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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

• Rp8yXmdmr 5mo ago
  I was surprised when they dropped the requirement, not now.
• StateflowsLabs 5mo ago
  "The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one. Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, building a competitive profile based entirely on expensive extracurriculars, sports, and elite summer camps is far more wealth-dependent. Standardized testing isn't perfect, but it's often the only objective equalizer we have."
  • ceejayoz 5mo ago
    > Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. Sports frequently just requires a ball or a place to run. In both scenarios, you can still purchase better equipment/training. There are very expensive, effective SAT prep options out there for the wealthy.
    • valleyer 5mo ago
      Your analogy works against you, given that tons of professional athletes come from poverty.
      • BigTTYGothGF 5mo ago
        > tons of professional athletes come from poverty Is that actually the case?
        • ptek 5mo ago
          Depends on the sport. I don’t think the Olympic equestrian competitors would be dirt poor.
        • xhkkffbf 5mo ago
          Read up on Kobe Bryant or Bronny James.
          • valleyer 5mo ago
            Sure, those are some good counterexamples: both sons of professional athletes. And there are plenty of others. On the other hand, we have: Allen Iverson, Larry Bird, Shaquille O'Neal, Carmelo Anthony, Michael Vick, Bo Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Fernando Valenzuela, Albert Pujols, Jim Thorpe, ... Oh, and LeBron James himself! So my view is that people of both rich and poor upbringings have a good chance in the sports world these days, at least for those sports where the necessary gear is relatively cheap.
            • nradov 5mo ago
              Times have changed. Due to the rise of expensive youth travel club sports leagues I suspect we will see fewer poor children turn professional. There will always be a few outliers but if you don't have access to top coaching and extra competitive playing time prior to college then you're really at a disadvantage.
            • BigTTYGothGF 5mo ago
              > On the other hand Perhaps I should have instead said "is that still happening at meaningful rates". LeBron James is an interesting example. Per wiki: > Realizing that her son would be better off in a more stable family environment, Gloria allowed him to move in with the family of Frank Walker, a local youth football coach who introduced James to basketball when he was nine years old. and then later he went to a fancy private high school (whose wikipedia page has many notable alumni, all athletes). So while "from poverty" may be technically accurate, I don't know if I'd count it given all his opportunities later in childhood.
      • ceejayoz 5mo ago
        Professional athletes are like people who get 1600s on the SAT; a bit of an outlier.
        • Aarostotle 5mo ago
          That's exactly the point. Top schools are looking for outlier intellectual talent, but the egalitarian approach (high school grade inflation plus weakening of standardized testing) smooths the differences and makes it harder for them to admit the right people. The visible result has been the weakening of these institutions. Do also observe that this is recursive — as these institutions have lowered their standards over decades, the people who go through them and end up leading them are weaker, too.
          • ceejayoz 5mo ago
            > Top schools are looking for outlier intellectual talent… Eh, somewhat. They want some of those outliers hobnobbing with the legacies.
          • t0mpr1c3 5mo ago
            We're talking about the California state education system here. They do not have the option to restrict the provision of their services to a tiny elite. The concerns of "top schools" absorbs altogether too much oxygen.
            • toast0 5mo ago
              IMHO, California state higher education is setup to be tiered. UC > CSU > Community Colleges. If UC is getting a lot of STEM students that need remedial math, I think something has gone wrong. Those students might be better served by getting their math needs met at a community college and transfering to UC later. For one, why pay UC prices for remedial math? For two, community college has a lot more sections of remedial math and more experience teaching it. If you're in a degree that doesn't need much math, taking remedial math at UC is probably fine; but all the STEM degrees want at least the full calculus series (afaik). Remedial math for STEM students at CSU is probably in the middle. You still don't really want a lot of students in that group, when they could be better served at community college ... but CSU should also be more prepared for it.
      • rixed 5mo ago
        According to IA this is mostly a myth though.
      • winterbourne 5mo ago
        Agreed. Professional sports are the closest institution that society has to a meritocracy. Highly competitive, public, obsessively measured and analyzed. A tenth of a second faster sprint time might be more valuable than even a top-tier socioeconomic background.
    • criddell 5mo ago
      My kids were able to take some SAT test prep course through their school (partially funded by the PTA) and it helped a lot. They wrote a bunch of practice exams and each time their scores went up. Also, test taking itself is a skill and the more you practice it the better you get at it. If you’ve written the SAT 15 times over the past 2 years, then the 16th time won’t be as stressful and you will know strategies that work and the questions will be familiar. If you are in a school that doesn’t have a well funded PTA, you are at a disadvantage.
      • jeffbee 5mo ago
        You can, as of about a year ago, take official SAT practice exams for free in Google Gemini.
        • ceejayoz 5mo ago
          SAT prep is much more than just taking practice exams.
          • jeffbee 5mo ago
            The person to whom I responded seemed to imply that it consists chiefly or entirely of taking practice exams. I merely wish to point out that if you want your kid to take SAT practice exams every month you can do it for free at home.
            • ceejayoz 5mo ago
              Such a "SAT test prep course" is going to involve more than just self-guided practice exams. It'll include feedback and coaching to address deficits revealed by those practice exams.
              • jeffbee 5mo ago
                You seem to be arguing with someone else.
    • triceratops 5mo ago
      Whatever gates you put up, the wealthy can fire cannons of cash at them. You just have to pick the ones least vulnerable to cash barrages. What is the marginal gain of expensive SAT prep? Versus just doing hundreds of mock tests out of some prep book, like SWEs grinding LeetCode?
    • duped 5mo ago
      It feels like the problem are the SAT prep courses' existence then
    • adrr 5mo ago
      Sports is the most expensive way to get into college. Tennis is close to $1 million to get your kid into an Ivy league through tennis. Malcom Gladwell wrote about sports and colleges in his book "revenge of the tipping point". Sports is used by the wealthy to get their less academically inclined children in to top schools and some school are expanding it.
    • nradov 5mo ago
      That's not the reality for most youth sports anymore. It's gotten much more competitive. Participating in school sports isn't enough. They generally can't develop the level of skill necessary to gain advantage in college admissions without paying a lot to participate in travel club teams and for private coaching. And I'm not talking just about NCAA recruited athletic scholarships but even for the sort of regular extracurricular sports activities that might give someone an advantage in college admissions.
      • chasd00 5mo ago
        A friend of mine brought his girl up in club soccer, he was starting to travel to different states for tournaments when she was about 8 years old. It was insanely expensive. The only thing i can think of crazier than club soccer is maybe club cheerleading. Youth sports is completely bonkers if you've never been exposed to it.
  • nyeah 5mo ago
    I don't think it's paradoxical at all. This was the original strength of the SAT system.
  • eunos 5mo ago
    And SAT as high school math exam itself I think is way too easy. They should design another test which can clearly distinguish top 1% or even 0.1%.from others
    • raincole 5mo ago
      There are already such tests. They're called International ___ Olympiad.
    • linguae 5mo ago
      When I was in high school in California more than 20 years ago, SAT math alone was insufficient for admissions to STEM programs at mid-ranked and top-ranked universities. I was required to take the SAT Math IIC subject test, which went up to pre-calculus. We were also strongly encouraged to take calculus in high school. There are two AP Calculus exams: AB (which covers the first semester of university calculus) and BC (which covers the first two semesters).
    • jobs_throwaway 5mo ago
      Yes, the scores at the top are way too bunched. A perfect score should indicate generational genius, not the 100th smartest kid your year in California.
