The open letter from University of California (UC) STEM faculty (exposing the profusion of mathematically unprepared of UC undergrads and calling for reinstatement of standardized testing) continues to gain traction.
The double edge of the affirmative action sword is that it harms the very people it was intended to assist by giving them a false impression of their true skills, leading them to underperform and justify the very claims of "inferiority" that they seek to negate on the one hand while calling into question the qualifications of members of those groups who truly did rise by merit.
There is one big problem with this approach to the issue however. The inadequate teaching in our public schools arises, in great part, because of the conduct of universities themselves. It is universities that train the nation's teachers. Not only is it education departs that have watered down the curriculum and filled its with social engineering drivel, the STEM departments themselves are DIRECTLY to blame. It is the STEM departments that treat courses for pre-service teachers as unimportant service courses from which they seek to extract resources in terms of larger class sizes and use of untenured/adjunct faculty without proper support so that they can have smaller classes and course releases to support...wait for it...RESEARCH!
Example: My job at MSU-Mankato was specifically created by the legislature's creation of a requirement that all pre-service teachers have increased and improved course work in science. Similar legislation applied in math. The faculty lines were placed in the STEM departments to insure that the pre-service teachers were given instruction by serious experts in the discipline. Unfortunately, those faculty were immediately undermined by administrative pillaging of resources. The Dean summed up his opinion repeatedly thus, "They're only going to be teachers, what do they need to know?" to justify increasing class sizes, reducing contact time and adding other duties to the faculty so he could move resources into areas the legislature had NOT chosen to fund including course releases for faculty to do inconsequential research.
If you really wish to improve teaching in the public schools, you need to hold universities responsible for the teachers they produce....perhaps by withholding tenure lines and overhead from research for the failure of their teachers to produce quality outcomes.
We need to follow the Finnish model, or the KIPP or Success Academy models. There are many others. Having grade school teachers who are at least competent would be a good first step towards addressing this issue.
Our current system has to be completely blown up and replaced.
Sadly, the data clearly show that of all populations of college graduates, the major whose students score lowest on standardized tests of math, science, English etc. are elementary education majors. The average gen ed student performs better than the average education major. Worse, the best education majors in terms of ability often do not get hired or leave the field after a few years because their ability is seen as "threatening" by their less qualified peers in the unionized education workplace!
good article. The angle for next news article needs to be finding and featuring the faculty and administrators who are pushing back against testing and are blocking it. name them and air their arguments or lack thereof
Indeed, the vast majority of University of California faculty in math and science have not signed that statement. Yes, let's hear them recount why they eliminated the SAT, and also how the admissions and the teaching in the U.C. system is polluted by systemic sexism and racism. Such policies and pronouncements successfully helped them shed their feelings of guilt and signal their feelings of virtue. Eliminating the SAT was self-serving for faculty and for U.C. administrators.
Thank you. The SAT revelations offers the UC system a window to reexamine its central goals of education, research, and public service. Over the past twelve years, those goals were too often displaced by a framework of oppressor-versus-oppressed, by claims of victimhood, and by moral panic over supposedly rampant sexism and racism.
Large Title IX offices on every campus repeatedly investigated male students and faculty, many of whom were thoughtful, empathetic men caught up in the panic. Large DEI offices similarly reshaped hiring and admissions, while UC deans and presidents publicly claimed that their own campuses were suffused with “systemic racism.” Hundreds of UC faculty members lost their jobs, and thousands of students were disciplined, suspended, expelled, or otherwise pushed aside. The SAT was abandoned to avoid further accusations of racism. In reality, faculty has worked hard to ensure a welcoming learning environment regardless of gender and race.
Once again: all these articles prove is that the current system is an utter fraud and disgrace: students cannot read or do basic math, the admissions process is fiendishly unfair, and "standards" is a dirty word.
Defund, dismantle, and re-invent higher education--Now. Cosmetic nibbling around the edges of the catastrophic failure that is today's higher ed won't cut it.
"Of course, defenders of current UC policy will deny antipathy. They just want to reward effort to get a high GPA, without penalty for low standards rooted in centuries of oppression. But this misses some key truths:"
Another "key truth" that it misses is that there is no good evidence at all that events long before a child is born ("centuries of oppression") affects how well he does at maths at school.
