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A Berkeley mathematics professor is sounding the alarm that many students are woefully unprepared when they arrive at college because the University of California system’s progressive “test-blind” policies have proven disastrous.
“Three days a week, I stand in front of lecture halls with 500 to 1,400 students. By the second week of the semester, I already know who is in trouble,” Professor Zvezdelina Stankova wrote in a San Francico Standard op-ed published Saturday.
“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” he said.
Stankova and thousands of faculty members across the 10 UC campuses have signed open letters urging the university system to reinstate the SAT and ACT in admissions. Former UC president Janet Napolitano, who also served in the Obama administration, led the way in 2020 to phase out the standardized testing, in part out of “equity” concerns.
“Since then, admissions officers have been forbidden from considering the one standardized measure that provided a common academic benchmark across California’s thousands of high schools,” Stankova wrote.
A growing consortium of University of California professors is urging the state university system to bring back standardized testing. (Getty )
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“After UC adopted test-blind admissions, the picture changed dramatically,” she wrote.
Stankova laid out brutal data showing a sharp decline in student math readiness after UC stopped considering standardized tests. From 2018 to 2020, 71% of roughly 2,200 tested Calculus I students were deemed ready or nearly ready, while just 0.14% tested below basic algebra.
Among roughly 2,800 students tested from 2021 to 2023 using a different diagnostic, only 51% were ready or nearly ready. That fell to 44% in 2023, and a whopping 17% answered none of eight tested topics correctly.
“Those of us teaching such courses don’t experience the consequences as abstractions. We watch students struggle through material they were expected to master years earlier. We pause lectures to reteach linear equations instead of expanding students’ understanding of differential equations,” Stankova wrote.
In an open letter from UC STEM faculty written in June, instructors specifically rejected the notion that “equity” was affected by the math requirement.
Professors are warning too many students are woefully unprepared for college-level classes. (iStock)
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“The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,” they wrote. “Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome. An admissions process that ignores foundational readiness does a disservice to the most vulnerable students. True access requires an honest assessment of the support students need and where, within California’s public higher education system, they can best receive it.”
The UC announced that month it was launching a review of its standardized testing policy.
“The Board of Regents and University leadership take very seriously the critical issue of college preparedness, and the UC Academic Senate has proposed a comprehensive, data-driven review to support its recommendations to strengthen student readiness and success at UC,” University of California President James B. Milliken said at the time. “There are few things more important on our agenda.”
The op-ed comes as more elite universities are moving away from the test-optional policies that were in vogue during what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., might call the “Woke 1” era around 2020.
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Columbia University in June joined seven other Ivy League institutions in going away from test-optional policies, announcing it would reinstate standardized testing requirements for undergraduate applicants starting next year, according to HigherEdDive.
Digital reached out to Berkeley did not immediately respond to Digital’s request for comment.
Concerns about coddled or underprepared students at elite schools are hardly exclusive to California.
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Digital reported last week that freshmen at the University of Michigan next year will get a semester-long break from having letter grades appear on their transcripts as school officials look for new ways to combat the “mental health crisis” affecting higher education.
Digital’s Joshua Nelson and Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.
