Harvard is not alone. UC students Without 8th Grade Math Skills Skyrockets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The dirty little secret of the UC's is that they select a certain percentage from each high school, whether that high school is an overperforming one in Palo Alto or Irvine or an underperforming one in LAUSD.

Prior to tests being banned, the average SAT scores were low, below 1300 at most campuses.

Now that SATs are banned, the equity drive has seen the UC system oversubscribed with low performing students.

Hopefully these students can get the remediation they deserve so they can thrive in more difficult classes.

Agree. Although it’s not a “secret” - the admissions data is right on the UC website for everyone to see.

Kids from these low performing schools have major deficiencies.

But that’s kinda the point. I’m wondering if few dcum parents went to state schools.

I did. There were people in my class of all abilities and levels of education- that made the education stronger. Sure, some people took longer because they were starting from a weaker set of base knowledge but that isn’t inherently bad or a reason to dismiss their abilities. We shouldn’t punish people from accessing a quality state university education just because they did the best in the environment they were in. Now you can argue that we have an issue if grade inflation or what have you, but a 3.2 or 4.0 wouldn’t have changed the fact that these were the students who were the best at their high schools either way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe they're not actually getting 5's on the AP exam.
It's just been shocking to my kid who had a bit of imposter syndrome going into the Ivy. He's not a math genius but just had very solid and slow math instruction at a high school that is loathe to accelerate kids.

[Anonymous]

the poor curriculum in etc lower grades is actually so sad and infuriating b/c for first gen or ESOL kids- math is the one subject that they should be able to shine- it is logic. The reason so many Asian kids chose stem is b.c their parents were able to give them confidence in math b.c that is the one subject where they could help their kids and teach skills but the "new math" is so convoluted and relies on building understanding of mathematical concepts through words instead of building number sense.

I think the problem is that they have been aiming teaching math to kids who are good with words instead of teaching math to kids who might be bad at words and good with numbers. Elementary math and algebra is logic - anyone can do it, even illiterate people so the first gen/no English shouldn't matter. we are stationed in a German speaking country right now and my kid is learning German but she does math hw everyday in 1st grade (takes maybe 5 minutes) and it is teaching her to intuitively understand numbers and she has zero problem getting the concepts despite struggling in everything else. I'm hoping that she picks up enough of the language that when we go back home she can do immersion and that the math curriculum in the German school is like here and not the american system. I just dont understand what is happening with elementary education- we managed to learn so much with much fewer bells and whistles. I was in MOCO publics in the 80s and 90s and maybe we only did precalculus in school but we all passed calculus in college when we got there! and then I thankfully never took another math class again!

[Anonymous]

State education leaders have been trying and in many cases succeeding to dumb down math education for years. Couple that with rampant grade inflation and this no wonder that basic math skills are compromised in the HS educational process but every one has As in Calc so all must be fine. Right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't it good that they are catching this and students can learn math properly? Some high schools don't have good math teachers. Not everyone is able to go to good public/private schools with good teaching. Also, the fact that numbers have tripled in recent years probably has to do with covid, online learning, and just bad math teachers.

Community college is the place to remediate algebra 1, not a UC campus. Even at a school with poor teaching, students who care can self-teach via Khan academy. COVID might have made it easier to cheat, but math teachers have not gotten significantly worse over the past 5 years

[Anonymous]

Exactly. You can’t fix a poor K-12 education within four years of college. People who can’t do 8th grade math shouldn’t be admitted to any UC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Is the problem these kids are not learning the material or are they not retaining the material? If they are indeed earning 5s on an AP exam then I would argue the latter... How do you fix that? I don't know.

It’s both. If you read the report, at the end, there are a bunch of statements made by math tutors at UCSD. One of them said students literally never encountered concepts like factoring in their K-12 education. Another mentioned that students got through earlier math courses by “plug and chug” and never realized that they needed the material in later courses

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Exactly. You can’t fix a poor K-12 education within four years of college. People who can’t do 8th grade math shouldn’t be admitted to any UC.

Agreed. Why should these kids be at UC schools and not a Cal State school or the community college to UC pathway? So many high performing California students are rejected from the top UCs. Why aren’t the UCs using SAT/ACT scores? Is it purely for DEI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly. You can’t fix a poor K-12 education within four years of college. People who can’t do 8th grade math shouldn’t be admitted to any UC.

Agreed. Why should these kids be at UC schools and not a Cal State school or the community college to UC pathway? So many high performing California students are rejected from the top UCs. Why aren’t the UCs using SAT/ACT scores? Is it purely for DEI?

Yes. It's entirely about equity. California also doesn't have the demographics it did in the 1980s and 1990s. Just pointing out the basic truth. To get the UC schools to mirror state student demographics they have to substantially change the metrics used for educational progress. And we all know it's not about helping Asian or white students get into UCs.

[Anonymous]

California went all in on equity, which is wonderful. Hopefully UC's can adjust. The lower SES, marginalized learners just need the right support. That's what they're doing creating new ways to get students up to speed. Who cares if they learn it in college or 8th grade?

As for those complaining that the UC's pick students who don't have as strong an academic background, making the UC's some monolithic robot students is just not a priority. Closing opportunity gaps is much more important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.newsweek.com/students-ucsd-without-8th-grade-math-skills-skyrockets-11030373

18% UC students placed below Algebra 1.

Among the students not meeting middle school math levels:
42% had taken precalculus or calculus. And 25% of these students had a math GPA of 4.0 in high school.


Takeaway is that you can't trust high school GPA.
4.0 in Calculus can't pass Algebra. Something is going on.

Is that true for DMV schools? Nauseating to see DMV parents beating their chests about this and that and turns out it’s all fake ( Trumpesque)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the math thing is crazy these days. My kid is at an Ivy and was given a math placement test at the beginning of freshman year. He took Calculus AB in high school and was placed into Calculus 2. However it turns out that almost all his classmates took BC in high school. Except most did not actually learn the BC because they are now getting Cs and Ds in this course (the average on the exams has been in the 60s).
My kid has had two 99% so far and he is a humanities kid. He attended a grade-deflating, private high school which rarely accelerated kids in math.

How are these kids getting 60% on material that they already took in high school? And yet of course they got high As in high school as they got into an Ivy.

The state of high school math education is worrisome.

Those kids probably also got 5s on the AP test. My humanities kid at a UC is very scared of taking math next quarter. He placed into UC’s last Calculus level which is supposedly after BC not sure if that maps to II or III . He had As in high school, 5 on the AP exam and 780 on SAT math but he’s hearing from so many kids with similar stats who are getting Cs and Ds and who are engineering kids that like math.

Is this Brown or Dartmouth?

[Anonymous]

this is what happens when schools go test blind and grade inflation and cheating is rampant. college degrees become worthless.