Earning a 4.0 GPA in high school math while only knowing middle school math seems absolutely wild. Is that truly a side effect of COVID or are certain schools just going to be heavily penalized in admissions because their standards are far too low?
Grade inflation and automatic promotion had nothing to do with Covid - it was occurring when at uni in the 70's, with dean's list definitions changing to reflect higher GPA's. Covid isolation might have made things worse, but starting from a mediocre beginning it might also not be significant. People who are interested in subjects, and have anywhere competent teachers tend to do well. Those who are disinterested, or faced with "disappointing" teachers do less well.
The spread of things like ChatGPT is going to make things worse. And there's a whole lot of parents who are certain their precious offspring are (well) above average. Wasn't that a feature of Lake Wobegone? EDIT: and how common is the attitude "I paid a lot for your product, give me the grades..."?
In theory, yes. But as the report makes clear, grade inflation is rampant. 25% of the students in remedial math had a 4.0 (straight A) GPA in math during high school. And over 40% of the remedial math students had taken precalc or calculus in high school.
I'm seeing this myself, I had to explain to a freshman student last week what a colon is and where to find it on the keyboard. That's a first in 7 years.
In fairness for professional/jounalistic writing, colons sometimes make sense. But a past blog and PR editor where I worked would routinely strike out semicolons. I use them sometimes but I find it often makes sense to avoid more complex sentences and punctuation.
Hilarious for a commentator on college preparation to show such a lack of command of English grammar: "That last phrase is a euphemism for low-income, minority youths whose interest K–12 education’s love affair with “equity” is intended to serve." When I was in a Humanities sequence at UC San Diego, the singular presence of such a run-on in a paper assignment would have garnered the grade of "C" regardless of surrounding context.
It should come as no surprise that a conservative think-tank would immediately blame "K–12 education’s love affair with 'equity'." I don't think I need to read any more of this.
If you look at the report, it shows the facts support this claim. UCSD has gone all-in on LCFF+ schools (low income, ELL, foster youth) and the explosion in math and literacy remediation is driven by these admits.
One in three LCFF+ admits end up in remedial math, and the total remedial math population is more than 50% LCFF+ admits.
What was the motivator for this post-2020 change? Equity, or the idea that outcomes for all groups should be equal (regardless of time/energy expended, of course).
So in the article I read on AP or Reuters, 1/8 freshmen had below a middle school level of proficiency in math. If you're from outside the US, middle school is for kids aged ~11-14.
Yes, and 1/3 of students admitted from LCFF+ schools (low-income, ELL, foster) are in remedial math. These students make up the majority of remedial math students.
Pretty unbelievable, considering how hard it is to get into UCSD if you're not from an LCFF+ school. It's basically a huge thumb on the scale, from an admissions perspective.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadWhich would mean if we were willing to shut things down like we did we should be willing to take the secondary effects and solve those problems too.
The spread of things like ChatGPT is going to make things worse. And there's a whole lot of parents who are certain their precious offspring are (well) above average. Wasn't that a feature of Lake Wobegone? EDIT: and how common is the attitude "I paid a lot for your product, give me the grades..."?
In the UK you needed to have at least a C in maths and English to study at a university. This was 17 years ago.
This was not negotiable and I believe applied to all universities and all courses.
One in three LCFF+ admits end up in remedial math, and the total remedial math population is more than 50% LCFF+ admits.
What was the motivator for this post-2020 change? Equity, or the idea that outcomes for all groups should be equal (regardless of time/energy expended, of course).
Pretty unbelievable, considering how hard it is to get into UCSD if you're not from an LCFF+ school. It's basically a huge thumb on the scale, from an admissions perspective.
It's without doubt that lower income high schools have lower academic outcomes.
This leads to the conclusion that only students from wealthy districts should be admitted to higher education.
Because we would never want to fund school districts equally.
That would be commonism...