      • nradov 5mo ago
        That's not a real problem for UC admissions. They accept thousands of students every year. Anyone who scores near perfect (within the margin of error) should be admitted to at least one UC campus. If that's not happening then the problem is with the admissions criteria, not with the SAT.
        • jobs_throwaway 5mo ago
          > Anyone who scores near perfect (within the margin of error) should be admitted to at least one UC campus You really don't see a problem with that? Our best students should not be "admitted to at least one UC campus". They should have their pick of the UCs and should be getting generous scholarships to entice them. There is absolutely loads of bunching near the top the distribution which makes it impossible for actually-top students to differentiate themselves.
  • lokar 5mo ago
    The problem is as never the tests. It was pretending that the difference between a 600 and 625 (or whatever) really predicted anything. It was the silly idea that with tests you could produce a fair ordering of students based on potential to succeed.
    • jpadkins 5mo ago
      who uses SAT scores as "potential succeed"??
      • lokar 5mo ago
        The original argument for standardized tests was to pick based on how well you would do in university (vs who your parents know).
    • raincole 5mo ago
      Any working system has to rely on some arbitrary rules. Drawing a line between students who scored 600 and 625 is still infinitely better than drawing it based on the decision-makers' moods.
      • lokar 5mo ago
        Or, treat 600-625 as a tie, and use a lottery.
    • chaostheory 5mo ago
      As imperfect standardized tests are, they are still more fair and less biased than using arbitrary judgement on extra curriculars
      • lokar 5mo ago
        Bucket to the observed predictive power of the score, resolve ties with a lottery .
        • 5mo ago
  • CalRobert 5mo ago
    I wasn't underprivileged but I did go to a terrible evangelical high school that had no honors or AP classes (AP bio at a place teaching creationism would've been something else...) and I think I only got in to a decent college on the strength of my SAT and ACT scores. My grades were OK (except in bio, where I refused to acknowledge young Earth creationism) but not amazing.
    • RealityVoid 5mo ago
      > My grades were OK (except in bio, where I refused to acknowledge young Earth creationism) but not amazing. This is... Wild.
      • smcg 5mo ago
        It's very common in US private schools.
        • tclancy 5mo ago
          Uh, it's been a while since I've been inside one, but I would guess it's very common in a certain strain of US private schools, not as a rule.
        • cm2012 5mo ago
          No it is not lol. Incredibly rare
        • nyeah 5mo ago
          I think this depends a lot on how you select the set of private schools you're looking at.
        • Henchman21 5mo ago
          Please provide a reference to this.
      • CalRobert 5mo ago
        The funny thing is the Adventists seem to produce good hospitals but are still creationists. I guess it’s not a big deal how we got here if you just want to do medicine.
  • happytoexplain 5mo ago
    I can't read the article - do they explain why they think this is a "paradox"?
    • akramachamarei 5mo ago
      Personally, I don't think they actually believe it's paradoxical, I think the authors are just trying to be polite to those who criticize standardized testing with identity politics. Politeness can aid in persuasion, so I don't blame them.
    • kayson 5mo ago
      This doesn't exactly answer your question, but MIT added test scores back recently and wrote a blog post explaining why: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our... I think the "paradox" is that you'd expect disadvantaged students to perform worse on standardized testing.
    • delecti 5mo ago
      Expectation: removing standardized tests will give more opportunity to students who historically tend to do worse on those tests, like poor kids. Reality: removing standardized tests means that universities have to put more weight on the rest of the college application, such as extracurricular activities which are often expensive and thus disadvantage poor kids. Calling it a "paradox" is maybe a little hyperbolic, but basically it did the opposite of what they expected.
      • happytoexplain 5mo ago
        But this is relative, right? We're talking about SATs vs just relying on grades. Do poor kids do worse on SATs relative to how they do in their class grades, as compared to other kids? I kind of just figured poor kids do worse overall.
        • Jensson 5mo ago
          Its easier to get good grades in poor schools since regardless how you grade your teachers grade you against your peers, and poor schools have worse peers. So given same knowledge poor students have better grades, so their grades will be relatively better than their SATs. At least in public schools were you don't have an incentive to give everyone an A, maybe private schools are different.
  • fred_is_fred 5mo ago
    I've been wondering with all the data that's available now couldn't admissions look at a 4.0 from HS A vs a 4.0 at HS B and then compare those to actual grades on the campus once students were in class? Assuming HS A has lower standards, they should be able to tell that a 4.0 isnt as meaningful as a 4.0 from HS B. Seems like a straightforward exercise.
  • jaco6 5mo ago
    [dead]
• john_strinlai 5mo ago
  >“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” they warned. i dont understand why the teachers would go out of their way to reteach middle-school math. i teach. my courses have prerequisites. if a student somehow makes it into my class without a passing-grade grasp of the prerequisites, i will point them in the right direction to get caught up, but i am not spending any class time on it. its not fair to the other students.
  • ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Professors who fail large swathes of their classes get in trouble.
    • dmoy 5mo ago
      This sounds like the real underlying problem then
      • ceejayoz 5mo ago
        There are several interrelated problems.
        • conartist6 5mo ago
          A particular historical virus comes to mind
      • Shank 5mo ago
        It's kind of like how if you owe the bank $1000, you have a problem, but if you owe a bank $100M, they have a problem. You just can't reasonably ignore a huge portion of the class as a professor without a serious amount of documentation, and proof that you've tried to escalate and solve the issue. Ultimately, people are paying for these courses, and it's probably better to teach something rather than nothing.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
  >Critics call the SAT inequitable and say high school grades are a good predictor of college success. I mean, it seems pretty clear from the last 6 years of experience by professors and others that grades (or at least grades in isolation) aren't a good predictor at all for this. The problem is removing the use of standardized tests here was done for ideological reasons. You can already tell by the use of the word "inequitable" here, because a certain insane subset of policymakers and the public believe that we should push for equal outcomes ("equity") over equal opportunity (usually referred to as simply "equality").
  • ceejayoz 5mo ago
    > the public believe that we should push for equal outcomes ("equity") over equal opportunity (usually referred to as simply "equality") This is the direct inverse of what's actually asserted by people talking about equity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_equity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_equity Providing a hearing aid to someone hard of hearing so they can learn is equity. Their outcomes aren't guaranteed; an obstacle to achieving them is removed.
    • valleyer 5mo ago
      From your link: > Equity is equality of outcome for all subgroups in society.
      • ceejayoz 5mo ago
        Also from my link: > factors specific to one's personal conditions should not interfere with the potential of academic success
        • JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
          Sure, but the reality is that such conditions do interfere with the potential of academic success, as much as proponents of equity like to argue otherwise. If I had a severe brain injury as a child, or my mom drank and did a ton of drugs while pregnant with me, or any number of other reasons, I will probably be far less academically successful than in the counterfactual reality where I didn't get a brick dropped on my head as a child. Equality proponents argue that brick-on-head and no-brick-on-head should be judged by the same standards. Equity proponents argue that brick-on-head should be given advantages over no-brick-on-head to make them obtain substantially similar educational outcomes. Once again, from your own link: >Equity recognizes this uneven playing field and aims to take extra measures by giving those in need more than those who are not. Equity aims to achieve equal outcomes for groups, also called substantive equality. Equity aims to ensure that everyone's lifestyle is equal, even if that requires unequal distribution of access and goods.
