California school board frontrunner makes stunning excuse for students who cant do basic math

California’s frontrunner for state superintendent of public instruction says he would oppose bringing back standardized testing for students applying to University of California schools, even amid concerns students are struggling with basic math skills.Richard Barrera, president of the San Diego Unified School Board, has served on the board since 2008 and currently works as a senior policy adviser to State Superintendent Tony Thurmond.Barrera is running against Chino Valley Unified school board president Sonja Shaw to succeed Thurmond as California’s top elected education official.

Barrera has the backing of the powerful California Teachers Association in the race.Barrera said he does not support reinstating the SAT as an admissions requirement for the UC system in an interview with NBC LA’s Conan Nolan on Sunday, Oct.4, Nolan pressed Barrera on that disconnect, pointing to concerns from math professors at UC Berkeley and UCLA who say some students are arriving on campus without basic math skills.“Absolutely not,” Barrera said when asked whether the SAT should return.

“So math teachers at UCLA and Berkeley and every place else, part of your job that you get paid by the taxpayers to do is to teach our kids.”“Teach them fractions when they’re at the preeminent institutions of higher learning in the country?” Nolan responded.“Listen, we’ve got students who are coming up from incredible experiences, first generation students overcoming so many barriers to be on the campus,” Barrera said.“Those students are capable of learning quickly.

What they need is a little support to be caught up.What they don’t need is to be excluded.”Barrera’s position comes as questions mount over whether high school grades accurately reflect how prepared students are for college.The number of college applicants reporting GPAs of 4.0 or higher has doubled over the past decade, even as state testing shows students are still struggling to recover from a post-p...