{"id":243798,"date":"2026-03-30T19:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/243798\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T19:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:50:08","slug":"how-uc-berkeley-is-closing-the-math-readiness-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/243798\/","title":{"rendered":"How UC Berkeley is closing the math readiness gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In November, a report from UC San Diego<\/a> raised alarm across the country. One in 12 incoming students tested below middle school proficiency in mathematics \u2014 even while maintaining good grades in high school. The report sparked debates on many issues, from grade inflation to standardized testing to inequitable school funding.<\/p>\n

UC Berkeley math professor Alex Paulin says his campus\u2019s situation is not as dire as UC San Diego\u2019s, but it does reflect the nation\u2019s general decline in college readiness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of students have taken precalculus or calculus in high school, and they’ve basically been lied to by their school systems,\u201d said Paulin. \u201cThey don’t actually know these subjects at all \u2014 not enough to do remotely well in the classes here. Ludicrously, their first wake-up call is occurring in their first college midterm, which is mind-blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 80 percent of UC Berkeley undergraduates enroll in a math course during college, and many popular majors have math requirements, including physics, chemistry, engineering, and molecular and cell biology. In 2016, the Department of Mathematics decided to assess incoming students\u2019 readiness. They found that around 40 percent of students starting Calculus 1 tested below entry level for the course. Some even needed refreshers on fractions and exponents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In November, a report from UC San Diego raised alarm across the country. One in 12 incoming students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-243798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}