What happens when a child is promoted, grade by grade, through America’s K-12 school system but can’t actually perform at grade level in reading, writing or math?
As the University of California at San Diego found, they get into college — and become someone else’s problem.
UC San Diego’s Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions released a startling report last week documenting a steep decline in college preparedness.
Between 2020 and 2025, it found, the number of freshmen with math skills below middle-school level “increased nearly thirtyfold” — with about one in eight of them unable to handle even the most basic high school math.
The university has had to add a new course devoted exclusively to teaching “elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8)” — in addition to the remedial math classes it already had in place covering high school topics like algebra and geometry.
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