BUZZ
Key Takeaways
- A UC San Diego report reveals a significant spike in freshmen requiring remedial math classes, with the need increasing from 1 in 100 to 1 in 8 students since 2020 due to factors such as COVID disruptions and grade inflation.
- To mitigate these challenges, the report recommends developing a 'Math Index' to assess students' math preparedness based on high school transcripts.
- The findings indicate that the integration of artificial intelligence tools may further complicate existing educational deficiencies, necessitating immediate institutional responses to enhance student success and preserve instructional integrity.
A new University of California San Diego faculty report reveals that ditching standardized testing, COVID disruptions, and grade inflation triggered a 30-fold spike in freshmen needing remedial math classes since 2020.
In the last five years, the share of freshmen needing remedial math has increased from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 8, forcing the university to create another class below college level, according to the report.
One class is now dedicated solely to elementary and middle-school basics, and another to fill high-school-level gaps.
“Alarmingly, the instructors running the 2023-2024 Math 2 courses observed a marked change in the skill gaps compared to prior years,” the report states.
“While Math 2 was designed in 2016 to remediate missing high school math knowledge, now most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further, to middle and even elementary school,” it states.
Writing issues show similar trends, with more students entering remedial programs like Analytic Writing.
“The Senate–Administration Working Group on Admissions (SAWG) concludes that this trend poses serious challenges both to student success and to the university’s instructional mission,” the report states.
“Admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources,” it states.
In addition, the report attributes this “deterioration” to COVID-19 learning losses, “the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools.”
The report further warns that these issues will only be exacerbated by “the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence tools.”
The group called for an “immediate institutional response” to avoid setting students up for failure and putting strain on faculty.
The report also offers recommendations to improve admissions practices and student preparedness.
To fix the math crisis, UCSD must stop relying on overall high school GPA, which hides weak math skills, according to the report.
Since UCSD ditched standardized testing scores and can’t test students’ math skills before admitting them, the report recommends creating a “Math Index.”
This is a simple score that looks only at high school transcripts, including math grades, which math classes were taken, and which high school the student attended. The index will predict exactly how the student will do on the real math placement test.
“The Math Index will be used to evaluate any student whose first choice for major is one that requires the Math 10 or Math 20 sequence,” the report states.
Alternatively, admissions readers can admit math-intensive majors “holistically,” but keep a real-time counter of how many future remedial kids they’re letting in, and stop when the number hits a certain limit.
To address the issue of students’ plummeting writing and language skills, the report calls for “a separate inquiry” due to the complexity of the problem.
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