The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Senate Administration Workshop on Admissions recently released a report on the math and English proficiency of the most recent cohort of admitted freshmen and the courses to which they were assigned. The most striking finding in the report was that one in eight admitted freshmen in the current academic year does not meet the standards for high school mathematics.
The gap in required mathematics knowledge at the elementary and middle school levels is so large that UCSD had to redesign its remedial mathematics courses to address it. UCSD’s remedial mathematics woes among its freshmen are multifaceted in origin and reflect a broader crisis nationwide in mathematical education.
The main factor causing the mathematics education crisis is the long-term effects of the 2020 pandemic, which led to the virtual delivery of instruction and hindered students’ ability to study and grasp concepts effectively. This is backed up by data from the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP), which saw a drop in math and reading achievement levels in 2022 and has yet to fully recover.
This theory is corroborated by an Education Next study at the United States Military Academy at West Point, which found that students who learned virtually during the pandemic experienced negative effects on their grades and learning outcomes, with fewer students reporting “feeling connected and focused compared to in-person students.” According to reports covering education, the pandemic “weakened expectations for students” and caused a “dwindling supply of qualified math teachers.” This adversely affected student academic performance, contributing to the broader crisis of students’ lack of grade-level knowledge of mathematics.
Another factor worsening the mathematics education crisis is the elimination of standardized testing at UC schools. In 2021, the UC Board of Regents eliminated the requirement of the SAT or ACT for undergraduate admissions, thereby broadening the applicant pool. However, according to the report by UCSD, this placed more reliance on high school GPAs to determine mathematics readiness. The UC’s Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF) noted in their 2020 report that California high schools “vary greatly in grading standards, and that grade inflation is part of why the predictive power of HSGPA has decreased since the last UC study.”
The UCSD report further reported that during the pandemic, teachers often lowered “grading standards in acknowledgement of students’ special challenges.” Therefore, this resulted in a decrease in the reliability of transcripts as indicators of student readiness and success upon admission. Universities are not selecting students based on mathematical abilities anymore, which further degrades the value of mathematics education and students’ ability to stay prepared for the required grade-level mathematics courses.
One final factor of this crisis is that high school GPAs are now merely suggestions or fantasies rather than hard data of a student’s academic success. In the past few years, we’ve seen some California schools drop “D” and “F” grades to boost students’ chances of getting into colleges. However, this approach means that failing a class has no consequence; failing students are instead placed in supplemental winter or summer courses.
Oftentimes, these supplemental courses include online exams, limited instruction and more retakes than possible answers, which merely boosts GPAs intended only to help students pass the class rather than to help them learn the required material. As a result, GPAs don’t correlate with students’ ability or skill, exacerbating the crisis in mathematics education, as students’ mathematical abilities stagnate or decline.
Many argue that supplemental courses, such as winter academy — a one-week program over winter break — are beneficial because students who excel in other subjects receive additional time and opportunities to learn subjects in which they might struggle. However, allowing students to pass a class without learning anything through rigorous tests and exams in these programs is a net negative and harms their futures.
Another disagreement would likely be that the reinstatement of standardized tests in the UC system, such as SATs and ACTs, would exacerbate inequity and discrimination because of inequitable funding and educational quality disparities across schools. While these are clear concerns that should be discussed, tests are the only proven way of assessing students’ mathematical readiness for college because high school GPA is inflated. Without standardized tests, schools cannot measure or assess a student’s mathematical knowledge and skills.
It’s clear that UCSD’s mathematics woes reflect a larger crisis facing math education across the country. Influenced by not only the pandemic but also an education system that fails at its core purpose of teaching students, this crisis must be addressed. Fixes must be implemented now to correct for student mathematics deficiencies long-term, or else this issue will get worse.
