Over 280 University of California STEM faculty members have signed an open letter calling on the UC Board of Regents to

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

18 of Escalante's students passed the test. 14 of them got accused of cheating because their answers had weirdly similar error. 9 made the same silly mistake and likely chceated. So 12 of them retook the test under heavy supervision and they all passed. 2 declined to retake the test. So in the end 16 of escalante's 18 students incontrovertibly took and passed the test.

So about 1/2 of his students likely cheating on a standardized exam. That's pretty reprehensible. Why do people celebrate this guy?

[Anonymous]

Specific to the UCs, they have always been research focused, sink or swim environments. Excellent for the highly capable and highly motivated. They have always admitted more undergrads toward majors that have fewer seats, hence the deflationary weeder courses. This is the sink or swim and those courses are more rigorous and harshly graded than equally or even higher ranked schools. There have always been kids that fail and need to retake it or drop to a non stem, non economic or non business major. In the past it was the white frat boy who got bumped out of STEM and today it’s the FGLI kid getting bumped as the frat boy never got in during admissions. It doesn’t really matter to the kids who got through the weeder courses what the demographic or deficiency gap of the bottom students was. It doesn’t matter to the faculty and it doesn’t impact research. The bottom kids never make it into upper division courses with weeder requirements.

What’s driving STEM faculty crazy is that their fields have exploded attracting many capable but not suited for the field students. 30-40 years ago when these faculty were pursuing their PhD they were surrounded by others who were truly passionate and borderline obsessed with their PhD field. The only grinders without STEM talent were the premeds but they were only there to knock out the requirements. Engineering is a unique field and a unique way of thinking about things. Now too many students who thirty years ago would have been looking to go into medicine, law or business or applying for engineering. It’s not going well. Kids are miserable, faculty are frustrated.

[Anonymous]

Practice CSAT questions:

If x is a positive integer such that 2x +12 is perfectly divisible by x, then the number of possible values of x is

An outgoing batch of students wants to construct an auditorium worth Rs 42,00,000 for their college. If the teachers offer to pay 50% more than the student’s contribution and an external benefactor give three times the teachers contribution, how much should the teachers donate?

The cost of a diamond varies directly as the square of its weight. While showing to the customer, this diamond broke into four pieces with weights in the ratio 1:2:3:4. When the pieces were sold, the merchant got Rs 70,000 less. Find the original price of the diamond.

A bought 5 cars, 7 tractors and 4 buses. B bought 6 cars, 8 buses and 14 tractors for an amount which was half more than what A had paid. What per cent of the total amount paid by A was paid for the cars?

Each odd digit in the number 5263187 is substituted by the next higher digit and each even digit is substituted by the previous lower digit and the digit so obtained are rearranged in ascending order. which of the following will be the third digit from the left end after the rearrangement?

Meanwhile SAT Questions:

The total cost, in dollars, to rent a surfboard consists
of a $25 service fee and a $10 per hour rental fee. A
person rents a surfboard for t hours and intends to
spend a maximum of $75 to rent the surfboard.
Which inequality represents this situation?

s = 40 + 3t
The equation gives the speed s, in miles per hour, of a certain car t seconds after it began to accelerate.
What is the speed, in miles per hour, of the car 5 seconds after it began to accelerate?

The function f is defined by f(x)=x^2+x+71. What is the value of f(2)?

The big difference is multi-step mathematical reasoning and the CSAT testing your real aptitude. CSAT has an unfamiliar structure on purpose for students to actually have to think and not just receive the equations or functions to apply. There's also a lot more ways to solve these CSAT questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duh. This is what liberal lunacy focused on "equity" results in. Absolute dumbing down of America. In progressives' minds, if there isn’t a desired racial and diversity outcome in things like math scores, their solution is to get rid of the tests and quality standards, not assist those who can't make it.

Newsflash: physics, engineering, math, and science give zero Fs about equity and race. If you can't do the math, then you don't belong. This is why the US is imploding and China will dominate the future. Complete dumbing down of kids while China has standards.

Stupid recycled RWNJ garbage.

You are whistling past the graveyard.

Calling it RWNJ garbage doesn't make it untrue.

If America wants to continue to provide a good standard of living to the majority of its citizens, the growth and innovation has to occur here and if we are not going to be importing the talent from abroad every time there is a republican in office, we have to grow it here. Even if your kids are not going to be flipping burgers, you want them flipping burgers in the country that is building the quantum computers and fusion reactors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

You aren't making any sense. Whatever happens to juvenile delinquents it is wrong to place them in classes with the poor bright students who are academically motivated. This is what is happening in many poor schools today because so many administrators and University Education departments champion mixed ability math classes. It is really insulting and ignorant to not understand how many really smart poor kids there are. There are so many who could be academically so much higher if given the opportunity to get ahead. There is nothing in my post that says they are intellectually defunct, they are the exact opposite.

