I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can't do middle school math | Hacker News Reader

I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can't do middle school math

sfstandard.com

24 pointswyclif12 comments

At some point, folks who object to epic incompetence in government need to focus on where the buck stops:

> The University of California is governed by a twenty-six member Board of Regents, eighteen of whom are appointed by the Governor of California to 12-year terms. The board also has seven ex officio members, a student regent, and a non-voting student regent-designate.[87]

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California%2C_Be...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_California_gubernatorial_...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_California#Recall_...

Normally I would expect this to be self-rectifying, that students without the background for the curriculum would cause graduation rates to drop enough to be a problem.

And maybe that's the case but needs more time. More likely (as the article hints) the school will bend it's teaching to get these students through the program, which is short-sighted as it will erode the brand when mediocre graduates enter the workforce.

modern america's education pipeline is seriously corrupted and was corrupted on purpose to prevent social classes (ie, ghettos) from excelling. Most of this stems from the 60's desegregation and what should be called the "cement pool" affect, where white people, rather than allow desegregating public pools, filled these pools with cement, ruining the public asset for fear of intermingling.

Instead of allowing races and women into the public benefits sphere, they slowly dismantled the social safetynet.

In the specific instance for education, pushing state funding onto the city property taxes and school districts ensured impoverished areas would continue to fund impoverished schools and as the decades wore on, this tightening of budgets bled into it's surroundings and then the dismantling of funds as per-head attendence started via magnet, charter schools and now school voucher programs for private schools and the rest.

This is a pipeline designed to punish society for integration. this is "critical race theory" in the next 5 decades.

You can blame it on techno culture, but that's just the indirect cause of fundamentally desociallizing/devaluing public assets. You can make a direct association, also, with the rise of the business class as another attack on normalzing this type of segregation without laws.

This does not align at all with what is happening in public California high schools and colleges, which is what TFA is about.

modern america's education pipeline is seriously corrupted and was corrupted on purpose to prevent social classes (ie, Whites, Asians, Jews) from excelling. Most of this stems from the 10's postmodernism and what should be called the "woke" affect, where white people, rather than allow meritocracy and education flourish, filled these classrooms with unqualified students, ruining the public asset for fear of being called racist.

Instead of allowing races and women into the public benefits sphere, they slowly dismantled the social safetynet.

In the specific instance for education, pushing state funding onto the state income taxes and school districts ensured rich areas would continue to fund impoverished schools and as the decades wore on, this ballooning of budgets bled into it's surroundings and then the dismantling of merit as per-head attendence started via magnet, charter schools and now school voucher programs for private schools and the rest.

This is a pipeline designed to punish society for perceived racism. this is "critical race theory" in the next 5 decades.

You can blame it on leftist culture, but that's just the indirect cause of fundamentally desociallizing/devaluing public assets. You can make a direct association, also, with the rise of the DEI class as another attack on normalzing this type of segregation without laws.

Not being in the US, what is the qualification for admissions supposed to be. Maybe I missed it. If it's not testing, what is it?

Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM (79 days ago, 868 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309233

There’s no mandatory process; each college can DIY whatever they want, within their system’s restrictions (here, Univ of Cali) if any. For this specific school:

> UC Berkeley is test-free, which means we will not use SAT/ACT test scores in any part of our application process. UC Berkeley has always used, and will continue to use, holistic review

https://admissions.berkeley.edu/apply-to-berkeley/first-year...

Mom & Dad’s $$$ :)

Is that still a thing, or is everyone on student loans, nowadays?

This article makes me super angry. Ours is an Indian-American family from the SF bay area. 3 years ago, my son graduated from one of the top high schools in the bay area with a 4.0+ GPA and 1600 SAT, getting all 5's in his 9 STEM AP classes, and was not accepted into a single UC for CS and Math. His HS counselor had asked us to lower our hopes, saying "to the UCs, he's just another very smart Asian or Indian kid. He's a statistic." That year, none of his (very high achieving) Asian friends with high GPAs and SATs got into UC Berkeley, UCLA, or UCSD. I recall that my rant got a crazy battle started here on HN.

Since then, he's done very well at a non-California school, but I will forever be pissed at the UC system. They passed on a brilliant student in the service of DEI.

BTW, I saw in the article the 2 sample math questions that stumped much of UCB's incoming class. What a freaking joke.

The only cure: throw out the entire board that decides admission policies; they are all incompetent. Ask professors to decide on admissions, not sociology and gender studies graduates. Heavily weigh the SAT and GPA instead of the essay. Hopefully this brings back some sanity to the process.

The midterm grade spread in my Precalculus I course this summer was median 70% +/- 30% across all students, with four retakes allowed penalty-free. It was show your work with pencil and paper. The teacher noted that it’s the first time since Covid that no students were caught cheating by Proctorio.

I warned (in a fashion) the head of a college district last year that the “two-year degree” was not long for this world. They were not convinced. Least enjoyable ‘told you so’ ever.

If this article is accurate, I hope it leads to an intervention.

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