A new SAWG report out of San Diego, California, is sounding warning bells about the state of education in the Golden State.
It turns out that since the California University system no longer requires standardized testing as part of its admission process, its admissions have taken a rather predictable turn for the worse.
That last chart documents hundreds of students who needed remedial math (Math 2) in the first place.
According to state law, a Californian student must complete a minimum of two math courses to graduate high school, and one of those courses must be Algebra I or higher. In order to be admitted to a California University, students have to have completed three specific courses in high school: Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II.
It used to be that a standardized test would let an admissions advisor know if the students were proficient enough in those courses to attend college; but now, all admissions can look at is whether the students' transcripts say they took the required classes.
Students still have to take placement tests to know which courses they need in university. If they are accepted and don't have the appropriate math skills, they have to take Math 2 (a remedial 9-12 grade math class) to brush up.
But over the last few years, the number of students heading to remedial math who have been accepted at UC San Diego has skyrocketed from 100 to 900.
And this isn't rocket science:
And they aren't lacking in just high school math.
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), and introduced a new course, Math 3B, so as to cover missing high-school common core math subjects (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II or Math I, II, III; grades 9-11)
That's right.
Elementary math for college students.
But despite this embarrassing trend, California's education department is still taking victory laps because their high school graduation rate is up to 86.4%.
Maybe at some point we can acknowledge that there's a difference between education and credentialing...
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