And Escalante's students retook the Calculus exam while being proctored by College Board officials and passed. He had amazing success and did the other Calculus teacher at Garfield. Once a new administration came in they lost support. Escalante left then two years later the other amazing Calculus teacher left. They had between them around 120 students taking AP Calculus.

It is tragic what is happening to academically motivated students in many poor schools in CA.

Why did you write an entire paragraph just to say "imprison black kids." It's a lot easier to make the message short and clear. There's not that many elite-level poor children in the US. That's just a statistical fact.

Escalante had multiple students who id not accept taking the retest and admitted to cheating on their AP exam.

2 of escalante's students did not retake the test. 16 of them did and passed on the second go around as well with most getting 4s and 5s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

You aren't making any sense. Whatever happens to juvenile delinquents it is wrong to place them in classes with the poor bright students who are academically motivated. This is what is happening in many poor schools today because so many administrators and University Education departments champion mixed ability math classes. It is really insulting and ignorant to not understand how many really smart poor kids there are. There are so many who could be academically so much higher if given the opportunity to get ahead. There is nothing in my post that says they are intellectually defunct, they are the exact opposite.

And Escalante's students retook the Calculus exam while being proctored by College Board officials and passed. He had amazing success and did the other Calculus teacher at Garfield. Once a new administration came in they lost support. Escalante left then two years later the other amazing Calculus teacher left. They had between them around 120 students taking AP Calculus.

It is tragic what is happening to academically motivated students in many poor schools in CA.

Why did you write an entire paragraph just to say "imprison black kids." It's a lot easier to make the message short and clear. There's not that many elite-level poor children in the US. That's just a statistical fact.

Escalante had multiple students who id not accept taking the retest and admitted to cheating on their AP exam.

2 of escalante's students did not retake the test. 16 of them did and passed on the second go around as well with most getting 4s and 5s.

9 likely cheated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Speechless -

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-professors-demand-return-of-sat-for-stem-admissions

Over three years — from fall 2021 to fall 2023 — the letter said, at least 20% of Berkeley first-semester calculus students who took a diagnostic exam showed deficits. “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable for students,” faculty wrote.

What is making you speechless? Calc 1 isn't exactly an advanced course.

Speechless because what do those students expect to do if they CANNOT do calculus in a STEM program. The only next exit is non-STEM, that totally defeats their original intention to attend these programs. These are ripple effects. I would have a lot of doubt hiring the students coming from compromised curriculum if schools are forced to dumb down their curriculum to accomondate.

Not everyone needs to be able to do calculus you know.

STEM majors especially need to know how to do calc.

Trained biologist and have never used calculus a day in my life.

Ok. You reminded me the merchant I encountered in the farmers market. While the poor folk struggle to figure out the changes using calculator, I just rounded up for the poor fellow.
It is the way of thinking matters. Without foundation and solid mathematical training, your number sense is impaired. Science is not imagination. Good luck for you.

Thank you for explaining science to a scientists. Anyway, back to the point, never used calculus a day in my life. There's mathematics i do need, such as statistics, so I can validate findings, but I am not an applied statistician, so the calculus? out the window.

So? Most STEM majors need math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

You aren't making any sense. Whatever happens to juvenile delinquents it is wrong to place them in classes with the poor bright students who are academically motivated. This is what is happening in many poor schools today because so many administrators and University Education departments champion mixed ability math classes. It is really insulting and ignorant to not understand how many really smart poor kids there are. There are so many who could be academically so much higher if given the opportunity to get ahead. There is nothing in my post that says they are intellectually defunct, they are the exact opposite.

And Escalante's students retook the Calculus exam while being proctored by College Board officials and passed. He had amazing success and did the other Calculus teacher at Garfield. Once a new administration came in they lost support. Escalante left then two years later the other amazing Calculus teacher left. They had between them around 120 students taking AP Calculus.

It is tragic what is happening to academically motivated students in many poor schools in CA.

Why did you write an entire paragraph just to say "imprison black kids." It's a lot easier to make the message short and clear. There's not that many elite-level poor children in the US. That's just a statistical fact.

Escalante had multiple students who id not accept taking the retest and admitted to cheating on their AP exam.

