We did so because what an admission letter is supposed to mean \u2014 that a student is ready to attend the school \u2014 no longer matches what we see in our classrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The math collapse<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a new debate.<\/p>\n
In January 2020, a UC task force (opens in new tab)<\/a> studied standardized testing and recommended keeping it. Then-President Janet Napolitano nevertheless urged the Board of Regents to phase out the SAT and ACT, citing pandemic disruptions and long-standing equity concerns. The regents voted that May to make testing optional, and a court ruling (opens in new tab)<\/a> later that year, focused on access for students with disabilities, required UC to become completely test-blind through 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since then, admissions officers have been forbidden from considering the one standardized measure that provided a common academic benchmark across California\u2019s thousands of high schools.<\/p>\n Many peer universities have since reconsidered. MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale all suspended testing requirements during the pandemic. All have reinstated them. Across the Ivy League, similar reversals are underway.<\/p>\n UC has moved in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n Faculty asked the university to revisit the policy quickly, but the timeline has repeatedly slipped. The Academic Senate now plans a review that will conclude in June 2027, meaning no new admissions policy could take effect before fall 2028.<\/p>\n Students don\u2019t have that kind of time: They attend college once!<\/p>\n The reason so many faculty have spoken out isn\u2019t philosophical. It\u2019s because of what the data \u2014 and our classrooms \u2014 show.<\/p>\n Before 2020, Berkeley administered a diagnostic exam to incoming Calculus I students. Between 2018 and 2020, 71% of roughly 2,200 students tested as ready or nearly ready for calculus. At the bottom of the distribution there was almost nobody. Just 0.14% tested below basic algebra.<\/p>\n After UC adopted test-blind admissions, the picture changed dramatically.<\/p>\n Berkeley Calculus I readiness, before and after test-blind admissions Among approximately 2,800 Calculus I students tested between 2021 and 2023 with a different diagnostic that measured proficiency in eight mathematical topics, the share who were ready or nearly ready for calculus (meaning, they had proficiency in five to eight subjects) fell to 51%, dropping to 44% by 2023. Most troubling, the bottom of the distribution exploded. Seventeen percent of students answered none of the eight diagnostic topics correctly. By 2022-23, more than one-third had severe math deficits, and the single most common score on the exam was zero.<\/p>\n The classroom itself changed shape.<\/p>\n Before 2020, most students clustered toward the \u201cready\u201d end of the spectrum, with only a tiny tail at the bottom. Afterward, the middle hollowed out, and the weakest students became the largest single group. We didn\u2019t end up with one somewhat weaker calculus class. We ended up teaching two different classes in one lecture hall: one for students who were prepared for college calculus and one for students who needed remedial mathematics that nobody had scheduled.<\/p>\n That distinction matters because it has been misunderstood publicly. An Aug. 12 article (opens in new tab)<\/a> in the San Francisco Chronicle said that in the pre-2020 readiness assessment, 48% of students who took the exam were prepared for Calculus I. The article said the faculty reported higher readiness for students admitted under the test-blind policy. But that is incorrect. Our analysis (opens in new tab)<\/a> defined calculus-readiness as students passing seven or eight out of eight topics on the diagnostic exam. By 2023, that figure had fallen to 26%. More important than any percentage is the distribution itself. The crisis isn\u2019t simply that readiness declined; it\u2019s that the middle collapsed while the bottom became the largest group in the room. The Chronicle didn\u2019t mention that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nor is Berkeley an isolated case. Although Berkeley\u2019s before-and-after diagnostics were not identical exams, UC San Diego (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014 which used the same placement test before and after 2020 \u2014 has documented the same broad pattern. This is not one professor\u2019s anecdote or one campus\u2019 problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those of us teaching such courses don\u2019t experience the consequences as abstractions. We watch students struggle through material they were expected to master years earlier. We pause lectures to reteach linear equations instead of expanding students\u2019 understanding of differential equations.<\/p>\n Have thoughts on this story?Start the conversation<\/p>\n The people arguing this test-blind policy on television, in committee meetings, and in politics do not stand in front of 700 students three times a week or grade a first midterm with a pre-curved D\/F average.<\/p>\n We do.<\/p>\n The cost of waiting<\/p>\n In July, two dozen professors traveled to San Francisco for the UC Regents meeting. Some came from as far as San Diego. Each had one minute to describe what was happening in their classrooms.<\/p>\n Outside the university, school districts have begun acting on their own. On Aug. 6, the San Dieguito Union High School District voted 4-0 (opens in new tab)<\/a> to urge UC to reinstate standardized math testing for STEM admissions and encouraged other California school districts to consider similar resolutions.