• chaidhat 5mo ago
  As a product of the STEM post-SAT UC system (UCLA ‘26), I never personally experienced “middle school math” being taught or a lack of mathematical understanding. I’ve had my fair share of classes which throw you into the deep end and not many which coddle you. Never seen any professor teaching middle school mathematics. A lot of professors started off with a vague idea of prerequisites, covered the basic ideas and usually go straight into the deep end with new material. It is up to the student to make sure they are acquainted with the prerequisites, go to discussions or office hours to ask TAs or the professor, or just drop the class and do it next quarter (without penalty). At least in my four years at UCLA, we have ample opportunity to do it and the TAs are 90% empathetic towards “stupid questions.” So in my personal opinion, I think profs shouldn’t be wasting time teaching basic math and there are more than enough opportunities for the student to learn it at their time in the UC.
  • dieselgate 5mo ago
    Thanks for sharing your post-SAT experience and it's similar to mine (UCD engineering '14). The article mentions "middle school math" for people in first semester calculus but doesn't specify which calculus series. There were at least three when I was in undergrad: engineering/physics/math, biology/life-science, and business/econ series.
• japhyr 5mo ago
  Anecdotal data point: My son is finishing 9th grade, and he's taking 10th grade math because he got ahead a year when he was younger. At his school, you're exempted from having to take the final exam if you're passing with a reasonable grade at the end of the semester. He said there are about four students who don't have to take the final exam. Math has always been hard to teach well, because issues with earlier math classes compound so much. With all the societal interruptions to education, and the impact of addictive tech on young people's minds, it's only gotten more difficult.
  • t0mpr1c3 5mo ago
    True. COVID has set the entire cohort back, in terms of education but also every other aspect of personal development.
    • winterbourne 5mo ago
      The IQ loss from neurological damage caused by COVID wasn't helpful either. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330
• eunos 5mo ago
  It's very astonishing that sometime I heard folks with very high SAT including math /science/programming accolades failed to get admission in UCs but you have severe math deficit like this.
  • confidantlake 5mo ago
    It is depressing but not surprising.
  • kyboren 5mo ago
    But were those folks members of politically desirable racial groups? Or were they Asian?
• kleiba2 5mo ago
  I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercises. Maybe even for most high school math. That was frowned upon though by the higher ranks. If I was evaluated as a teacher and didn't include some iPad shenanigans in the class that I was getting audited for, I would have been in trouble. How behind the times! I got along really well with most of my teenage students, it was a lot of fun interacting with them. But the politics behind it all got too annoying. Also, you're under very tight control on what you teach and how, that was super annoying. So I stopped teaching a few years ago and never looked back.
  • collabs 5mo ago
    I am thinking why not use the iPad simply as a letter pad with infinite pages? the new iPad with the new iPad pencil can do that and I am sure with the right software you can write, erase, rewrite as much as you want? What am I missing?
    • kleiba2 5mo ago
      That's being done, but it would not be sufficient to satisfy the powers that be.
    • irishcoffee 5mo ago
      You can just use a pencil and paper, and it's a lot cheaper?
      • ptek 5mo ago
        Yes it is cheaper and who will steal or rob a student of pencil and paper compared to a iPad also pencil and paper doesn’t require age verification.
        • 5mo ago
• tedggh 5mo ago
  My nephews came to the US in their early teens as non English speakers. They struggled in some of the courses but still got good grades reported to their parents. So, apparently some teachers will put them on a bus together with other minorities and take them on a day trip to the museum instead of math class, but they would still get graded. They retuned back to Spain and had a very difficult time graduating from high school because of math. So I’m not sure how well of a predictor high school is.
• godsinhisheaven 5mo ago
  Out of the current population of college students today, what percentage shouldn't really be there, be it for lack of intelligence or too much? (e.g. smart ceo guy dropping out.) 10%? 20%? 50%? If you can't do high school level math, much less middle school, do you deserve to be in college? It really strikes at what the purpose of college is: is it for educating people, no matter their prior abilities? Or is it to foster our best and brightest to put them on a path towards advancing society? Or is it to create well-rounded individuals, knowledgeable in many different domains? I admit, perhaps the purpose is all of the above, but if so, things that try to be everything for everyone often have to make sacrifices in one area to improve another.
• BigTTYGothGF 5mo ago
  > "We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” they warned. When I was a grad student in a mediocre university in a different state thirty years ago we had a lot of kids in a similar situation. This was resolved by means of a pre-placement exam, and the ones who scored the worst had to take one of two remedial math classes, the lower of which was solidly at the middle school level. The university had a SAT requirement at the time. The pre-placement exam had two versions that were used on alternate days, and a student could take it as often as they liked. This may be a new experience for those particular UC faculty, but it is not a new phenomenon.
• jdw64 5mo ago
  Looking at the world, it seems we all go through similar systemic issues. Naturally, in East Asian cultures where the fervor for education is overheated, this phenomenon tended to manifest much earlier. When specific exams are abolished or watered down under the banner of 'diversity and equal opportunity,' the wealthy actually gain a massive advantage. Of course, the exam system itself inherently favors the rich as well. The reason is simple: weakening exams naturally forces the strengthening of alternative metrics. During the transition period when a new system is introduced to society, wealthy parents are far better equipped to adapt than poorer ones. Korea’s 'Spoon Class Theory' (where rich parents are gold spoons and poor parents are dirt spoons) and Japan’s 'Parent Gacha' (parent lottery) stem from this exact dynamic. Sure, standardized testing benefits the wealthy because they can hire top-tier tutors. However, when the rules of the system change entirely, the underprivileged simply do not have the buffer or resources to keep up with the shift.
  • anal_reactor 5mo ago
    When school doesn't force kids to study, there is a growing gap between parents who do and those who don't. Wealth is just a proxy for that.
    • jdw64 5mo ago
      [dead]
  • MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
    I agree. The rich kids will always have an advantage. But let me ask why are we playing this like a zero sum game? Do we not have enough education for anyone who is willing to put up the work?
    • jdw64 5mo ago
      The ideal of education is holistic growth, but functionally, it's a positional good. An Ivy League, MIT, or UC Berkeley degree is valuable precisely because others do not have it, not simply because you do. Add to this the fact that global productivity is maxed out, yet access to the tools of production remains highly restricted. This is the core issue. If the number of good jobs is fixed, hiring is a zero-sum game. When education becomes universally accessible, we don't get equality; we just get higher hurdles. Just look at the dev industry. It used to be that knowing a local CMS was enough to get a job. Now, you are forced to grind leetcode and memorize the deep architecture of tech stacks you'll never actually use just to pass the filtering process. I don't think there's any real solution to this inequality. It's a reality, and any attempt to 'solve' it is bound to fail
• collabs 5mo ago
  something that came to my mind as I was reading the comments here -- the thing is that in the quest for professionalism, we have sidelined a lot of people who would be good at teaching in favor of people who are good at jumping hoops. there is a famous quote saying "when the measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure"
  • ryukoposting 5mo ago
    Goodhart's Law (that quote) is actually one of the motivations for moving away from ACT and SAT as college entry benchmarks. "Teaching to the test" is a rampant problem in the US. UC is seeing flaws in departing from those benchmarks, though. The thing is, % of students getting admitted to college is itself a measure for schools and school districts. If GPA is how you get kids into college, well... It's not a teacher problem, it's a district and state problem. As a teacher, if kids are failing your classes (which nowadays seems to be "getting anything less than an A") your school district blames you. To me, it seems that Goodhart's Law is an inherent problem for education in the information era, no matter how you cut it. If there's one good thing that can be said about ACT and SAT, they're relatively difficult for schools to game. GPA inflation is trivial.
