EDITORS' CORNER
Students are up to eight years behind, professor says
Calculus students at the University of California Berkeley don’t know how to work with elementary-level fractions, one professor wrote in a recent op-ed.
“I teach mathematics at UC Berkeley. Three days a week, I stand in front of lecture halls with 500 to 1,400 students. By the second week of the semester, I already know who is in trouble,” Zvezdelina Stankova wrote in an article published by The San Francisco Standard.
Stankova added that she works with students who are “five to eight years behind in mathematics.”
“Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” she wrote.
She noted that other professors are having similar experiences, which is why thousands of faculty at all 10 UC campuses signed open letters asking for the return of SAT and ACT requirements in admissions.
UC ditched the standardized testing requirement in 2020 to promote “equity.” Then, a court ruling on disability access forced the system to go fully test-blind through 2025, Stankova wrote.
While other universities, such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, have reinstated the testing requirement after ditching it in 2020, UC has not.
“Faculty asked the university to revisit the policy quickly, but the timeline has repeatedly slipped. The Academic Senate now plans a review that will conclude in June 2027, meaning no new admissions policy could take effect before fall 2028,” Stankova wrote.
The professor cited diagnostic data showing a sharp decline in readiness among students after the testing requirement was dropped.
Before test-blind admissions, about 71 percent of Calculus I students were ready or nearly ready. Afterward, the figure fell to roughly 44–51 percent, with more than a third showing severe deficits.
“We ended up teaching two different classes in one lecture hall: one for students who were prepared for college calculus and one for students who needed remedial mathematics that nobody had scheduled,” the professor wrote.
She added that the question is no longer about sufficient evidence. “It’s how many more students we are willing to gamble with before acting.”
University faculty aren’t the only ones calling for the reinstatement of standardized testing.
This month, the northern San Diego school board passed a resolution calling on the UC system to reinstate the requirement for STEM majors, The College Fix reported.
“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.
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