A growing consortium of University of California professors is urging the state university system to bring back standardized testing, warning that the elimination of admissions tests has degraded academic readiness and forced instructors to teach "middle school math" to college undergraduates.More than 1,400 UC faculty members have signed an open letter calling on leadership to reinstate the SAT and ACT mathematics requirements for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) majors.The massive pushback follows a dramatic multi-year decline in student proficiency after the university went completely "test-blind" in 2021.Karajean Hyde, Co-Director of the UC Irvine Math Project and a Lecturer of Education, told Fox News Digital that objective benchmarks are desperately needed to restore academic baselines."I'd say we need some objective measures to go along with the whole picture," Hyde said.
"A student's not just a single number or a single letter, but standardized testing can play an important role in ensuring one level of measuring where that bar is so that the bar doesn't move."EDUCATION SECRETARY LINDA MCMAHON RIPS CALIFORNIA TRANS ATHLETE ‘COMPROMISE,’ TELLS NEWSOM TO ‘PICK A SIDE’A University of California Irvine professor argued that there "needs to be some objective measures" in light of over 100 faculty calling for state officials to reinstate standardized test scores.(iStock via Getty Images)While Hyde is not directly involved in the university's internal admissions decisions, her work focuses heavily on K-12 educational outreach and preparing undergraduate STEM majors to become future educators.The open letter, spearheaded primarily by STEM faculty, notes that instructors are witnessing preparation gaps so severe that they must dedicate finite university class time to remedial math instruction.
Data cited from diagnostic testing across several campuses—including UC Berkeley and UC San Diego—revealed that a significant portion of incoming...