Reports like this make me rub my head and sigh. It’s wrong right out of the gate:
Higher education institutions in California and across the country are transforming their approach to math education to ensure that it supports student success and equity. Colleges and universities are adopting new evidence-based strategies including multiple measures placement, diversified mathematics pathways, and just-in-time supports such as corequisite courses. These reforms are expected to improve equity in outcomes by eliminating barriers that arbitrarily prevent students from successfully completing college and disproportionately impact low-income students and students of color.
Evidence-based? California’s state universities have eliminated the “entry level math test”, have done away with remedial math courses, and have foisted math classes into high school that are at a significantly lower skill/ability level than Algebra 2, the customary college entrance math requirement. These schools continue to admit more unqualified students and then make up programs to pretend they’re getting qualified.
What should a university degree mean, what information should it impart to others? Why have a 3-4 year high school math requirement for admission if the universities themselves are helping to skirt their own requirements with low-level high school classes? (Here’s one–I assure you, the class isn’t as awesome as it’s presented to be.)
Bottom line: the focus is equity, which, simply defined, means “all races perform the same.” As long as the starting point is “racism” and the focus is “equity”, these so-called reforms are doomed to fail. Why?
“The less consistent your means are with your goal, the less effective your efforts shall be.” –Michael Lopez, from the Welcome to Highered Intelligence! weblog