    • matwood 5mo ago
      For almost all math at the HS level, teaching to the test is exactly what you want.
    • antonyt 5mo ago
      I've never understood the "teaching to the test" argument against these tests. Take a look at some of the math SAT sample questions: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/digital-sat-sample-questions.pdf https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/digital-sat-samp... How would you "teach to the test" for these in a way that looks different from just teaching arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, etc?
      • indoordin0saur 5mo ago
        I agree that Goodhart's law doesn't really apply to well designed tests.
• hedora 5mo ago
  This doesn't surprise me at all. From what I can tell, California's education system has moved from "equality" (which I would define as providing similar opportunities to all the kids) to focusing on "equity" (which I think they define as dictating the same outcome for all kids). To get an idea of how off the rails this has gotten, go read up on their statements trying to justify banning high school calculus. They explicitly (in the abstract / introduction of their plan) reject the idea that some kids are more talented at some things than other kids, so if you can compute a derivative by 12th grade, it's due to racial discrimination benefiting you or something. On a related note, instead of writing some Rust code, today, I think I'll go paint a Banksy or something after I finish my coffee. That plan caused a lot of uproar and was blocked before being implemented. Anecdotally, when I asked our local public school for a copy of the curriculum, the teacher said they just teach common core. If you go to the common core website, somewhere towards the top it makes it clear that it is not a curriculum, and just meant to be a lower bar that gets supplemented. Personally, I think all funding in California education (other than terminal levels like 4 year bachelors and up) should be a function of the percentage of students that succeed at the next step. If a local district starts losing funding, then it would have to close / shrink schools, and people from outside the educational system would be allowed to establish independent (secular) charter schools within the district. Those schools would also not be paid unless the students do well in the next phase of their education. This solves the problem of trying to use this as a curriculum back door for climate denial and Islamophobia (or whatever the red states are pushing).
  • ryandrake 5mo ago
    Measuring (and funding) schools based on student outcome is fraught because a student's performance / preparedness for the "next level" is not entirely a function of the school. There are other significant parameters, including parental upbringing, home life stability, neighborhood safety, friends, hunger/nutrition, various trauma and abuse, the list goes on. I'm sure it's been studied, but I'd bet "school quality" is not even close to number 1 on the list of predictors of educational outcome.
    • hedora 5mo ago
• pgh 5mo ago
  The lack of any subject level standardised US high school certification to prove skill-level for matriculation still boggles my mind. I realise this is fundamentally a curriculum issue, as it’s set at a local level. There’s AP, but that’s not universally available.
  • WillAdams 5mo ago
    For my part, it has always killed me that schools don't do as one system which I once briefly attended did --- divide courses between academic and social --- academic classes are attended at one's ability level, while social classes are at one's age level. I was in 4th grade, but attended 8th grade math, science, English, and history (there was a 4 grade cap until after 8th grade classes) while my homeroom, Phys. ed., and social studies were with my 4th grade age peers. Some teachers at the school were also accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and for students who were able to take courses which weren't able to be taught, either a professor from the college would come to the school to be taught, or arrangements would be made to bus students to the college. It wasn't uncommon for students to be awarded a college diploma along with their high school diploma at graduation and there were multiple instances of multiple majors being completed.
    • gamander2 5mo ago
      [dead]
  • declan_roberts 5mo ago
    The best option for a high achiever is to get out of the high school crab bucket as soon as possible. Drop out and take your GED and start community college (often free). Public high school is a terrible place to be a smart kid.
    • floren 5mo ago
      I don't see that much advantage in pushing them out of the crab bucket and into the rat race. As a smart kid in a small rural high school, I had so much free time to read and pursue my other interests, because school wasn't demanding.
• travisgriggs 5mo ago
  It’s ok. In the future, no one will do math. Mathematicians will be directors, with a team of math bots that they administer and direct. Instead of being managed, they will become the managers of mathematic autonomons. Universities need to get with the program. /s
  • ptek 5mo ago
    Internet streamers will need to know basic math unless they are clowns.
    • booleandilemma 5mo ago
      [flagged]
• rdtsc 5mo ago
  What did they expect to happen? Is it one of those things when they say "They may be a professor but they can't tie their shoes!". Surely, they should have seen it coming. I see quotes from faculty there about this being "unexpected", like "the bottom dropped out". Are they just pretending to be surprised or actually surprised...
  • nonethewiser 5mo ago
    >What did they expect to happen? A mixture. 1) They were delusional and thought SAT/ACT scores werent useful signals for selecting qualified candidates. 2) They didn't care and prioritized the ability to admit people based off race and other demographics. And now they are resolving the dissonance between their mission and admission policy. Johnathan Haidt detailed this dynamic a long time ago in a lecture at Duke entitled "Two incompatible sacred values in American universities." The incompatible values being "truth" and "social justice." https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8 https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8
• everybodyknows 5mo ago
  Web site built for the petition campaign: https://ucstudentsuccess.org/ https://ucstudentsuccess.org/ Direct link to its FAQ page: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dxdfw0gIE2UW9k5cqtf6FVMaclI_AFX7/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dxdfw0gIE2UW9k5cqtf6FVMaclI... And here's the slick 50-page, double-column manifesto from the UC establishment, unsigned of course, on the subject -- giving us a sense of the scale of the bureaucratic blob that the petitioners are up against: https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/expanding-opportunity-chemistry-math-and-future-of-stem-at-uc.pdf https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-plannin...
• avs733 5mo ago
  There is a nother factor worth mentioning in the admissions piece - the proababilistic accuracy in admissions alongside massive increases in the number of applications students send out. The first admissions criteria is basically the ability to succeed at the institution academically. It used to be typically applied to a handful, maybe 10 max, universities. Now it is not uncommon to hear from students they applied to 40 or 50. In 2017, my university got 31k applications and accepted 7.4k students. In 2025 those numbers were 68k and 8.5k - the number of acceptances were up 20%, the applications were up 115%. If you assume admissions process has a 95% accuracy, that predicts a huge increase in 'false positives' dropping from 85% of students we expect to be 'correctly' prepared to 74%. Add to that that the quality of math learning outcomes and math learning in K-12 has gone WAY down. I point this squarely at 2 factors - No child left behind and the rejection of the common core because parents no lnoger felthtey understood the math their kids were learning. (and teachers did not understand math well enough to teach it well as a conceptual matter). Even if they are getting the grades and even getting the test scores, they increasingly undersstand very little. They are not prepared for understnading they are prepared for question answering. Even in advnaced classes I see students actively reject learning and understanding for just answering - answering is the point they have learned. Right answers are the point, the only point. A colleague and I were recently talking about what they see their middle nad high schoolers being taught in math classes. They termed it 'calculation as a defense against analysis' SATs might help some but they aren't the problem they are a stop gap. K-12 (and by extension college) have so heavily sought to (poorly) quantify every aspect of experience to evalute people that they have stripped any meaning from the process. The problem is nothing has useful predictive value anymore in a process that is oversaturated by a 115% increase in the number of decisions an admissions office has to make. Its a math problem more than a cultural or standards problem.
