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.
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?
It’s definitely actively bad to involve a device in the vast majority of education. And, it’s a purely selfish thing by tech companies to insert themselves into education.
A student should not see a computer until college or vocational school unless they are taking e.g a high school programming or electronics class.
>“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.
Also these are most likely the first classes. You can not block most of your entering cohort. Or even any way significant part. At least in the system these professors exist in. In some other systems like say German where getting in easy and getting rid of some is normal would be different.
professors who don't/can't cover their curriculum also get in trouble. if i had to dedicate half of my classes to reteaching things the students are required to know before taking my class, i would not cover what i am supposed to, which then has a knock-on effect to the classes that my class is a prereq for.
whenever i have had a larger-than-normal percent of my students failing, i am provided an opportunity to explain it.
It's a different country and a different time, but when I studied (a natural science) there were dedicated courses at the start for refreshing high school math. Those were optional, and covered relatively simple topics.
There was also a real math lecture that went into topics above high school math, but also contained some repetition. All other courses mostly relied on what was contained there.
So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed.
>So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed.
we do! those are dedicated courses, where it is expected that the students are taking it to catch up (i.e. no prereq)
students can also drop a course within the first 4 weeks for no penalty, and retake it in a later semester if they figure out they they are behind and would not perform well.
I agree with you and think this claim needs a lot more evidence. In my university we have been providing remedial math classes for freshman students for a long time. They must pass these before taking regular classes that have math prerequisites.
i have not tracked it, so this isn't based in data. but, no, i have not noticed any major trends.
i dont have any 1st-year courses though, which is where a lot of students are filtered out (for various reasons), so im not in the best position to answer that question.
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).
> 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.
This seems problematic.
Areas already doing well likely don’t need additional resources, and areas already struggling likely won’t do better with less resources.
Who would want to start a charter school in an area that has historically struggled, when funding depends on them succeeding immediately?
Seems likely that the new schools would be backed by well funded groups that do t need the funding but want to have a say in what kids are being taught.
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.
I doubt that you can point to a high school which banned calculus. My guess is that you are referring to a political fight in San Francisco where a very specific racial/ethnic cohort of parents believes that one of the high schools is a Berkeley/Stanford acceptance funnel reserved for them, and they got mad when the government decided to spread the wealth.
From my perspective, there has never been any dumber debate than whether 9th grade math is called "Math" or "Algebra". My kids went to high school in Berkeley where Math is just called Math in grades 9-11 and after that you can take AP Calculus or AP Statistics if you want. And this is not Woke 1.0 stuff because the courses have been named that way forever.
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...
"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."
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.
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
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).
You can absolutely make a bet on who's more likely to succeed based on a 100 point difference, though. It's not absolute, but it's highly predictive. And the reason the SAT was dropped wasn't because admissions were being forced to blindly accept 620 over 610 (they never were), but so that people who scored hundreds of points below the mean could be admitted (in the pursuit of other institutional goals).
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.
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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
>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").
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.
>This is the direct inverse of what's actually asserted by people talking about equity.
From the wiki article you linked:
>Equity is equality of outcome for all subgroups in society. Equity proponents believe that some are at a larger disadvantage than others and aims to compensate for this to ensure that everyone can attain the same lifestyle.
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.
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.
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?
That's being done, but it would not be sufficient to satisfy the powers that be.
You can just use a pencil and paper, and it's a lot cheaper?
1 reply →
It’s definitely actively bad to involve a device in the vast majority of education. And, it’s a purely selfish thing by tech companies to insert themselves into education.
A student should not see a computer until college or vocational school unless they are taking e.g a high school programming or electronics class.
>“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.
Professors who fail large swathes of their classes get in trouble.
That's presumably why so many professors are banding together for this letter. 600 professors is a fairly significant chunk of the faculty.
Also these are most likely the first classes. You can not block most of your entering cohort. Or even any way significant part. At least in the system these professors exist in. In some other systems like say German where getting in easy and getting rid of some is normal would be different.