And yet NYC produces hundreds of them every year at places like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

Yes, while 100s of thousands are not elite level. It might sound crazy but hundreds is not much of anything for the most populace city in the US.

There are maybe 100,000 high school seniors in NYC. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are about 1600 of them. They are outnumbered by the graduates of places like trinity and dalton and horace mann but about 5-10% of THOSE schools are low income students. There are plenty of low income elite level students, most of them are asian but not all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

You aren't making any sense. Whatever happens to juvenile delinquents it is wrong to place them in classes with the poor bright students who are academically motivated. This is what is happening in many poor schools today because so many administrators and University Education departments champion mixed ability math classes. It is really insulting and ignorant to not understand how many really smart poor kids there are. There are so many who could be academically so much higher if given the opportunity to get ahead. There is nothing in my post that says they are intellectually defunct, they are the exact opposite.

And Escalante's students retook the Calculus exam while being proctored by College Board officials and passed. He had amazing success and did the other Calculus teacher at Garfield. Once a new administration came in they lost support. Escalante left then two years later the other amazing Calculus teacher left. They had between them around 120 students taking AP Calculus.

It is tragic what is happening to academically motivated students in many poor schools in CA.

Why did you write an entire paragraph just to say "imprison black kids." It's a lot easier to make the message short and clear. There's not that many elite-level poor children in the US. That's just a statistical fact.

Escalante had multiple students who id not accept taking the retest and admitted to cheating on their AP exam.

And yet NYC produces hundreds of them every year at places like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

Yes, while 100s of thousands are not elite level. It might sound crazy but hundreds is not much of anything for the most populace city in the US.

Funny thing is half the really smart poor kids at stuyvesant end up at SUNY and NYU because they are being compared to their peers and they are asian.

Does that suddenly make up for the 100s of thousands of poor kids who don't qualify?

Why do they all have to qualify? I mean a 2% rate seems OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

You aren't making any sense. Whatever happens to juvenile delinquents it is wrong to place them in classes with the poor bright students who are academically motivated. This is what is happening in many poor schools today because so many administrators and University Education departments champion mixed ability math classes. It is really insulting and ignorant to not understand how many really smart poor kids there are. There are so many who could be academically so much higher if given the opportunity to get ahead. There is nothing in my post that says they are intellectually defunct, they are the exact opposite.

And Escalante's students retook the Calculus exam while being proctored by College Board officials and passed. He had amazing success and did the other Calculus teacher at Garfield. Once a new administration came in they lost support. Escalante left then two years later the other amazing Calculus teacher left. They had between them around 120 students taking AP Calculus.

It is tragic what is happening to academically motivated students in many poor schools in CA.

Why did you write an entire paragraph just to say "imprison black kids." It's a lot easier to make the message short and clear. There's not that many elite-level poor children in the US. That's just a statistical fact.

Escalante had multiple students who id not accept taking the retest and admitted to cheating on their AP exam.

And yet NYC produces hundreds of them every year at places like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

Yes, while 100s of thousands are not elite level. It might sound crazy but hundreds is not much of anything for the most populace city in the US.

There are maybe 100,000 high school seniors in NYC. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are about 1600 of them. They are outnumbered by the graduates of places like trinity and dalton and horace mann but about 5-10% of THOSE schools are low income students. There are plenty of low income elite level students, most of them are asian but not all.

About 70-80% of NYC public school students are low income. This really just says that most of these students are incompetent, and we shouldn't be searching in mines with little return. Return institutions back to places for the most elite. The asian poor kid from the Bronx is not going to improve our colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5/28 update: over 800 have signed, including
7 of the 9 Chairs of UC Mathematics Departments
Plus an additional 37 STEM department chairs

I still think they should consider both EBRW and Math. Not just Math. The reading comprehension is just as crucial.

Their humanities departments can carry that water. But they are likely to be opposed to any return to testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can totally understand why these tech companies rather hire H1B (foreign educated tech workers) or even outsource the jobs.

Even the discussion here show people naive about the need for solid STEM foundation in education.

There's not much connection. Presumably, those getting 4 year degrees should be trained. It is the fault, then, of universities, not the k-12 system.

4 yrs of university can not make up for a poor k-12 foundation, and that is exactly the point of the UC professors. it should not be their job to teach the missing foundation.

huh? What kind of revisionist trash is this? The UCs have always had people from all walks of life, who all did not receive an elite foundation. You can 100% start off on shaky territory and build yourself up to a competent professional; in fact, that is how much of my peers at Berkeley got through their engineering degree! It's so sad how much people here want to trap poor people into worse conditions, worse schooling, and worse opportunities.

