US Schools Ditch Timed Maths Tests | Times Tables Games

When I looked into the latest from the National Math Improvement Project and the NASBE 2026 policy updates, what stood out immediately was the language being used at the policy level. These are not just suggestions from progressive teachers on social media. This is state and district guidance that is pushing back hard against what researchers have long called "drill-and-kill" practice. The new direction calls for conceptual math fluency, confidence-building, and what some documents describe outright as joyful learning.

Chicago Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the country, is part of this broader Illinois push. The backdrop is falling NAEP math scores, which have prompted serious reflection about whether the old model of timed tests and rote repetition is actually producing fluent, confident mathematicians. The answer, increasingly, is no.

The key takeaway from the new guidance is this: fluency and speed are not the same thing. A child who can recall 7x8 quickly under pressure is not necessarily a child who understands multiplication. And a child who cannot recall it quickly under pressure may understand it perfectly well, but has been taught to associate maths with fear.

This is not new research, but it is newly influential. For years, educators working with children with maths anxiety, SEND needs, and neurodivergent learners have known that the stopwatch is often the enemy of understanding. When I speak to teachers and SENCOs, the stories are consistent: a bright child who genuinely grasps mathematical concepts but shuts down the moment a timer appears. The physiological stress response that timed tests trigger can actually block memory recall, which means these tests are measuring anxiety as much as they are measuring knowledge.

What the Illinois and Chicago policy shifts acknowledge is that this is not a niche problem affecting a small number of struggling students. It is widespread, and it is holding children back.

Here is where it gets practical, because "joyful learning" can sound vague when you are planning a real lesson for a real class of thirty children. What the research and the new policy direction point toward is practice that is:

1. Low-stakes and repeatable, so children build fluency through volume of practice rather than pressure of performance.
2. Conceptually grounded, connecting multiplication facts to genuine understanding rather than pure memorisation.
3. Engaging enough that children want to return to it, which is where the design of the practice matters enormously.

Multiplayer game formats are increasingly recognised as one of the most effective ways to achieve this. When children are playing together rather than competing against a clock, the emotional context of the practice changes entirely. Collaboration, friendly rivalry, and the intrinsic motivation of a game format replace the dread of the timed test.

As our founder Gal Darrash puts it, *"We built XTables Champions around the games kids already love because we knew that if a child is having fun, they are not anxious, and if they are not anxious, they can actually learn."*

At XTables Champions, this is precisely the problem we set out to address. Our maths fluency app was designed from the start for children with maths anxiety, SEND needs, and neurodivergent learners, and the core design principle is that engagement comes before everything else. We use popular game formats that children are already drawn to, and multiplayer modes that make practice feel social rather than isolating.

What we keep hearing from the schools and families we speak to is that the difference is not just in results. It is in attitude. Children who previously avoided maths practice are asking to play. That is the shift that the Illinois and Chicago guidance is calling for, and it is the shift we are genuinely seeing happen when children use our platform.

We are a young company and I will not pretend we have decades of outcome data to cite. What we do have is a clear design philosophy that is aligned with where the research and the policy are pointing, and early conversations with educators that give us real confidence we are on the right track.

If you are a teacher or instructional coach in Illinois, Chicago, or anywhere else in the US where maths fluency policy is shifting, the practical question is: what does your current fluency practice look like, and does it reduce or increase anxiety for your most vulnerable learners?

If you are still relying primarily on timed drills or flashcard-style testing, this is a good moment to audit that. Not because timed tests are evil, but because they are often the least effective tool for the children who need the most support. And those children are the ones who will show up most clearly in your district's outcome data.

The move toward anxiety-free, conceptual, joyful fluency is not a softening of standards. It is a smarter approach to actually meeting them.

If you are an elementary school teacher, instructional leader, or district curriculum coordinator looking for a maths fluency tool that genuinely reflects the anxiety-free, engagement-first approach that Illinois and Chicago schools are now prioritising, I would love for you to take a closer look at XTables Champions.

Our platform was built specifically for children who find maths stressful, and we would be happy to walk you through how it works and whether it could be a fit for your students. Get in touch with us at xtableschampions.com and tell us a little about your school. We are a small, founder-led team and we genuinely make time for real conversations with educators.