[Just for example, do grandchildren of Holocaust survivors tend to struggle at maths? No, they don't.]
[And if one attempts the go-to explanation "poverty", there is also little good evidence that poverty and low family SES *cause* worse performance at maths; such *correlations* are primarily because parents who are less able academically both (1) tend to have worse-paid jobs or no job, and (2) pass on their genes for being less academically able to their children.]
I commissioned that artist's rendering of the planet transiting HD209458, immediately after we discovered the planet (by our Doppler measurements) that we confirmed by photometry showing the dimming as the planet crosses in front. This discovery removed any doubt that the exoplanets we had been discovering with our Doppler measurements were indeed due to planets. I asked Lynette Cook to render our discovery. https://www.ursa.fi/yhd/sirius/HD209458/HD209458_eng.html
I used to commute to Cal with a Mexican who was quite bright. He was moved to tears describing how nothing he could do would change the fact that he would always be seen as an affirmative action beneficiary.
On a side note, there are a few of us out there who don't math very well. I gave up after spending nearly $20,000 on tutors and classes over several years (during the early-ish days of the internet, not a lot of math instruction at the time), best guess, there's a heavy touch of numerical dyslexia that makes algebra a major pain in the ass, which made one of my career paths a bit of a nightmare (replacement parts sales and related, not a lot of fun when lengthy part numbers move around a bit).
Note: I can do some basic math, including being able to math enough to do machine shop work. Where it gets interesting is once I start going down the path of algebra.
Not all degrees and jobs require extensive mathing, and I'll be honest, so I'm more curious about how many lives might have been ruined by crappy math teachers. To that end, I've been asked repeatedly (from math types I have known) as to how I come up with the joke and story material that materializes in my head, and I've always responded with, "I can teach anyone how to do what I do, when you can teach me math, I'll teach you how to write".
One constant I kept running into, it was almost impossible to find one instructor/tutor who taught math the same way as another, every freaking one of them had developed personal shortcuts and taught as if they were instructing someone who was already a "math" person, the only one I ever ran into actually made any headway before accepting a fellowship at a California institution, and he thought my comment about "math teachers needing English and communications professors to translate" was a pretty solid condemnation of the "well-rounded student" doctrine. At one point I was on a degree track to do a double major in psychology/communications, and I bailed after noting two things:
1. The field of psychology is imploding and has been taken over by a very specific demographic because you can literally make it up as you go along
2. Nobody could explain why I was needing upper-level math and chemistry classes to do a psych degree, remember, only psychiatrists prescribe medication, I was repeatedly told, "you're supposed to be a well-rounded student, that's why!", by brain-dead advisors.
To that end, I have noticed that private colleges don't go anywhere near as batshit for math requirements for non-mathing degrees as do state college degree requirements. The wife has nailed two degrees with minimal math requirements (both required private colleges), I gave up after noting that I would have to spend myself into oblivion to nail a degree with minimal chance of ever being able to use it for anything.
Those of us who are fairly quantitative and adept at mathematics hear this sort of thing often. Unfortunately we are moving into a world where mathematics is more and more predominant. Those without mathematics skills will be pushed into more menial jobs (as long as robotics does not take them).
I have some issues with how we teach arithmetic and mathematics. I see lots of deficiencies. We might be able to do better.
I feel the need to jump in here and point out that California Community Colleges (CCC’s) are facing a different but related struggle. AB 1705 has made it impossible to enforce any math or English pre-requisite below college-level, regardless of current ability level. As a result, if a student has only ever taken algebra in high school but then enters a CCC and decides to major in chemistry, the FIRST math class the student would take is Calculus 1A. After a public outcry from CCC math and science faculty, the state walked back their requirements by one step, and now pre-calculus can be enforced as a pre-requisite. Nevertheless, it’s kind of crazy that at the same time UC’s are having students take remedial math courses that teach K-8 math skills, CCC’s can’t force students to take anything lower than pre-calculus, regardless of level of preparation, in most instances.