• WarmWash 5mo ago
  Why do we have such an easy time accepting peoples intrinsic athletic ability and such a difficult time accepting people's intrinsic mental ability? To me this is a 1:1 comparison, but people lose their mind when I make the comparison. College isn't for everyone just like amateur league sport isn't for everyone. I feel like I am going to a minor league baseball game and seeing a shortstop on the field with the motor control of a toddler, and while everyone is cheering them, I think I'm taking crazy pills wondering who the hell steered this guy towards baseball his whole life.
  • make3 5mo ago
    No one is saying there isn't, but it's objectively a stupid massive oversimplification of how complex things like a human brain and human learning really are. For one, people used to be a lot better, do unless you think people are actively dumber, you argument doesn't hold. School capabilities also correlates massively with things like access to resources and wealth of parents, and inversely with mental health. We also have very strong incentives as a society, as an economy and as a democracy to have as many educated people as possible, to work on setting the best conditions possible for people to learn
    • 650 5mo ago
      What do you mean people used to do a lot better? As far as I know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect was a thing until recently. The human body is quite complex as well. Graduating a for profit private college that is aiming to maximize profit, by churning out specific degrees does not mean you are educated. Having a college degree is not synonymous anymore with well educated. The measure (college degree) became a target, and thus it stopped functioning as intended.
      • make3 5mo ago
        Before devices and AI came. we're seeing a reversal of the Flynn effect trend
  • BobaFloutist 5mo ago
• 999900000999 5mo ago
  Community College is the way to go for most students. The UCs cost too much, for the first 2 years you can either spend 2400$ at a community college or 32k at a UC. Even if your family has the money, put that extra 30k in an index and you have a home down payment by the time you finish school. >Board members cited concerns the tests were biased against students of color and those from lower-income families — including students who did not have access to prep courses. Ehh, you can't balance the world so easily. I was never going to go straight to a 4 year college because I didn't have a stable home situation.
• nradov 5mo ago
  The open letter from UC faculty is here. https://ucstudentsuccess.org/ https://ucstudentsuccess.org/
• cute_boi 5mo ago
  First make SAT/ACT free. Then we will talk about it.
• Alifatisk 5mo ago
  Is this really surprising to anyone? Especially the oldies? I remember decades ago when I started high school. We were all given laptops, but the teachers had a whole lecture on when to use laptops and for what. One thing that stuck with me was how one of the teachers pointed out that we should still take notes and do our homework on physical notebooks, this is because we learn better that way. Things stick to our memory much more when we write it with our hand compared to writing it on the computer. We were supposed to use electronics as little as possible until we grasp the subject. Pen and paper is enough in the beginning. We have truly entered a era where electronic devices is part of our daily life, its now a necessity to have it on us at all times. Of all the places, I would have expected schools to be sensitive towards whats allowed in class and whatnot. If I could decide, I would have banned all electronic devices in class (there is exceptions of course).
  • zahlman 5mo ago
    > I remember decades ago when I started high school. We were all given laptops Decades, plural? Perhaps that could happen two decades ago, but I doubt much more than that. Three decades ago you were lucky if your school had a computer lab.
    • derwiki 5mo ago
      Two decades ago “given laptops” — astonishing. I graduated a shade over two decades ago and most of my classrooms didn’t have a single desktop computer, let alone were students “given laptops.”
• randusername 5mo ago
  > We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields I was annoyed to not find specifics. I would be surprised if the K12 school board and university STEM professors are in agreement about what middle school mathematics is. Trig comes to mind as a common stumbling block. I could be forgetting, but I don't recall much of it on the SAT. If I had to pick one area of math where the gap between learning something initially and actually being shown its broader applicability is the longest, it would be that. Like a decade between SOHCAHTOA and diffeq / fourier probably.
  • bgc 5mo ago
    The November report mentioned in the article goes into (disturbing) details: https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio...
    • randusername 5mo ago
      > To address the large number of underprepared students, the Mathematics Department redesigned Math 2 for Fall 2024 to focus entirely on elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8) ouch
• k6hkUZtLUM 5mo ago
  Years ago, students would take placement exams when they enrolled in the community college. This was great for their education. They would spend a year or two getting to college level english and math. That program is expensive and apparently made people “feel bad”. The colleges were no longer allowed to require placement tests. Then they were no longer allowed to offer remedial courses (courses that did not count toward a degree) and students went directly into college english and math. The failure rates are astounding. About 1 in 3 at a large CC. This issue is trickling up from k-12 being required to “pass” everyone to the colleges with that same pressure. We need our policy to focus on education achievement rather than number-of-degrees. The incentive is short sighted and the ramifications could result in our local economies declining with ineffective employees, fewer successful businesses, etc.
• jrflo 5mo ago
  It's weird to me that standardized tests were demonized as anti-equity rather than GPA. You can always get extra help with homework, projects, etc. if you have a better funded support system. Single subject/unit tests in high school are also much more narrow in scope and easier to prepare for. A standardized test on the other hand is so wide in breadth that raw abilities will shine more.
  • cryzinger 5mo ago
    The SAT/ACT prep school industry is a thing. I grew up with many, many kids whose (wealthy) parents sent them to SAT prep summer school every year from age 12 to 17.
    • jrflo 5mo ago
      Oh for sure. But there's also a huge industry for private tutors, homework help, writing help, etc- which more directly translates dollars to GPA points. My thinking is that the translation between dollars to SAT/ACT points is much less than that.
  • Jensson 5mo ago
    Its because the people pushing for these changes are privileged and stupid, so they want the most gameable version to still be there ie GPA and extracurriculars and not the SAT.
  • verteu 5mo ago
    > It's weird to me that standardized tests were demonized as anti-equity rather than GPA I think it's because socioeconomic status is much more correlated with tests (40% of variance explained) than grades (<10% of variance explained): https://cshe.berkeley.edu/news/family-background-accounts-40-satact-scores-among-uc-applicants https://cshe.berkeley.edu/news/family-background-accounts-40... https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qeeeGJ4100oM-mK0g-1Z34VqEaFEXjWG/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qeeeGJ4100oM-mK0g-1Z34VqEaF... I'm surprised the correlation between SES and grades is so low.
    • 5mo ago
• Lonestar1440 5mo ago
  We need to ensure a diverse student body - by making sure that smart kids of every race, class, and culture are given a thorough math education. The K-12 public schools in California fail too many kids; and far too many poor, minority kids. Rather than fix this, we ban 8th grade algebra because we don't like the racial makeup of the advanced math track. We can, in fact, have it both ways. But it will take change and be resisted by people who, ironically, claim to be helping the poor minorities most hurt today.
• rayiner 5mo ago
  MIT dropped the SAT requirement only to bring it back a few years ago: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our.... Dropping standardized test requirements is disconcerting. Of all of the institutions that should be making decisions neutrally based on the evidence, it’s universities. The fact that even institutions like MIT changed their admissions policies according to ideas that aren’t backed by evidence.
  • sosodev 5mo ago
    Isn’t this contradictory to your point? They dropped it, collected data, and then reverted when the evidence suggested they made the wrong choice.
    • rayiner 5mo ago
      The data has showed that standardized tests are highly predictive for decades. Schools made the change despite the data. Then they changed back not because the data changed, but because it became apparent they couldn’t tolerate the burdens of not screening students properly.
  • undeveloper 5mo ago
    didn't MIT, like most other schools change this only in wake of COVID? A pandemic resulting in a significant amount of your potential applicants from applying is pretty good reason.
