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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][size=9] [/size][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]
La Jolla high school is a majority white school. Compare apples to apples.[/quote]

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. [/quote]
UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla High?[/quote]

Of course it doesn’t! Why would a UC school
Have any control over local public elementary schools?[/quote]
this comment doesn't make any sense.[/quote]

The PP said “UCSD doesn’t control La Jolla high?”  Of course it doesn’t [/quote]
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.[/quote]

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.

[b]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[/b]. 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. [b]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. [/b]

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. [/quote]
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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]
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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]
9 likely cheated.[/quote]

Not on the second test, which they passed.[/quote]

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