Nah not the poor but the under qualified

You don't have to pretend like you are being in anyway open to accepting poor people. We get it. You were pretty crystal clear that you are antagonizing poor people. Just saying "underqualified" doesn't mean much when I know you think the issue is the expansion of admissions towards lower performing high schools.

DP

To be fair, qualified kids are not evenly distributed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The majority of students getting extra time on the SAT are affluent and white. The number of students getting accommodations has skyrocketed. The College Board is NOT allowed to flag if you have extra time or not.

This is the reason why so many students at top schools get accommodations. Almost 40% of Stanford students are registered as having a disability.

12.5% of Stanford students have academic accommodations. The majority of accommodations are related to housing and/or religion. For example, my Stanford kid has severe food allergies so can’t be placed with an unknown roommate (not as relevant as an upperclassman with a draw group but extremely relevant as a freshman)—the university classifies this as a “disability.” She, like 87.5% of her fellow students, does not have any academic accommodations.

12.5% is still a lot.

Most kids are just gaming accommodations to get better housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The majority of students getting extra time on the SAT are affluent and white. The number of students getting accommodations has skyrocketed. The College Board is NOT allowed to flag if you have extra time or not.

This is the reason why so many students at top schools get accommodations. Almost 40% of Stanford students are registered as having a disability.

12.5% of Stanford students have academic accommodations. The majority of accommodations are related to housing and/or religion. For example, my Stanford kid has severe food allergies so can’t be placed with an unknown roommate (not as relevant as an upperclassman with a draw group but extremely relevant as a freshman)—the university classifies this as a “disability.” She, like 87.5% of her fellow students, does not have any academic accommodations.

12.5% is still a lot.

Most kids are just gaming accommodations to get better housing.

Evidence?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:280 is a really paltry number for the size of UC. This is simply rage bait for anti CA MAGAs.

1. UCs require placement tests, so the unprepared students aren’t walking into Calculas.
2. UCs focus on conceptual math and don’t allow calculators which is the exact opposite of what is happening in high school. You can get a 750+ on the math SAT, a 5 on AP Calculus, score high enough to place into Calculus and still struggle. This is great and I’m glad they do it this way.
3. Some UCs have math professors and TAs with such strong accents that no one outside their region can understand them.
4. Math courses are weeder courses for STEM and economics. You have top students and cheaters at the top but then #2 /#3 drop too many to the bottom. The school wants a bell curve for distribution but they have a K.

The reality in CA is that there isn’t a bell curve if your class is representative of the geography, race and socioeconomic groups in CA. UCs could reinstate the SAT but that doesn’t mean that they would scrap the geographic and socioeconomic goals. Using the SAT would not reopen seats for high performing Asians and Whites.

Ultimately what needs to happen is there needs to be better math instruction in public schools AND the top students in poor schools need to be separated into honors classes that are not filled with unmotivated students. CA has taken away tracking at many poor schools so the brightest kids are stuck with loser kids who constantly disrupt the class. So who supports detracking and does not believe the top Latino and Black students should be grouped into high performing math classes- yup you guessed it UCSD's School of Education.

UCSD runs a charter middle and high school of 850 students that is on UCSD's campus where 93% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Price Lunch, with Hispanic students making up 57% and African American 22%. There are NO honors math classes at the school. They do NOT even offer AP Calculus (not even AB) only non-honors Calculus. They don't offer true honors English since the ONLY 9th and 10th grade English classes are called Advanced English.

So how does UCSD do teaching this population. Well only 33% of AP exams taken at the school received a score of 3 or higher. Only 13% exceeded math standards in 8th grade and 25% in 12th grade. These students are mixed in the same class as the 65% of students who received scores of not passing (received scores of not met or nearly met) in 8th grade and the 50% who didn't pass in 11th grade. How are smart poor kids supposed to thrive in this environment?

Maybe UCSD should be looking at the high school that is on their campus and realize this model for teaching math doesn't work. How are they not mortified at what is going on?

And how does this compare to the affluent high school by UCSD called La Jolla High School that is 7 miles away? Of course they track students into regular and advanced math. They also offer dual enrollment community college math classes at the high school - MESA COLLEGE MATH 150 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY I (Fall) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 151 CALCULUS WITH ANALYTIC GEOMETY II (Spring) Grades 11-12, MESA COLLEGE MATH 254 (INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA) (Fall)Grades 11-12, and MESA COLLEGE MATH 245 (DISCRETE MATH) (Spring) Grades 11-12. You get a completely different education if you are a top student here.

