New Maryland Math Standards: What Changed for K-2
- Whitney Ramirez, AFC
- 3 hours ago
- 8 min read
A Maryland first grader will be assessed this year on knowing what a quarter is worth. That was not true a year ago, and most parents have not been told.
Maryland's revised math standards, adopted by the Maryland State Board of Education on July 29, 2025 and implemented starting in the 2026-2027 school year, add money to first grade for the first time. Standard 1.GR.C.6 requires first graders to identify and know the value of the penny, nickel, dime and quarter, and the $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills. Under the previous standards, money did not appear until Grade 2.
Key Takeaways
The revised Maryland College and Career Ready Standards (MCCRS) for Mathematics were adopted by the Maryland State Board of Education on July 29, 2025, with implementation beginning in the 2026-2027 school year.
Standard 1.GR.C.6 is new. It requires Grade 1 students to identify and know the value of the penny, nickel, dime and quarter, and the $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills. MSDE's own crosswalk marks it as added to build the foundation for money work in Grade 2.
Grade 2 money changed too. Standard 2.GR.C.9 now requires students to count mixed sets of coins and bills within $20.00, where the 2010 standard asked only for word problems involving coins and bills with no stated ceiling.
Kindergarten has no money standard. What kindergarten builds is the number sense money depends on, including K.NOS.C.9, understanding 10 as a bundle of ten ones.
Time standards tightened at both grades: Grade 1 adds quarter hours and estimating intervals, and Grade 2 moves from the nearest five minutes to the nearest minute and adds a new elapsed time standard, 2.GR.C.8.
What changed in Maryland's math standards for K-2
Four things changed for K-2, and three of them involve money or time. The revised MCCRS reorganized elementary math into four domains, and money and time now sit together in a cluster called Work with Time and Money, coded 1.GR.C at Grade 1 and 2.GR.C at Grade 2.
The additions there are new content, not renamed content.
Start with the baseline, because most coverage of this revision skips it. Under the 2010 standards, money appeared once in early elementary: at Grade 2, in standard 2.MD.C.8, as word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Grade 1 had no money standard at all. Kindergarten had none either.
Here is what the crosswalks show changed.
Grade 1 money is entirely new. Standard 1.GR.C.6 has no 2010 counterpart. The crosswalk's own note in the comparison column reads that the standard was added to build the foundation for work with money in Grade 2. That is a curricular rationale, not a financial literacy initiative, and it is worth being precise about that.
Grade 1 time got wider and more practical. The 2010 standard, 1.MD.B.3, asked students to tell and write time in hours and half-hours. The new standard, 1.GR.C.5, adds quarter hours and asks students to estimate time intervals of one hour, thirty minutes, fifteen minutes and one minute for real activities. Sharpening a pencil versus a soccer game.
Grade 2 money added a ceiling and a counting requirement. Standard 2.GR.C.9 requires students to count mixed sets of coins and bills to solve problems in context within $20.00. The 2010 version asked for word problems with the same denominations and the same $ and ¢ symbol requirement, but it did not ask students to count mixed sets and it set no dollar ceiling. The symbols carried forward. The counting and the ceiling are the new part.
Grade 2 gained a new time standard. Standard 2.GR.C.8 asks students to estimate and calculate elapsed time to the hour and half hour. It has no 2010 counterpart, and the crosswalk notes it was added to support elapsed time work in Grade 3. Separately, 2.GR.C.7 moves telling time from the nearest five minutes to the nearest minute and adds number lines as a representation.
What 1.GR.C.6 actually requires
The standard names its denominations, and precision matters here because coverage of it has already started drifting.
It covers four coins: penny, nickel, dime, quarter. It covers four bills: $1, $5, $10, $20. It asks students to identify each and know its value. It does not cover half dollars, dollar coins, or any bill above $20. It does not ask first graders to count mixed sets, which is the Grade 2 job.
When do Maryland students start learning about money?
Money instruction now formally begins in Grade 1 in Maryland, one full year earlier than under the 2010 standards. Kindergarten still has no money standard. What kindergarten does is build the place value structure that makes money make sense, which is why the progression matters more than the single start date.
Grade | What students build first | What the money standard requires |
Kindergarten | Count to 100 by ones and tens (K.NOS.A.1); understand 10 as a bundle of ten ones (K.NOS.C.9) | No money standard |
Grade 1 | Extend the bundle of ten to two-digit numbers (1.NOS.B.3); represent whole numbers on a number line (1.NOS.B.4) | 1.GR.C.6: identify and know the value of the penny, nickel, dime, quarter and the $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills |
Grade 2 | Understand 100 as a bundle of ten tens (2.NOS.A.1); skip count by 2s, 5s, 10s and 100s (2.NOS.A.2) | 2.GR.C.9: count mixed sets of coins and bills within $20.00, in context, using $ and ¢ |
If you take one thing from that table, take the middle column. The money standards are not bolted on. They sit on a number sense sequence the state rebuilt at the same time.
