College students can’t do middle-school math after test-blind admissions: UC Berkeley professor– www.thecollegefix.com

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.