The other point is how lazy UCSD is about actually teaching the remedial class once they get admitted. Student who are in that class are often the ones who attend horrifically bad high schools in the poorest areas of the state. They never got quality instruction in math. (There was an article about a student who was enrolled in AP Calculus at Lincoln High in San Diego and because they couldn't get enough students to take the class the school dropped the calculus class two weeks before the end of the first semester. The school then enrolled all the students who were in the class into Ceramics. This seems like a crazy story but it is true! This is what the poorest students often face trying to take math.) UCSD instead of actually having a person directly teaching the class they sit the students in front of computers on a curriculum called Aleks and students have to complete work all online. If they have question they can ask the TA proctoring the class but no one is actually teaching the students. And like the post above says, many students really can't understand some TA's due to really strong accents.

UC's could make everyone take a placement exam in April /May and then tell anyone majoring STEM who doesn't pass they need to take a community college class or take an intensive math class over the summer at the UC.

La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.

So the white students get rigorous classes while the brown kids get access only to remedial classes? How is this fair? If you want to hold all students to the same standard then they all need the same opportunities to advance. In too many poor schools, bright students are not grouped together in honors classes. They are constantly being held back by disruptive students.

UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?

this comment doesn't make any sense.

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?” Of course it doesn’t

You're really struggling with reading. it's because the PP's comment didn't make sense. Why are they talking about fairness of classes when La Jolla is an independent high school (why did you say public elementary school?) and has nothing to do with UCSD's charter public high school.

La Jolla High school is a public high school that is part of San Diego Unified School District. The closest high school is Preuss Charter School on the campus of UCSD. It is the height of hypocrisy for any STEM faculty at UCSD to be appalled at the math placement exams when the public high school on UCSD's campus has awful math test scores. They offer ZERO honors math classes and don't even offer AP Calculus. They need to take a walk and see what is being offered to high school kids on the UCSD campus.

People are clamoring for students to be treated the same and for UC's to go back to using SAT's. If high performing high school students in ALL high schools had the same opportunities that would make sense. The problem is they do NOT. For some crazy reason University Schools of Education push for detracking at poor schools. Affluent public school parents push back and insist there be tracking so their kids are challenged. San Diego Unified Math Department declared middle schools and high schools couldn't track, which goes along with what they publish under what students will learn in high school math classes, which the number one thing they list is "Building a Community of Math Learners". Yet somehow La Jolla High and its feeder schools were allowed to keep tracking and offering honors math classes.

For better or worse the juvenile incarceration rate in CA has fallen 75% between 2000 and 2023. Where do you think those kids who used to go to juvenile hall and juvenile camps are? They are attending poor schools and wreaking havoc. It used to be in these poor schools the academically advanced kids were able to be sheltered in honors classes, but now there is this tragic push that the top students shouldn't be isolated from the lowest performing students. They took honors classes away so those poor, brilliant kids are sitting in regular English and math classes with students who are far below grade level and kids who wouldn't have been in a regular public high school 20 years ago because they were too disruptive.

It is ridiculous that 40 years ago Jaime Escalante at Garfield High in LA (Stand and Deliver) showed that if you provide rigorous curriculum to poor students and give them opportunity to learn, they can excel, yet the model today is to lower expectations for poor students. In 1987 there were 73 students at that poor, primarily Latino High school that passed AP Calculus. Escalante ended up leaving Garfield High due to a large part that a new principal and administration didn't think was right all the emphasis was going toward the top students and not toward remedial students.

This is not necessarily true and runs into strange narratives that we MUST imprison black and brown kids. Maybe you believe that, but it's a gross insinuation. Also who are these poor brilliant kids? According to you, most are intellectually defunct and can't do algebra.

Are you aware that Escalante's students cheated? You also mostly invented why he left. He isolated himself from the rest of the school and then cried wolf that no one supported him, all while his students were cheating on exams, since there was a national spotlight on their progress. You're mostly spewing boring propaganda and making it sound revolutionary.

18 of Escalante's students passed the test. 14 of them got accused of cheating because their answers had weirdly similar error. 9 made the same silly mistake and likely chceated. So 12 of them retook the test under heavy supervision and they all passed. 2 declined to retake the test. So in the end 16 of escalante's 18 students incontrovertibly took and passed the test.

So about 1/2 of his students likely cheating on a standardized exam. That's pretty reprehensible. Why do people celebrate this guy?

Nobody from that school had ever passed the AP calculus exam before.