    • rayiner 5mo ago
      That was a coincidence. MIT announced it was dropping the SAT on March 20, 2020, just a day after the first statewide lockdown order. The announcement says that they had already planned to make the change before COVID: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/a-special-announcement-about-sat-subject-tests/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/a-special-announcement... (“And last, but certainly not least: I know we are making this announcement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had already been planning to make this change…”) The UC system dropped the SAT in May 2021, in a settlement of a lawsuit that argued standardized tests were discriminatory.
• kepler1 5mo ago
  I think there's conflating of problems here (at for the moment let's talk about primary school K-12 rather than university level). There is a fundamental problem with a good percentage of public schools right now, where the previous expectations of child behavior, learning ability, and classroom teaching outcome has been broken. And instead of coming up with ways to fix that, lots of people are trying to patch the holes at the output side. Unfortunately, public schools have to serve everyone, including: -- kids who have learning disabilities, which seems to be disturbingly an increasing fraction of the population, which costs lots and lots of extra money to pay for -- kids who don't behave properly in school, which is a degradation of the expectations and frankly, reflection of the standards of families at home -- "phone-it-in"ism of unfortunately a large enough portion of public school teachers, who are a combination of not the best trained, and honestly, not allowed to enforce discipline any more due to "equity" and liability rules that govern this now. And instead of being able to fix these problems, concerned people try to look at the easier thing to "fix" which is to rig the outcome to "look right". Until it blatantly and obviously fails. And disserves a generation of kids in the meantime with their hypothesis about how it was going to work. That's why you have dumbing down of entrance standards, as well as avoiding standardized tests (whether for the claimed reason of being "inequitable" or the worse lazy reason of "it's so stressful for the kids"). In the meantime, those with the means take their kids out of public school because no parent wants to conduct the experiment on their own kid. And you then watch as our society generally falls behind other countries that are not yet so rich that they can afford to have kids failing and still somehow end up somewhat ok in life.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• macspoofing 5mo ago
  >Critics call the SAT inequitable and say high school grades are a good predictor of college success. Well .. is it? We have decades of data that should either prove or disprove this. Why is this even an argument? There is an underlying, easily-veriable, objective reality.
• maxglute 5mo ago
  Severe asian deficit because reasons.
• richard_chase 5mo ago
  In my public high school, the teachers just didn't teach and everyone passed.
• ryandamm 5mo ago
  The root cause of the collapse in math education in California is one bad researcher's work, combined with politics. Briefly, a Stanford-affiliated "researcher" named Jo Boaler produced two deeply underpowered studies claiming to show that putting all students in the same grade-level math course led to better outcomes for everyone — even the kids that would've normally been tracked into advanced math. But she only tested results on grade-level math — of course the would-be advanced kids did better on "grade level" math if they've taken it recently. The loss is the advanced math they didn't take. Here's an article: https://stanfordreview.org/jo-boaler-and-the-woke-math-death-spiral/ https://stanfordreview.org/jo-boaler-and-the-woke-math-death... I fought with my son's middle school administration about this precise issue. It is the stated policy of CA's state level education department to de-emphasize advanced math and tracking, in favor of these deeply suspect ideas. I'm pretty progressive in general, but this is braindead stupid, alarming, and self-defeating. (If you care about equity, you NEED to have options in the public school for the underprivileged gifted kids! the rich kids have lots of options and will be fine.) It's deeply depressing, but education has long been a weak spot for California; since Prop 13 in the 1970s, California has been 49th or 50th in per-pupil funding for public education (excluding college, I think). But to compound that with this wrongheaded, moronic, politically suspect and quantitatively incorrect policy is... infuriating.
  • kyboren 5mo ago
    I agree with everything you wrote about maladministration of California's math curricula, but: > since Prop 13 in the 1970s, California has been 49th or 50th in per-pupil funding for public education (excluding college, I think). This is totally incorrect. California ranked 6th in total per-pupil spending in 2023[0]. California has a formulaic mandate on K-12 funding amounts (Prop 98) and schools are funded through both property taxes (affected by Prop 13) and general funds via the LCFF, which directs extra funds towards schools with more disadvantaged students. In fact, funding levels keep hitting record after record, with only mandatory Prop 98 spending rising from $59B in 2013-14[1] to $127.1B in 2026-27[2], despite an enrollment decline of ~7% over that period[3]. [0]: https://reason.org/k12-ed-spending/2025-spotlight/ https://reason.org/k12-ed-spending/2025-spotlight/ [1]: https://ebudget.ca.gov/2024-25/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Education.pdf https://ebudget.ca.gov/2024-25/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Educati... [2]: https://ebudget.ca.gov/2026-27/pdf/Revised/BudgetSummary/TK-12Education.pdf https://ebudget.ca.gov/2026-27/pdf/Revised/BudgetSummary/TK-... [3]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-k-12-students/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-k-12-students/
• u1hcw9nx 5mo ago
  If STEM degrees produce low quality graduates, the value of degree decreases: 1. Employers must add more math testing before hiring to see that they get what they need. 2. Wages drop to with match the knowledge and skill. Become prompt engineer $25/h no permanent job. 3. Immigrants to the rescue!
• rahimnathwani 5mo ago
  "In 11th grade, the most relevant grade relating to college readiness, 30.5% of students met or exceeded math learning standards. Of these, nearly half exceeded the learning standard — marking them as likely to be the best prepared for a college STEM major." You can see this 30.5% in the 'grade 11' chart on this page: https://tools.encona.com/caaspp-explorer#slots=state&s=math https://tools.encona.com/caaspp-explorer#slots=state&s=math Politicians in California want the ethnic mix of students at public universities to reflect the ethnic mix of the state population. They cannot achieve this goal if colleges use academic preparedness as the main factor in admissions: https://tools.encona.com/caaspp-explorer#slots=state%7E76%2Cstate%7E74%2Cstate%7E78%2Cstate%7E80&s=math https://tools.encona.com/caaspp-explorer#slots=state%7E76%2C... Academics presumably have multiple reasons to want students showing up having mastered the prerequisites of whichever class they're taking.
  • isityettime 5mo ago
    > Politicians in California want the ethnic mix of students at public universities to reflect the ethnic mix of the state population. They cannot achieve this goal if colleges use academic preparedness as the main factor in admissions That's a satisfiable goal, but it means they have to accept that they need extremely broad and deep remedial courses, and they need to treat admissions more or less like a community college does. Is that what they're looking to do? What are their goals regarding the existing community college system?
    • rahimnathwani 5mo ago
      The politicians don't accept that students need remedial courses. They passed AB705 and AB1705 to prevent a community college from putting someone in a remedial classes unless it had very strong evidence they wouldn't be able to pass a regular (transfer-level) class. So if you go to a community college and intend to study for a STEM degree, you'll be placed in a calculus class.
      • isityettime 5mo ago
        > They passed AB705 and AB1705 to prevent a community college from putting someone in a remedial classes unless it had very strong evidence they wouldn't be able to pass a regular (transfer-level) class. Why? Did someone make students graduating from high schools who go on to need remedial courses into some kind of metric for the high schools, and the politicians are trying to "solve" the schools' low scores on this metric by cheating? I'm sorry, I was not prepared for how insane this is. It's super late, so I'm going to need to do it later, but I guess I should go look up those bills.
• pickleballcourt 5mo ago
  The only possible counterpoint I’d say is SAT math is quite trivial and also can be prepared for? Not that I think there are better alternatives out there.
  • sometimelurker 5mo ago
    the SAT is a (probably biased but relatively good) measure of willpower. it can be prepared for but its not fun
• rs999gti 5mo ago
  All I have to say is LOL to holistic admissions. Use standardized testing. We cannot power the future with feels, we need STEM grads.