That's crazy. Thanks for pointing this out as I knew nothing about it before. A brief search reveals that AB 1705 was adopted in 2022 to speed graduation. What happens to students who can't pass calculus? Can they still major in STEM or must they switch to something else?
That's a complicated question to answer. First off, it is the opinion of the state that it's better to pass calculus after taking it and failing it multiple times than it is to take earlier classes and work their way up. Their goal is to get students through transfer-level math in a shorter time, so the idea is that it would take longer to do (for example) college algebra, trig, pre-calculus, then calculus, than it would take to start with calculus, fail a couple of times, and eventually pass. They're probably right about that, though not for the reasons they probably think.
A few things happen to make to "prove" their point, though I would argue that they aren't good things. First off, when faced with a class consisting of a large percentage of students who have basically no foundation, the faculty have roughly two options:
1) Maintain standards and see success rates crater. Some math faculty are doing this and they are the "bad" professors, hated by most students.
2) Spend a significant amount of class time attempting to remedy student misconceptions/make up for that lack of foundation. Since this time has to come from somewhere, by the end of the semester less on-level material is covered. As a result, even students who actually are properly prepared for the class suffer, as they get a watered-down version of the class. This does increase "student success", the only problem is that comparing the old calculus to this new watered-down course is comparing apples to oranges. The change in the class itself isn't captured in the statistics, though, so the state gets to take a victory lap and tell the faculty that we were wrong about our dire predictions.
Another reason that this "works" is because if a student takes calculus two or three times they're eventually going to find an easy professor, or perhaps a professor who reuses exams. That way they'll pass without having to learn what they were supposed to learn.
Anyway, it's a crapshoot. I'm of the personal opinion that a lot of students are being pushed toward pursuing science with no consideration about whether they have a genuine interest, let alone the appropriate skills and constitution, to be successful in it. Then when they wash out the state says it's our fault.
The double edge of the affirmative action sword is that it harms the very people it was intended to assist by giving them a false impression of their true skills, leading them to underperform and justify the very claims of "inferiority" that they seek to negate on the one hand while calling into question the qualifications of members of those groups who truly did rise by merit.
There is one big problem with this approach to the issue however. The inadequate teaching in our public schools arises, in great part, because of the conduct of universities themselves. It is universities that train the nation's teachers. Not only is it education departs that have watered down the curriculum and filled its with social engineering drivel, the STEM departments themselves are DIRECTLY to blame. It is the STEM departments that treat courses for pre-service teachers as unimportant service courses from which they seek to extract resources in terms of larger class sizes and use of untenured/adjunct faculty without proper support so that they can have smaller classes and course releases to support...wait for it...RESEARCH!
Example: My job at MSU-Mankato was specifically created by the legislature's creation of a requirement that all pre-service teachers have increased and improved course work in science. Similar legislation applied in math. The faculty lines were placed in the STEM departments to insure that the pre-service teachers were given instruction by serious experts in the discipline. Unfortunately, those faculty were immediately undermined by administrative pillaging of resources. The Dean summed up his opinion repeatedly thus, "They're only going to be teachers, what do they need to know?" to justify increasing class sizes, reducing contact time and adding other duties to the faculty so he could move resources into areas the legislature had NOT chosen to fund including course releases for faculty to do inconsequential research.
If you really wish to improve teaching in the public schools, you need to hold universities responsible for the teachers they produce....perhaps by withholding tenure lines and overhead from research for the failure of their teachers to produce quality outcomes.
We need to follow the Finnish model, or the KIPP or Success Academy models. There are many others. Having grade school teachers who are at least competent would be a good first step towards addressing this issue.
Our current system has to be completely blown up and replaced.
Sadly, the data clearly show that of all populations of college graduates, the major whose students score lowest on standardized tests of math, science, English etc. are elementary education majors. The average gen ed student performs better than the average education major. Worse, the best education majors in terms of ability often do not get hired or leave the field after a few years because their ability is seen as "threatening" by their less qualified peers in the unionized education workplace!
good article. The angle for next news article needs to be finding and featuring the faculty and administrators who are pushing back against testing and are blocking it. name them and air their arguments or lack thereof
Indeed, the vast majority of University of California faculty in math and science have not signed that statement. Yes, let's hear them recount why they eliminated the SAT, and also how the admissions and the teaching in the U.C. system is polluted by systemic sexism and racism. Such policies and pronouncements successfully helped them shed their feelings of guilt and signal their feelings of virtue. Eliminating the SAT was self-serving for faculty and for U.C. administrators.