1 reply →
professors who don't/can't cover their curriculum also get in trouble. if i had to dedicate half of my classes to reteaching things the students are required to know before taking my class, i would not cover what i am supposed to, which then has a knock-on effect to the classes that my class is a prereq for.
whenever i have had a larger-than-normal percent of my students failing, i am provided an opportunity to explain it.
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That is the entire problem in a nutshell. You cannot reject more than one or two students in a year or the school will reject you.
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The types of students who are entering college needing dramatic remedial math are not the ones you want to fail in large numbers.
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This sounds like the real underlying problem then
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It's a different country and a different time, but when I studied (a natural science) there were dedicated courses at the start for refreshing high school math. Those were optional, and covered relatively simple topics.
There was also a real math lecture that went into topics above high school math, but also contained some repetition. All other courses mostly relied on what was contained there.
So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed.
>So I would fully agree, but I'd also be a bit surprised if you don't have any dedicated "math for scientists"-like courses to cover the stuff usually needed.
we do! those are dedicated courses, where it is expected that the students are taking it to catch up (i.e. no prereq)
students can also drop a course within the first 4 weeks for no penalty, and retake it in a later semester if they figure out they they are behind and would not perform well.
I agree with you and think this claim needs a lot more evidence. In my university we have been providing remedial math classes for freshman students for a long time. They must pass these before taking regular classes that have math prerequisites.
Have you observed a reduction in the number of students who match those pre-requisites over time?
i have not tracked it, so this isn't based in data. but, no, i have not noticed any major trends.
i dont have any 1st-year courses though, which is where a lot of students are filtered out (for various reasons), so im not in the best position to answer that question.
Because the like teaching and believe in giving their students/customers the best possible education?
I get not wanting to waste the time of the better students, but if too many student are behind, whose time are you really wasting?
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).
> 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.
This seems problematic.
Areas already doing well likely don’t need additional resources, and areas already struggling likely won’t do better with less resources.
Who would want to start a charter school in an area that has historically struggled, when funding depends on them succeeding immediately?
Seems likely that the new schools would be backed by well funded groups that do t need the funding but want to have a say in what kids are being taught.
They defined equity as Fair outcomes, treatment, and opportunities for all students.[1]
[1] https://www.cde.ca.gov/qs/ea/
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.
I doubt that you can point to a high school which banned calculus. My guess is that you are referring to a political fight in San Francisco where a very specific racial/ethnic cohort of parents believes that one of the high schools is a Berkeley/Stanford acceptance funnel reserved for them, and they got mad when the government decided to spread the wealth.
From my perspective, there has never been any dumber debate than whether 9th grade math is called "Math" or "Algebra". My kids went to high school in Berkeley where Math is just called Math in grades 9-11 and after that you can take AP Calculus or AP Statistics if you want. And this is not Woke 1.0 stuff because the courses have been named that way forever.
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...
"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."
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.
I can't read the article - do they explain why they think this is a "paradox"?
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
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).
There are already such tests. They're called International ___ Olympiad.
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.
You can absolutely make a bet on who's more likely to succeed based on a 100 point difference, though. It's not absolute, but it's highly predictive. And the reason the SAT was dropped wasn't because admissions were being forced to blindly accept 620 over 610 (they never were), but so that people who scored hundreds of points below the mean could be admitted (in the pursuit of other institutional goals).
1 reply →
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.
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who uses SAT scores as "potential succeed"??
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As imperfect standardized tests are, they are still more fair and less biased than using arbitrary judgement on extra curriculars
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> 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.
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.
3 replies →
Your analogy works against you, given that tons of professional athletes come from poverty.
5 replies →
I don't think it's paradoxical at all. This was the original strength of the SAT system.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
>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").
> 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
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.
>This is the direct inverse of what's actually asserted by people talking about equity.
From the wiki article you linked:
>Equity is equality of outcome for all subgroups in society. Equity proponents believe that some are at a larger disadvantage than others and aims to compensate for this to ensure that everyone can attain the same lifestyle.
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From your link:
> Equity is equality of outcome for all subgroups in society.
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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
Internet streamers will need to know basic math unless they are clowns.