Growing Number of Students Entering U. of California System Lack Basic Math Skills
“The findings reflect a growing disconnect between high school transcripts and actual college readiness.”
I bet these students know all about equity, social justice, and the latest progressive gender trends. You know, the important stuff.
Newsweek reports:
Students at California University Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets
A sharp rise in students entering the University of California system without middle school-level math skills is raising alarms among educators.
A new internal report from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) reveals that the percentage of incoming students scoring below Algebra 1 on placement exams—a math course typically completed by the end of eighth grade—has tripled over the past five years.
Why It Matters
In 2020, just 6 percent of first-year students at UCSD placed below Algebra 1. By 2025, that number had surged to 18 percent, according to the UCSD Senate Admissions Working Group (SAWG) report.
The findings reflect a growing disconnect between high school transcripts and actual college readiness. The SAWG report links the increase to pandemic-era learning disruptions, long-standing inequities in California’s K–12 system, and the elimination of standardized testing requirements in UC admissions.
What To Know
The number of UCSD students requiring Math 2, a course originally designed for less than 1 percent of the incoming class, surged from under 100 students annually to over 900 by fall 2024.
“In Fall 2024, the numbers of students placing into Math 2 and 3B surged further, with over 900 students in the combined Math 2 and 3B population,” the report notes. “This represents an alarming 12.5 percent of the incoming first-year class.”
Math 2, once intended to cover high school topics like Algebra I and II, has been redesigned to focus “entirely on elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8).” A new course, Math 3B, was created to handle high school-level content.
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Comments
The educational experiment of government-run schools has been tried and has failed abysmally.
It’s time to defund public education. Close the bottom 50% of performing schools and sell them to private educational enterprises. Let parents choose the winners and losers with their wallets. It cannot work any worse than what we have now.
But they do know 72 different genders, how to spot Islamaphobia in under 4 seconds, and that Zionsist are the center of all evil in the world. They also can tell when a cis gender patriarchal white male is holding them down, and how to make sure said male gets canceled and has life ruined. Oh and they are really good at using TicToc.
I have recently met a high school graduate who thought that 1/4 was bigger than 1/2 because 4 is bigger than 2. This person also didn’t know the meaning of the word “merchandise” but did know to complain about my car’s carbon footprint.
Fire all teachers. ChatGPT won’t do worse.
Math training was dreadful even when I was just a youngster. Lately, I’ve been watching videos by MathJoy and OlyVerse / Olympiad Universe on YouTube. I’ve learned more from those two fellows in just the last month and a half. Then I learned back when I was in school.
I am so smart…
Don’t accept them. As a taxpayer I already paid once to educate them … I don’t want to pay a second time. They had their chance to learn and they blew it … kick ’em loose.
Check out Robert Heinlein’s essay “The Happy Days Ahead – The Decline of Education”. An excerpt:
“My father never went to college. He attended high school in a southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2-year academy roughly analogous to junior college today, except that it was very small – had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.
Here are some of the subjects he studied in back-country 19th century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, World history, chemistry, geology.
Twenty-eight years later I attended a much larger school. I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. Anyone wishing comprehensive history could take (each a one-year 5-hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern European history, American history – and note that the available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely with respect to our wars with each.”
It goes downhill from there. Should I mention that this essay was written over forty years ago?
It really doesn’t matter. Everyone is making the mistake of viewing schools as places of education. They’re really place of indoctrination.
The crucial point being that if the parent gets to choose the school, he gets to choose the doctrine. If he doesn’t, the government gets to choose the doctrine.