Why the number work matters more than the coins
The bundle of ten is the whole thing. A kindergartner who understands that ten ones can be treated as a single unit called a ten (K.NOS.C.9) already has the structure they need to understand that a dime is worth ten pennies. A first grader who can decompose 46 into forty and six (1.NOS.B.3) has the structure for four dimes and six pennies. Maryland's revision makes that sequence explicit across the three grades rather than leaving it to chance.
Then there is what actually happens in the room. I have taught money to elementary students, and the failure point is almost never the arithmetic. It is that coin value does not track coin size. A dime is physically smaller than a nickel and worth twice as much. Adults forget how strange that is until they watch a six-year-old sort coins by size and get a confidently wrong answer.
The second failure point is skip counting across denominations. Counting five dimes is easy. Counting two quarters, a dime and three pennies requires switching from 25s to 10s to 1s mid-count, and that switch is the actual skill hiding inside 2.GR.C.9. Maryland's new Grade 2 standard 2.NOS.A.2 asks for skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s and 100s, which covers part of it.
The 25s a student needs for quarters are not in that list.
This is the same pattern we see across what happens when money lessons reach elementary classrooms: the math is rarely the obstacle.
The wider reorganization
Elementary math in Maryland now runs on four domains: Number and Operation Sense (NOS), Algebraic Thinking (AT), Geometric Reasoning and Measurement (GR), and Reasoning with Data and Statistics (DS). The old Measurement and Data and Geometry domains merged into GR. Number and Operations in Base Ten and Operations and Algebraic Thinking were reorganized into NOS and AT.
Content moved between grades as well. The number line standard is the clearest example: representing whole numbers as lengths from 0 moved down from Grade 2 to Grade 1 as 1.NOS.B.4, while Grade 2 kept the harder half, representing sums and differences on a number line, as 2.NOS.C.7. A line of symmetry moved down from Grade 4 to Grade 2.
Several standards were added outright to shore up numeracy.
For teachers, the document worth having is not the crosswalk. MSDE published per-grade Standards Companion Guides in December 2025 that show what each standard looks like in practice, with examples and connections to prior and subsequent learning. The crosswalk tells you what changed. The companion guide tells you what to do about it. Schools mapping curriculum against the revision may also find our note on how the F.A.S.T. Framework maps to math standards useful.
What parents can do this school year
None of this requires buying anything or knowing math yourself. Five things, in the order they help.
Ask which coins your first grader can name and value. That is the assessed standard, stated plainly. It is a fair thing to check at the kitchen table and it takes two minutes.
Use real coins, not pictures. The size-versus-value confusion only resolves by handling them. Worksheets flatten the exact property that causes the problem.
Skip count out loud by 5s, 10s and 25s. Then switch between them mid-count, because that switch is what 2.GR.C.9 will actually ask for and it is the part that breaks down.
Say prices out loud at the store, using both symbols. The $ and ¢ requirement is written into the standard, and most children never see cents notation anywhere outside a worksheet.
Give the money a job. A standard teaches a child what a quarter is worth. It does not teach them what to do with one, and it does not claim to.
That last point is the honest limit of what a math standard can do. Maryland still has no standalone personal finance graduation requirement, a gap we covered when the Blueprint's college readiness push outran its financial literacy push. Identification is not decision-making. The standards were never written to close that distance.
FAQ
When were Maryland's new math standards adopted?
The Maryland State Board of Education adopted the revised Maryland College and Career Ready Standards for Mathematics on July 29, 2025. MSDE convened the Standards and Frameworks Validation Committee that developed them, but the State Board is the body that adopts.
When do the new Maryland math standards take effect?
Implementation begins in the 2026-2027 school year. The 2025-2026 year was set aside for educator professional learning and preparation, so this is the first year students are taught under the revised standards.
Does Maryland teach money in kindergarten?
No. Kindergarten has no money standard under the revised MCCRS. Maryland kindergarten math builds the number foundations money depends on instead, including counting to 100 and understanding 10 as a bundle of ten ones. The first money standard is 1.GR.C.6 at Grade 1.
What is standard 1.GR.C.6?
It is Maryland's new Grade 1 money standard: identify and know the value of coins (penny, nickel, dime, quarter) and bills ($1, $5, $10, $20). It has no counterpart in the 2010 standards. MSDE's crosswalk notes it was added to build the foundation for money work in Grade 2.
Where can I read the Maryland math crosswalks myself?
MSDE publishes a crosswalk for every grade on its revised standards page. Each one lists the 2025 standard beside its 2010 predecessor, with a note explaining what changed. The Grade 1 and Grade 2 documents are where the money standards live.
Where this leaves Maryland families
Maryland moved money instruction a full year earlier and, more usefully, tied it to the place value work that makes it stick. That is a real improvement and it deserves to be said plainly.
It is also still four coins and four bills. A child who can name a quarter and count to $20.00 has learned the vocabulary of money, not its use. The rest happens at home, or it happens in a program built for it.
Families can start with our financial literacy classes for ages 9 to 24. Districts and school leaders mapping the revised standards against existing programming can review school and district partnership options.
Whitney Ramirez is an Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC), the Founder and CEO of Diapers 2 Deposits, Inc., and delivers financial education in Maryland school districts. Standard citations in this article were checked against MSDE's published Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 crosswalk documents.