<\/p>\n Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize-winning Berkeley scientist known for pioneering gene editing, summarized the concern in a letter to the regents this summer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe test-blind policy was a well-intentioned experiment,\u201d she wrote, \u201cbut the reality in our classrooms shows that it has failed.\u201d Admitting students who are unprepared, she warned, \u201csets them up for discouraging struggle. \u2026 We cannot afford another cycle of administrative delay.\u201d<\/p>\n That last sentence is at the heart of this debate.<\/p>\n Defenders of scrapping the SATs and ACTs blame COVID or AI for a broad decline in K-12 education. They say those are the only reasons UC students aren\u2019t as ready for math \u2014 not the lack of standardized testing in admissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both those factors surely contributed. California\u2019s K-12 math program isn\u2019t a success story. In 2025, only 37% of students in the state performed at grade level (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But neither fully explains what faculty are seeing.<\/p>\n General learning loss would lower the entire distribution. It would not hollow out the middle while piling students up at exactly zero. Something else appears to be compounding the problem. Whatever the mix of causes, the problems at UC accelerated precisely when the system discarded the one standardized baseline it once had. Without standardized tests, admissions officers are flying blind, especially as grade inflation has made transcripts a weaker indicator of readiness, and artificial intelligence has made admissions essays a weaker signal of students\u2019 work.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth remembering that students entering in fall 2027 were in fifth grade when the pandemic began. If, seven years later, many cannot reliably solve a basic inequality such as x\u00b2 > 4 \u2014 a four-answer multiple-choice question that fewer than half answered correctly \u2014 then \u201cpandemic learning loss\u201d is no longer doing all the explanatory work.<\/p>\n UC has twice tried to build a replacement for the SAT and ACT. Twice it has failed.<\/p>\n The 2020 task force estimated that a UC-specific admissions test would take nine years to develop. Berkeley Senate leaders projected a cost of $100 million to $150 million (opens in new tab)<\/a>. A second effort examined California\u2019s Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) \u2014 a standardized test that evaluates public school students\u2019 mastery of English and math. In 2021, the Academic Senate concluded (opens in new tab)<\/a> it was \u201cnot appropriate as an admissions test\u201d and would likely cost about as much as the SAT while reproducing many of the same inequities critics hoped to solve.<\/p>\n Yet even after those conclusions, BOARS \u2014 the UC faculty committee that oversees admissions \u2014 spent much of spring 2026 revisiting SBAC before internal opposition forced that effort to be abandoned and the regents imposed an accelerated review.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, another admissions cycle passes.<\/p>\n Which brings us back to Nadia and Elias.<\/p>\n Both took California\u2019s standardized math assessment as juniors in 2024. Both later applied to UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n Two real Bay Area high schools put numbers to this pattern. At (opens in new tab)<\/a>Dougherty Valley High School (opens in new tab)<\/a> in San Ramon, 432 of 756 juniors exceeded California\u2019s math standard in 2024, as measured by SBAC. Of the school\u2019s 542 Berkeley applicants that fall, 44 were admitted (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014 an acceptance rate of 8%.<\/p>\n At (opens in new tab)<\/a>Mission High School (opens in new tab)<\/a> in San Francisco, 193 of 202 juniors did not meet the state math standard. Yet Berkeley admitted 34 of the school\u2019s 76 applicants \u2014 a 45% acceptance rate.<\/p>\n Based on those figures, at least 174 Dougherty Valley students who exceeded the state benchmark were rejected, and a student with Nadia\u2019s academic record would have been among them.<\/p>\n At least 25 Mission High students who failed to meet the benchmark were admitted, and a student with Elias\u2019 academic record could have been among them.<\/p>\n Even accounting for students who did not take the state assessment, the disparity barely changes.<\/p>\n Today, Nadia is thriving at an out-of-state university and is on track to graduate in three years.<\/p>\n![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786801931_425_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
In school year 2022-23, more than one-third of Calculus I students tested had severe math deficits. | Source: Sean Fan\/The Standard<\/p>\n![\"ALEKS](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/-S3840x1513-FPNG.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/-S3840x2468-FPNG.png\"\/)
More than two-thirds of UC\u2019s math faculty, along with five Nobel laureates, have signed open letters urging the university to reinstate the SAT and ACT.\u200b | Source: Christina House\/LA Times\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
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UC\u2019s review of test-blind admissions won\u2019t finish until 2027 \u2014 meaning no policy change can take effect before fall 2028. | Source: Sean Fan\/The Standard<\/p>\n