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‘Admitting students into STEM programs without verified math readiness does not advance equity,’ resolution states
A faculty-led petition urging the University of California System to reinstate standardized testing in admissions just gained another supporter: the San Dieguito Union High School District.
On Thursday, the northern San Diego school board passed a resolution that calls on the public university system to reinstate “standardized testing as a requirement for STEM majors in the admissions process,” The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
“Admitting students into STEM programs without verified math readiness does not advance equity – it increases the risk of course failure, academic difficulty and degree incompletion,” the resolution states, in part.
Prior to the vote, several professors from UC San Diego urged the board to approve the resolution. They shared how the 2020 decision to end the standardized testing requirement has led to a growing number of unprepared students in the classroom.
“Only a return to requiring the SAT and ACT can overcome the current admissions crisis,” economics Professor Marc Muendler wrote in a letter read to the board Thursday. “Without the ACT and SAT, the holistic review now comes in a few grade bins and results in many thousands of hard-to-distinguish applicants.
“…We are setting these admitted but underprepared students up for failure because it takes years to fill the gaps even in the best remedial courses,” Muendler wrote, according to the newspaper:
Geoffrey Braswell, a professor of archeology at UC San Diego, said the math is only half of the problem as too many admitted students also cannot read or write at the college or high school level. David Kleinfeld, a physics professor, said the lack of the test as a measure as well as grade inflation has made it random who ends up in his classes and it creates a lot of problems. He recounted a physics laboratory he taught last winter where he saw it the most dramatically.
The UC system recently set up a committee to study the matter and make a recommendation by June 2027.
However, the San Dieguito school board believes that the process should be expedited. Its resolution urged the UC Board of Regents and Academic Senate “to go as fast as possible with a thoughtful implementation so that it doesn’t affect another graduating class,” the report states.
The resolution also encourages other California school districts to pass resolutions supporting “evidence-based admissions standards that serve the genuine long-term success of all students.”
As of July, more than “2,300 UC faculty members signed an open letter to the UC Board of Regents asking to reinstate the SAT/ACT mathematics requirement for applicants to STEM majors,” according to the report.
Social science and humanities scholars also voiced their support for the return of standardized testing in a June letter, The College Fix reported.
Most Ivy League universities also have reinstated their standardized testing requirements over the past two years.
MORE: ‘Convinced by the data’: Dartmouth College reinstates SAT requirement
