> For Jessica Babcock, a Temple University math professor, the magnitude of the problem hit home last year as she graded quizzes in her intermediate algebra cla

> For Jessica Babcock, a Temple University math professor, the magnitude of the problem hit home last year as she graded quizzes in her intermediate algebra class, the lowest option for STEM majors. The quiz, a softball at the start of the fall semester, asked students to subtract eight from negative six. Negative numbers are normally taught somewhere between fourth and sixth grade, so this is a pre-pandemic failure. I did math tutoring at university, almost two decades ago now. At the time, there were three semesters of remedial math available, plus the tutoring program. The state (California) eventually got mad and made them scrap some of it, as the high schools were supposed to be covering it. Which is true enough, but obviously that wasn't happening. I'm sure Covid made the problem worse, but not being ready for university math is clearly a decades old problem now.