{"id":66851,"date":"2025-11-23T21:01:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T21:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/66851\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T21:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T21:01:20","slug":"1-in-8-freshmen-at-uc-san-diego-dont-meet-middle-school-standards-in-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/66851\/","title":{"rendered":"1 in 8 freshmen at UC San Diego don’t meet middle school standards in math"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) \u2014 Nearly one in eight freshmen at UC San Diego don’t meet middle school standards in math, according to a new report<\/a> that highlights a dramatic decline in student preparedness.<\/p>\n

The report focusing on first-year students shows freshmen have experienced significant drops in math performance, with some students’ skills falling below middle school levels. Students have also struggled with writing and language skills.<\/p>\n

The findings don’t surprise local educators who see the effects firsthand.<\/p>\n

“If they don’t get pattern recognition at the lower levels in elementary school, it’s miserable trying to do pre-algebra and algebra,” said Laura Twitchell, a high school math teacher. “Those things have to kind of jump out at you to be able to solve effectively.”<\/p>\n

James Zieglerkelly, who owns a local tutoring business, said the gap reflects broader educational inequities.<\/p>\n

“It’s an investment,” Zieglerkelly said. “And a lot of the parents that can’t invest at the high school level, their kids are falling behind.”<\/p>\n

The report attributes the deterioration to multiple factors that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the elimination of standardized testing like the SAT and ACT, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools.<\/p>\n

UC San Diego acknowledged the challenge in a statement from the Executive Vice Chancellor, saying the university remains committed to serving as “a powerful engine of social mobility” while faculty and administrators work to solve the problem.<\/p>\n

Despite the concerning trends, some students are finding ways to improve. High school student Jade Tanouye-Wiesner said her relationship with math has changed through practice and persistence.<\/p>\n

“I used to say I hated math,” Tanouye-Wiesner said. “I’m starting not to hate it anymore though. I am starting to like it. The more I get it, the more I like it, and the less frustrating it is.”<\/p>\n

Tanouye-Wiesner said she’s seen improvement in her grades this semester and hopes the progress continues.<\/p>\n

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (KGTV) \u2014 Nearly one in eight freshmen at UC San Diego don’t meet middle school standards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2011,39834,39833,39835,32728,39836,74,76,75,33433,39837,20983,5729],"class_list":["post-66851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-college-admissions","tag-college-readiness","tag-covid-19-education-impact","tag-educational-equity","tag-grade-inflation","tag-math-skills","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-standardized-testing","tag-student-prepardness","tag-tutoring","tag-uc-san-diego"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66851","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=66851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}