• throw6784 5mo ago
  Its bad for natives and African Americans. The whole system is designed to keep them poor and powerless
  • lanfeust6 5mo ago
    progressive with a throwaway account: "We can't expect BIPOC people to pass SATs, because of reasons". The reason is racism. The evidence shows the opposite, SAT testing allows hardworking/gifted minorities to get ahead.
    • throw2nwnwnnw 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      • trallnag 5mo ago
        Is this also a valid question towards Indians?
• WalterBright 5mo ago
  To nobody's surprise, the SATs actually measure math competence which is crucial for success in STEM.
• MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
  I think providing access to remedial resources, free meals at school, do more for disadvantage students than lowering the requirements. Also make sure there are enough slots for anyone who is able to pass the requirements.
• Balgair 5mo ago
  For the non Californians here, there is very important context on admissions that may not be widely known. Under the 1960 California Master Plan, the top 12.5% of California high school graduates have automatic entry into the UC system. That is no longer quite the case though. Nowadays, under the Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) system, the top 9% of high school graduates are guaranteed a spot in the UC system, regardless of rejection to school. That said, you will commonly hear about the Master Plan in conversations here without the nuance. In practice, this is typically UC-Merced or UC-Riverside as the UCs of last resort. That said, about 32% of all UC entrants are in the ELC system. So, I'd assume that around 32% of incoming UCSD (the UC in question in the article) entrants are ELC. The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) found that ~80% of ELC entrants came from below average schools. So, assuming nothing special here, 0.8*0.32 = ~0.25, or ~25% of incoming UCSD students came from an 'bad' high school. > Statewide, 37.3% of students meet math learning standards in the grades that are tested. Look, there are a lot of complicated stats and math that I just do not have the coffee for here. But a 'failing' 25% of incoming entrants is in the right ball park. The University of Texas system has a similar matriculation standard too. TLDR: Failing high schools are the root cause here. UC professors should get out of the ivory tower more. None of this is surprising.
  • epistasis 5mo ago
    > UC professors should get out of the ivory tower more. None of this is surprising. This dig seems misaimed, inaccurate, and inapplicable to the request of having SAT factor into admission.
• trunnell 5mo ago
  I'm in the SF bay area w/ middle school and high school age kids. Between San Jose and San Francisco, 15%-30% of kids are in private school (it's 30% in SF where the public schools are extra dysfunctional). That's far above the California statewide average of 8% in private school. Among our peers, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of kids are doing advanced math outside of school, typically either Russian School of Math or Art of Problem Solving. This group only partially overlaps with the private school group. This is happening despite the fact that both public and private school teachers strongly discourage math outside of school! So by decelerating math in the public school, incentives were created for privileged parents to take matters in their own hands and put their kids into programs that accelerate math education far beyond what public schools used to do. We now have a system that is creating even wider disparities in outcomes. It stands to reason that it's producing far less equitable outcomes, too, given that extremely bright kids who happen to be in lower-resourced schools have fewer opportunities. Universal screening for giftedness, advanced public school math courses, and the SAT -- all avenues for advancement regardless of background -- were all eliminated.
  • niwtsol 5mo ago
    Could you elaborate on the reasoning they "strongly discourage math outside of school"? I'm genuinely curious how that would be a stance they take.
    • rawgabbit 5mo ago
      Not the OP. I assume the public school teachers don't want to answer when the student says "my Russian math teacher said to do this" instead of the common core math that is being taught. https://www.mathschool.com/blog/parent-resources/what-is-russian-math-anyway https://www.mathschool.com/blog/parent-resources/what-is-rus...
    • trunnell 5mo ago
      We've heard: - It can make kids "overconfident when they see material they think they already know, so they end up not engaging." - Some programs, particularly RSM, are criticized for valuing speed over depth. Current culture for K-8 math teachers is the opposite, they value depth over speed. Left unsaid: - It can make the teacher's job harder when the class has a wide span of abilities. - Current teaching culture is skeptical of accelerating and/or skipping grades in math. Notably, we've never heard English teachers be upset about a kid reading a book outside of school that's above grade level, or using advanced vocabulary in an essay. They tend to praise it.
• linuxhansl 5mo ago
  Please, not the SAT! My son is prepping for the SAT and I am helping him. I studied physics and computer science, and was a advanced math A+ student... IMHO: The SAT is useless, solving equations under artificial time constraints is something that only happens in these kind of tests. The focus is on solving problems fast and getting a good score, and nobody really cares if you understand the math behind it. So, please, if you go back to testing, find something more useful than the SAT.
• vondur 5mo ago
  Getting rid of the SAT was a huge mistake and many Universities are finally seeing it for the problems it's caused. The fact that so many students are getting into the UC system and not able to do high school level algebra is one of the symptoms of it. The Cal State System is also having the same issues, we now give University credit for remedial (high school level) Mathematics and English courses.
• spwa4 5mo ago
  The critical difference between SAT and high school grades, of course, is that high school grades are easy to fake, especially on the school level (both ways, up and down). Schools being organized the way they are, in most locations high school grades is code for letting the local government decide who gets to go to university and who doesn't.
• bzmrgonz 5mo ago
  I think this is a Global phenomenon guys. In my humble opinion STEAM kids will need to be assigned 2 agents (quite honestly, I think every kid)... a digital brain and a digital tutor(s). We also have to revamp the entire curriculum, just hear me out; Why do we not memorize binary or assembly in computer science? Why do we allow calculators after a certain grade? Because we have abstracted large portions of the lower level structures in those disciplines. The medical industry is suppose to be revamping requirements for medical professions, and I think the STEAM programs should do the same.
  • adolph 5mo ago
    Memorizing binary would certainly revamp the A in STEAM. STEAM takes STEM education a step further by integrating “Arts” into the acronym, encompassing language arts, drama, graphic design, visual arts, music, and new media. https://www.k12.com/stem-education/stem-vs-steam/ https://www.k12.com/stem-education/stem-vs-steam/
• pasttense01 5mo ago
  Something many people here miss: UCSD is a selective institution. UC San Diego’s most recent published first-year acceptance rate is about 28.4% for fall 2025, based on 136,740 applicants and 38,846 admits. UCSD’s own admissions page also summarizes this as a 28% admit rate. The lousy students aren't even going to apply since they know they will be rejected. So we are not talking about an open enrollment institution where you would expect a significant number of students to need remedial math help; we are talking about the cream of the crop of California high school graduates many of which don't know high school math.
• jknoepfler 5mo ago
  If you're admitting students to Berkeley who can't figure out how to independently close gaps in their own knowledge quickly (formal or otherwise), you have bigger problems. I self-taught a bunch of remedial math when I went back to University after many years out. Khan Academy exists. Math tutors exist. They don't just exist, they're amazing. If I can self-teach basic sequences and series or polynomial factorization or whatever at the age of 30 while juggling a full time job and a full computer science syllabus, an unemployed Berkeley freshman shouldn't struggle with it unless they have a legitimate disability or something.
• Nervhq 5mo ago
  [dead]
• throwawaypath 5mo ago
  This is what "math is racist" brought us to.
• Glyptodon 5mo ago
  So just to be clear, I guess the issue isn't so much SAT or placement tests as it is that there's no functional baseline level of knowledge without some kind of entry exam, and without that there's no functional boundary on the starting place or length of time it will take to get a degree. So some level of entry exam is needed to avoid rebuilding a new remedial version of K12 education inside of every four year college? I think the focus on the SAT as a mechanism for this detracts from this as the SAT isn't really an designed to sus out topical placement, right?
