Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM • Hacker News Board

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#71

Post by everdrive » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #27

ceejayoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professors who fail large swathes of their classes get in trouble.

That is the entire problem in a nutshell. You cannot reject more than one or two students in a year or the school will reject you.

In part this is a consequence of blank slate ideology, which presupposes that all students are equally capable of identical outcomes and that individual student failures are always / usually systemic failures in disguise.

This is a silly perspective, but the blank slate folks really got their tendrils in just about anywhere. In reality, some people are simply bad at math. More education will help, but they will always be disadvantaged compared to people who are more naturally predisposed. (note, I'm quite bad at math myself)

It may seem altruistic to err on the side of caution here and try to catch the kids that fall through the gaps, (again, assuming that they are falling through the gaps due to systemic failures) but as the article points out, there is a limit to this approach; eventually it brings the talented students down and degrades the program.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#72

Post by happytoexplain » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

StateflowsLabs wrote: post #2

"The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one. Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, bu…

I can't read the article - do they explain why they think this is a "paradox"?

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#73

Post by MeetingsBrowser » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #53

This doesn't surprise me at all. From what I can tell, California's education system has moved from "equality" (which I would define as providing similar opportunities to all the kids) to focusing on "equity" (which I think they define as dictating the same outcome for all kids). To get an idea of how off the rails this has gotten, go read up on their statements trying to justify banning high school calculus. They ex…

> I think all funding in California education (other than terminal levels like 4 year bachelors and up) should be a function of the percentage of students that succeed at the next step.

This seems problematic.

Students' success isn't entirely up to the school. Some areas genuinely need more resources than others.

This system punishes areas that need more resources with by removing resources, likely causing a downward spiral.

A generation of kids is left with poor education before the schools eventually close, and then who wants to start a school in an area that has historically struggled when funding depends on them succeeding?

Based on happenings in other states, when public schools close the schools that take their place are from well funded groups who care more about spreading ideologies than running successful or profitable schools.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#74

Post by scarmig » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

lokar wrote: post #36

StateflowsLabs wrote: post #2

"The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one. Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, bu…

The problem is as never the tests. It was pretending that the difference between a 600 and 625 (or whatever) really predicted anything. It was the silly idea that with tests you could produce a fair ordering of students based on potential to succeed.

You can absolutely make a bet on who's more likely to succeed based on a 100 point difference, though. It's not absolute, but it's highly predictive. And the reason the SAT was dropped wasn't because admissions were being forced to blindly accept 620 over 610 (they never were), but so that people who scored hundreds of points below the mean could be admitted (in the pursuit of other institutional goals).

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#75

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

lokar wrote: post #31

dmoy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the real underlying problem then

They should not admit students who have little chance of success

Sure, but these students are likely two groups; those who are never going to be good at math, and those who were never really taught math.

The latter may need an opportunity to succeed.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#76

Post by JCTheDenthog » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #57

JCTheDenthog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the reality is that such conditions do interfere with the potential of academic success, as much as proponents of equity like to argue otherwise. If I had a severe brain injury as a child, or my mom drank and did a ton of drugs while pregnant with me, or any number of other reasons, I will probably be far less academically successful than in the counterfactual reality where I didn't get a brick dropped on m…

In your scenarios, equity proponents would tend to advocate for things like extra testing time, access to tutoring, etc. (And systemic efforts to prevent dropping bricks on childrens' heads in the first place.)

>In your scenarios, equity proponents would tend to advocate for things like extra testing time, access to tutoring, etc.

So you claim, but in reality proponents of equity instituted a system that gave Black students a roughly 450 point advantage over Asian students on the SAT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-un...

Note that the NYT, in their pure, non-partisan spirit of fairness and equity, somehow found a way to describe this as an unfair advantage for White students.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#77

Post by jeffbee » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #53

This doesn't surprise me at all. From what I can tell, California's education system has moved from "equality" (which I would define as providing similar opportunities to all the kids) to focusing on "equity" (which I think they define as dictating the same outcome for all kids). To get an idea of how off the rails this has gotten, go read up on their statements trying to justify banning high school calculus. They ex…

I doubt that you can point to a high school which banned calculus. My guess is that you are referring to a political fight in San Francisco where a very specific racial/ethnic cohort of parents believes that one of the high schools is a Berkeley/Stanford acceptance funnel reserved for them, and they got mad when the government decided to spread the wealth.

From my perspective, there has never been any dumber debate than whether 9th grade math is called "Math" or "Algebra". My kids went to high school in Berkeley where Math is just called Math in grades 9-11 and after that you can take AP Calculus or AP Statistics if you want. And this is not Woke 1.0 stuff because the courses have been named that way forever.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#78

Post by throw9494krrj » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #51

1970-01-01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the entire problem in a nutshell. You cannot reject more than one or two students in a year or the school will reject you.

That's a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Treating universities as a system, it is deeply problematic and even immoral to saddle students with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to enter programs that it is entirely predictable that the student will fail at. The solution is to use all the methods available to predict how successful the student is likely to be after matriculating, not to w…

No, moral is to make student loans subject to regular bankrupcy. Student should be also able to get refound, if university misrepresents or lies about their job prospects!

Universities are business as any other!

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#79

Post by ptek » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #40

valleyer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy works against you, given that tons of professional athletes come from poverty.

> tons of professional athletes come from poverty Is that actually the case?

Depends on the sport. I don’t think the Olympic equestrian competitors would be dirt poor.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#80

Post by linguae » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

eunos wrote: post #32

StateflowsLabs wrote: post #2

"The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one. Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, bu…

And SAT as high school math exam itself I think is way too easy. They should design another test which can clearly distinguish top 1% or even 0.1%.from others

When I was in high school in California more than 20 years ago, SAT math alone was insufficient for admissions to STEM programs at mid-ranked and top-ranked universities. I was required to take the SAT Math IIC subject test, which went up to pre-calculus. We were also strongly encouraged to take calculus in high school. There are two AP Calculus exams: AB (which covers the first semester of university calculus) and BC (which covers the first two semesters).