No surprise….who needs math in a “post truth” culture?
Thank you. The SAT revelations offers the UC system a window to reexamine its central goals of education, research, and public service. Over the past twelve years, those goals were too often displaced by a framework of oppressor-versus-oppressed, by claims of victimhood, and by moral panic over supposedly rampant sexism and racism.
Large Title IX offices on every campus repeatedly investigated male students and faculty, many of whom were thoughtful, empathetic men caught up in the panic. Large DEI offices similarly reshaped hiring and admissions, while UC deans and presidents publicly claimed that their own campuses were suffused with “systemic racism.” Hundreds of UC faculty members lost their jobs, and thousands of students were disciplined, suspended, expelled, or otherwise pushed aside. The SAT was abandoned to avoid further accusations of racism. In reality, faculty has worked hard to ensure a welcoming learning environment regardless of gender and race.
Once again: all these articles prove is that the current system is an utter fraud and disgrace: students cannot read or do basic math, the admissions process is fiendishly unfair, and "standards" is a dirty word.
Defund, dismantle, and re-invent higher education--Now. Cosmetic nibbling around the edges of the catastrophic failure that is today's higher ed won't cut it.
One can only hope the Regents finally listen.
Yes. But I would bet money that they won't.
This is by design. The less we learn, the more we can be manipulated.
"Of course, defenders of current UC policy will deny antipathy. They just want to reward effort to get a high GPA, without penalty for low standards rooted in centuries of oppression. But this misses some key truths:"
Another "key truth" that it misses is that there is no good evidence at all that events long before a child is born ("centuries of oppression") affects how well he does at maths at school.
[Just for example, do grandchildren of Holocaust survivors tend to struggle at maths? No, they don't.]
[And if one attempts the go-to explanation "poverty", there is also little good evidence that poverty and low family SES *cause* worse performance at maths; such *correlations* are primarily because parents who are less able academically both (1) tend to have worse-paid jobs or no job, and (2) pass on their genes for being less academically able to their children.]
By the way - you have a nice graphical representation of a transiting saturn-sized planet crossing its host star. NASA-Kepler lives!
I commissioned that artist's rendering of the planet transiting HD209458, immediately after we discovered the planet (by our Doppler measurements) that we confirmed by photometry showing the dimming as the planet crosses in front. This discovery removed any doubt that the exoplanets we had been discovering with our Doppler measurements were indeed due to planets. I asked Lynette Cook to render our discovery. https://www.ursa.fi/yhd/sirius/HD209458/HD209458_eng.html
I’ve forgotten which planet my avatar image is supposed to be, but it’s likely one of the early WASP discoveries 😀
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap991115.html
Don't worry - they can just get the answers from AI.
Tossing standards.
Or?
How to debase an entire culture (and hope no one notices) in one easy step
I used to commute to Cal with a Mexican who was quite bright. He was moved to tears describing how nothing he could do would change the fact that he would always be seen as an affirmative action beneficiary.
On a side note, there are a few of us out there who don't math very well. I gave up after spending nearly $20,000 on tutors and classes over several years (during the early-ish days of the internet, not a lot of math instruction at the time), best guess, there's a heavy touch of numerical dyslexia that makes algebra a major pain in the ass, which made one of my career paths a bit of a nightmare (replacement parts sales and related, not a lot of fun when lengthy part numbers move around a bit).
Note: I can do some basic math, including being able to math enough to do machine shop work. Where it gets interesting is once I start going down the path of algebra.
Not all degrees and jobs require extensive mathing, and I'll be honest, so I'm more curious about how many lives might have been ruined by crappy math teachers. To that end, I've been asked repeatedly (from math types I have known) as to how I come up with the joke and story material that materializes in my head, and I've always responded with, "I can teach anyone how to do what I do, when you can teach me math, I'll teach you how to write".
