteran and executive director of the Collaborative for Student Success where he is focused on lifting up and defending strong practices and policies driving improved outcomes for all students.

The United States already lacks enough skilled workers to build the high-tech military equipment the nation’s security demands. Engineers, technicians, programmers and advanced-manufacturing workers, jobs that are grounded in math skills, are in short supply across the defense industrial base. Yet the nation is compounding that vulnerability by awarding high school diplomas that too often overstate students’ readiness in math.

That math gap is a national security problem.

Modern deterrence depends on a workforce capable of producing and sustaining complex systems. If graduates arrive at college, training programs or jobs without the quantitative skills their diplomas imply, the pipeline into math-centric fields like engineering and advanced manufacturing narrows significantly.

New Jersey offers a stark example. State leaders celebrate a high school graduation rate above 90 percent, but the state’s own assessment shows that only about six in 10 juniors are “graduation ready” in math. As a new report concluded, “By lowering the bar for what it takes to graduate high school,” the high graduation rate “is obscuring the fact that New Jersey, like some other states, has diminished what it means to earn a diploma.”

New Jersey is hardly alone.

An independent 50-state analysis this spring found wide gaps between four-year graduation rates and high school math proficiency. California graduates 86 percent of students, but only 30 percent meet state expectations in math—a 56-point gap. Florida graduates 90 percent, while 44 percent meet or exceed standards in algebra and geometry. New York graduates 86 percent, but just 56 percent meet expectations on the Algebra I exam. Alabama’s gap is 67 points, Kansas’ is 69 and the District of Columbia’s is 71.

The numbers expose a dangerous mismatch between credentials and capability. A diploma should tell colleges and employers that a graduate is ready for the next step. When it conceals unfinished learning, the costs move downstream.

This reality is not lost on Jake Steel, the newly appointed Kansas Commissioner of Education.

“There is nothing more important than ensuring that students exit their educational path prepared for the next step,” he told me. “For some that’s college. For others it may be a job or the military. Whatever that choice is, we must ensure that we’re giving them the best shot possible. That means we’re detecting gaps and shortfalls as soon as possible so we can provide the supports and instruction that’s needed.”

The downstream costs

One of those downstream costs is borne by the students themselves, who once in college are often forced to change majors from those requiring stronger math skills to those that don’t, foregoing technical careers that government data says pay more than double others.

Another of those costs is borne by the nation in the form of increased pressure on the already struggling national security workforce to fill positions.

The most acute shortages in aerospace and defense currently are in skilled trades and production-critical roles, said Snelling Staffing, a nationwide recruiting company for U.S. manufacturers. These include machinists, numerical computer control operators, welders, maintenance technicians, quality inspectors and industrial electricians. The deficits in defense workers adept in math extend to the scientists and engineers who design weapons and other defense systems.

The Pentagon’s 2024 National Defense Industrial Strategy singled out an “inadequate workforce” as a “systemic challenge” to supplying the U.S. military with the weapons and systems necessary to deter and defeat enemies.

New tech demands math skills

National security needs are evolving. The Pentagon has identified six critical technology areas as its main research-and-development priorities as critical for U.S. national security: applied artificial intelligence, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technology, quantum battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy and scaled hypersonic weapons.

Each sits on a foundation of advanced math knowledge, and each demands a workforce with math skills nurtured during the K-12 years.

But it’s an open question whether the U.S. can produce enough technical talent to meet those needs. A report by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University found that the defense industry is not replacing or expanding its technical workforce at the same rate as other industry sectors.

“Countless studies and media reports detail the deficit of technical talent within the defense community, and the numerous risks associated with this shortfall,” the center found.

That deficit begins long before a job opening goes unfilled at a shipyard or defense contractor. It begins when schools award diplomas to students who have not mastered math needed to begin training or further their education in technical disciplines.

Bolstering the defense workforce requires states to restore meaning to the high school diploma, confront gaps between graduation and proficiency and ensure that students receive rigorous math instruction and timely support. The U.S. can’t ensure a strong defense industrial base, or effective national security, on a weak mathematical foundation.