Covid is too easy a scapegoat for the decline in math scores. For decades the focus has been on reading at a detriment to everything else. Primary school teachers have dozens of credit hours of reading instruction course work and will have maybe 4-6 credit hours for math. The last 10 or so years has pushed coding and technology ahead of math now too. Covid showed that there is no foundation for math education in the US and focusing on covid as the cause is treating a symptom over the disease.