One constant I kept running into, it was almost impossible to find one instructor/tutor who taught math the same way as another, every freaking one of them had developed personal shortcuts and taught as if they were instructing someone who was already a "math" person, the only one I ever ran into actually made any headway before accepting a fellowship at a California institution, and he thought my comment about "math teachers needing English and communications professors to translate" was a pretty solid condemnation of the "well-rounded student" doctrine. At one point I was on a degree track to do a double major in psychology/communications, and I bailed after noting two things:
1. The field of psychology is imploding and has been taken over by a very specific demographic because you can literally make it up as you go along
2. Nobody could explain why I was needing upper-level math and chemistry classes to do a psych degree, remember, only psychiatrists prescribe medication, I was repeatedly told, "you're supposed to be a well-rounded student, that's why!", by brain-dead advisors.
To that end, I have noticed that private colleges don't go anywhere near as batshit for math requirements for non-mathing degrees as do state college degree requirements. The wife has nailed two degrees with minimal math requirements (both required private colleges), I gave up after noting that I would have to spend myself into oblivion to nail a degree with minimal chance of ever being able to use it for anything.
Those of us who are fairly quantitative and adept at mathematics hear this sort of thing often. Unfortunately we are moving into a world where mathematics is more and more predominant. Those without mathematics skills will be pushed into more menial jobs (as long as robotics does not take them).
I have some issues with how we teach arithmetic and mathematics. I see lots of deficiencies. We might be able to do better.
I feel the need to jump in here and point out that California Community Colleges (CCC’s) are facing a different but related struggle. AB 1705 has made it impossible to enforce any math or English pre-requisite below college-level, regardless of current ability level. As a result, if a student has only ever taken algebra in high school but then enters a CCC and decides to major in chemistry, the FIRST math class the student would take is Calculus 1A. After a public outcry from CCC math and science faculty, the state walked back their requirements by one step, and now pre-calculus can be enforced as a pre-requisite. Nevertheless, it’s kind of crazy that at the same time UC’s are having students take remedial math courses that teach K-8 math skills, CCC’s can’t force students to take anything lower than pre-calculus, regardless of level of preparation, in most instances.
That's crazy. Thanks for pointing this out as I knew nothing about it before. A brief search reveals that AB 1705 was adopted in 2022 to speed graduation. What happens to students who can't pass calculus? Can they still major in STEM or must they switch to something else?
That's a complicated question to answer. First off, it is the opinion of the state that it's better to pass calculus after taking it and failing it multiple times than it is to take earlier classes and work their way up. Their goal is to get students through transfer-level math in a shorter time, so the idea is that it would take longer to do (for example) college algebra, trig, pre-calculus, then calculus, than it would take to start with calculus, fail a couple of times, and eventually pass. They're probably right about that, though not for the reasons they probably think.
A few things happen to make to "prove" their point, though I would argue that they aren't good things. First off, when faced with a class consisting of a large percentage of students who have basically no foundation, the faculty have roughly two options:
1) Maintain standards and see success rates crater. Some math faculty are doing this and they are the "bad" professors, hated by most students.
2) Spend a significant amount of class time attempting to remedy student misconceptions/make up for that lack of foundation. Since this time has to come from somewhere, by the end of the semester less on-level material is covered. As a result, even students who actually are properly prepared for the class suffer, as they get a watered-down version of the class. This does increase "student success", the only problem is that comparing the old calculus to this new watered-down course is comparing apples to oranges. The change in the class itself isn't captured in the statistics, though, so the state gets to take a victory lap and tell the faculty that we were wrong about our dire predictions.
Another reason that this "works" is because if a student takes calculus two or three times they're eventually going to find an easy professor, or perhaps a professor who reuses exams. That way they'll pass without having to learn what they were supposed to learn.
Anyway, it's a crapshoot. I'm of the personal opinion that a lot of students are being pushed toward pursuing science with no consideration about whether they have a genuine interest, let alone the appropriate skills and constitution, to be successful in it. Then when they wash out the state says it's our fault.