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

latimes.com

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

#841

Post by Gibbon1 »

rendall wrote: post #792
try-working wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied engineering in Sweden. One of our courses had an 80% failure rate. A world of difference from Harvard where the average grade is A.

Apparently Harvard is introducing a 20% cap (plus change) on As. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/03/plan-to-rein-... No cap on A minuses though.

Looked at my collage that I went to 40 years ago. Back then they graded on a curve.

Looking student grades for 2025.

A's 30% B's 45%

2 out of 254 got an A+

I look at grade inflation still being a problem at elite schools and shake my head.

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

#842

Post by jnovek »

rayiner wrote: post #552
jnovek wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much context here that you’re missing — have you ever been poor before?

Everyone in my wife’s family grew up poor and many still are. My wife lived in a converted barn for part of her childhood. Regardless, the data is the data! Only 10% of parents on SNAP work full time.

You, personally, haven’t been poor, though, so you you don’t know what it’s like to have to balance all the things a poor person does as an adult. Your confidence that you can speak on this topic because your wife was poor as a child comes from a perspective of massive privilege.

If you had been poor as an adult, you’d know that it’s very difficult to stay on SNAP if you have any income. It incentivizes not working if you want to feed your family.

You mention people who aren’t on disability — well, it’s very hard to get on disability. Go find a social worker and ask. They’ll tell you stories about people living on the streets with diagnosed schizophrenia having to stand in front of a judge for an appeal because SSDI was rejected twice.

What percentage of people who are on SNAP actually disabled and unable to work, I wonder? It’s far high than the number of people who actually receive SSDI.

This is why I ask if you’ve been poor — the devil is in the details on these programs and you are confidently misinterpreting those details.

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

#843

Post by jnovek »

rayiner wrote: post #640
borski wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data without context is not useful. Data (alone) = Noise Data + Context = Information Experimentation + Error = Experience Information + Experience = Knowledge Knowledge + Humility = Wisdom

What do you call the injection of ideological excuses into data?

You mean like bending SNAP data to somehow fit your picture of what poor people are like?

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

#844

Post by projektfu »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #157
kleiba2 wrote: post #28

I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercise…

I had the opposite experience, as it were, teaching in the UC system. The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. Most of the students were always great. But it seemed like every quarter, there would be 5-10 problematic students whose, for lack of better term, entitlement, resulted in far more hours of work than worthwhile. And don't get me started on the false disa…

It's frustrating. If you gave me unlimited time to do everything, I wouldn't finish anything. But give that to a normal person who is able to procure a disability accommodation, and they have a leg up over everyone else, and never have to worry about time constraints and priorities.

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

#845

Post by projektfu »

zahlman wrote: post #512
jazzpush2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite experience, as it were, teaching in the UC system. The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. Most of the students were always great. But it seemed like every quarter, there would be 5-10 problematic students whose, for lack of better term, entitlement, resulted in far more hours of work than worthwhile. And don't get me started on the false disa…

> The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. I'm not sure this distinction can be made, really. > And don't get me started on the false disability claims (see [0] for a taste). If you even verbalize questioning one, you're eligible for discrimination. Case in point. It's exactly because of the politics both that the students feel empowered to make those claims, and…

I thought the politics refer to basically the office politics, not the general political environment. The previous comment was talking about the politics that made being a high school teacher not fun, which I took to mean the demands of administration and other faculty, possibly parents as well.

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

#846

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

Bratmon wrote: post #543
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the evidence claimed is that there aren’t better outcomes for smart kids. Schools that claim they have better outcomes just selected for kids that would always have better outcomes. Like if I claimed my basketball team has better outcomes because I got to make sure all my players were above 6 foot. These 6 foot players don’t necessarily benefit from being in a team with other 6 foot players, but I’m saying…

But surely if having the best possible basketball team is important for national success, then it makes sense to pour more resources into the players with more talent

[dead]

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

#847

Post by jjulius »

rayiner wrote: post #307
nkrisc wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s not a real choice. As household income decreases, the odds the child goes to the nearest school (regardless of how good it is) increases. Are you providing after school child care options or transportation to their school of choice? If not, then it’s not a real choice and kids from lower income households will remain disadvantaged. That is to say, the results will be mostly identical except now public mo…

> Because it’s not a real choice. As household income decreases, the odds the child goes to the nearest school (regardless of how good it is) increases. The “odds” don’t tell you whether or not it’s a “real choice.” Families that value education will take advantage of those opportunities. Families that don’t value education will get what they get. Lots of families don’t value education and there’s nothing you can do…

What wildly inaccurate generalizations about an entire state.

Try being less closed-minded.

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

#848

Post by jjulius »

jnovek wrote: post #843
rayiner wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call the injection of ideological excuses into data?

You mean like bending SNAP data to somehow fit your picture of what poor people are like?

Or making wild generalizations about how men in Oregon only work in farming and fishing when those industries actually only comprise less than 10% or the workforce.

I don't think folk should bother debating with this user, I don't think they're conversing in good faith.

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

#849

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #830
zfnmxt wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a good comparison. All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable. The students at Scandinavian universities are selected to a degree, but represent a far broader range of the distribution and correspondingly there's a broader range of exam results. Of course, other things are at play here (there is grade inflation at Harvard, the schools obviously…

> All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable. It seems like there is a pretty good way to handle this. Make the only letter grades A and F, i.e. it's pass/fail, but then additionally provide class rank percentile. Even if everyone gets an A, in a class of 1000 students, someone is going to be at the 90th percentile and someone is going to be at the 10th and…

If I get a group of 30 kids together that are incredibly intelligent and highly motivated and have had “you must be the best and you must get A” beaten into their success and livelihood since before they could talk by their parents (and let’s be real that is a good chunk of Harvard grads) - do you really think that telling them that they are going to be stack ranked against each other is a healthy and productive thing that will produce the best outcome?

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

#850

Post by seanhunter »

andrepd wrote: post #831
kleiba2 wrote: post #28

I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercise…

Agree with technology being over-used for the sake of it. A visualisation/exploration of some math concept in Desmos can be invaluable, infinitely better than fiddling with diagrams on paper. Solving a calculus exercise on an ipad instead of paper adds exactly zero value. A smart teacher will know to use the first but not the second. I will just say whiteboard > blackboard. I get allergies just thinking about it x)

I strongly agree with your basic idea but I am currently studying maths part-time and for me personally, I love using an iPad for writing maths because of cut/paste and the ability to drag things around to make space on the page. It really helps me to do things in a way that’s clear. When I do things with pencil and paper I spend a huge amount of time erasing things, crossing out, adding little caret and then squeezing little extra bits that I forgot earlier between two lines “…and f is continuous on [-1,1]…” etc.

I used to hate writing on the ipad but the thing that was transformational for me was a “paperlike”[1] screen protector, which makes the surface feel a lot nicer to write on.

[1] https://paperlike.com/

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