  • J37T3R 5mo ago
    It's at least a standard, and that's the important part. Narrow down what exactly the best way to tell is later, the SAT fits the bill of good enough to re-impliment quickly.
    • charlieyu1 5mo ago
      I’d say written tests is a common thing in many countries, and at college age you really should be doing more than multiple choices
      • Glyptodon 5mo ago
        I agree with that, but it sounds more like a college readiness certificate concept than a competitive exam concept.
• gitowiec 5mo ago
  Yeah Idiocracy
• fsckboy 5mo ago
  the SAT is an IQ test, btw. who would have thought that could lead to better results in cognitive fields? shocked. shocked! Now that there is some grudgin recognition of this idea, it might do to remind people that high SAT scores on Verbal are correlated, and salient in non STEM subjects. and that there is no known way to increase scores significantly, neither from early intervention nor sustained practice. And, depressingly from an egalitarian perspective, there is a strong genetic correlation. You could read more about the measured statistics, the "mainstream science on intelligence" and "bell curve"s, but sadly the scientists studying it have been cancelled by people who did not like the results.
  • tptacek 5mo ago
    > And, depressingly from an egalitarian perspective, there is a strong genetic correlation. No, there isn't. Hope that helps your mood!
    • userbinator 5mo ago
      Yes there is. Stop drinking the woke-aid. Look at where advanced civilisations started, and it's clear as night and day.
      • tptacek 5mo ago
        Is molecular genetics woke now? (Or are you just trolling me? If that's what it is, I have it coming, but I can't tell.)
      • defrost 5mo ago
        Egypt in Africa? Mesopotamia aka modern Iraq? India? China? Looking at that you'd have to wonder how ever it ended with Whitey on the Moon. Maybe there are other factors at play.
        • tptacek 5mo ago
          It is indeed awfully difficult to explain the genetically determined part of European civilizational dominance given that we were getting our asses handed to us by the Abbassids less than an eyeblink ago in genetic timescales.
• stanleydupreez 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• ziofill 5mo ago
  I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’t paying customers. Also because Italy is Italy we had unlimited beer and wine on tap in the canteen. For real.
  • jmspring 5mo ago
    Having just shipped the kiddo into the real world, she's leaning liberal arts (her and her mom suck at math), but she has a benefit neither her mom or I had - EU deal citizenship. She's going to do a year here to figure things out - she's also been thinking about Europe. University in Europe, for undergrad, is different than the US. I think the large class model and a barrier of exams to advance makes sense in Europe. I've not been in the University of California system for years, but the school I went to - some classes didn't always hold up a level of academic rigor.
    • andai 5mo ago
      What is EU deal?
      • sillysaurusx 5mo ago
        EU dual citizenship Edit: if anyone’s confused, there was a typo in the original post. I corrected it.
        • canyp 5mo ago
          It's the new deal.
    • genxy 5mo ago
      No one has to suck at math. Any human can learn the majority of skills.
• isityettime 5mo ago
  > professors are often teaching middle school math to incoming students. Even after admissions, why aren't they using placement tests and prerequisites to handle this? Also why would you try to teach someone middle school math during a STEM class in college instead of just... urging them to drop the class and letting their grades reflect their competency if they choose to stay?
  • ang_cire 5mo ago
    I think because if their graduation requires them to pass that course (and it's a freshman-level course), the university is basically facing a choice of, "teach them this thing", "change graduation requirements", or "either kick the kids out or willfully let them waste 4 years just to not be able to graduate". Both the latter 2 are big choices for a university administration to make, so it's much easier to ask the professors to make up the difference. That's why it's the faculty and not the admin demanding this; they know what the admins are asking them to do is impossible.
    • isityettime 5mo ago
      tl;dr: remedial classes are good and some schools are good at them. Admissions question aside, it's not a bad idea to get good at them. I attended community college in my hometown, as well as a university elsewhere, and eventually completed my undergraduate education. While I attended the community college, which openly advertises that it has no admissions requirements at all, I also worked there as a tutor in math. Since it had no entry requirements, the school had decent placement tests and a pretty damn comprehensive suite of remedial math courses. Some of the students I tutored were studying arithmetic (negative numbers, exponentiation), and some were even practicing how to pronounce and write out numbers by name in English and map those to Arabic numerals. There was no amount of ignorance that could make you unteachable there, as far as I could tell; you just had to find the right course. Their math classes also included stuff you'd normally take at a university: when I was there, I took first-order logic, differential and integral calculus, vector calculus, systems of differential equations, statistics, discrete math, and probably some others I didn't take or forgot about. Some of those courses I had to retake at university anyway because of transfer credit limits and things like that, and in some of those cases, the community college version was actually better anyway (the university ones were fine). I think it's awesome that the school had really weak admissions and really strong placement, and that it can take an earnest and reasonably intelligent high school dropout from the basics they missed all the way to being ready to dive into upper-division, in-major courses in STEM at a university. It seems like that's an unspoken possibility for universities, too. Round out the catalogue, beef up placement exam regimes, further partnerships with local community colleges, lean into early exams and pre-tests within courses, and when students prove to be really unprepared, direct them to an appropriate class. It's not a matter of "waste 4 years just to not be able to graduate", it's "okay, it's going to take you longer to graduate because you have to take this detour in this subject area, so here's what your path now looks like". And of course dropping out or trying and failing are still (painful! expensive!) options, as they always were. I'm not saying this is easy or cheap or a responsibility I expect universities to want. But "teach students the thing" can be a much saner option than the article seems to describe, which is hijacking existing courses that are purportedly focused on something else in order to teach their prerequisites inline.
• genxy 5mo ago
  This is criminal that these students aren't graduating with a solid math education, regardless of what major they are going into. Math isn't only for STEM majors! Fix k-12 for everyone.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• BrenBarn 5mo ago
  There is a real doozy of an issue bured in there, which was reported when it originally happened but I felt it never got the public censure it deserved: > But the vote went against the UC Academic Senate’s own Standardized Testing Task Force, which said use of test scores could actually boost admission rates for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and school districts. The UC actually commissioned a faculty panel to investigate whether requiring test scores undercut the changes of disadvantaged students, and the panel found the opposite effect, and yet the administration got rid of the tests anyway. This is the clearest indication to me that the policymakers are entirely concerned with image and symbolism and not with any actual attempt to help anyone. They did the exact thing that their own people told them would hurt the very people they were ostensibly trying to help.
• zhivota 5mo ago
  My son is in 4th grade (nominally anyway, we homeschool so it doesn't really matter). He takes the MAP test periodically, which scores on a single scale for all grades. You can look up the percentile score for your student's grade, as well as where that score sits on the percentiles for all other grades. He's ahead in some areas, having some skills from as far as 7th grade, but mostly he's more in the 5th grade band by now. His MAP test score is 50th percentile for 12th grade. This means, basically, he knows more math than 50% of 12th graders who take the MAP test. This really blew my mind at first, but these kinds of single-scale tests are really valuable for this purpose. We should be reaching for a solid absolute standard, not grading everything on a curve and passing people who haven't demonstrated real mastery.
• m463 5mo ago
  Why don't they put this quality gate after admission? in other words, accept them, then put them in remedial math/etc before they can go onto the classes that require that math/etc?