A stunning new report from the University of California, San Diego documents what many educators have feared: incoming college students are less prepared than ever. This “steep decline in the academic preparedness” of incoming college students isn’t limited to advanced subjects; it’s hitting the bedrock of learning: literacy and numeracy. These are the skills upon which all higher-order thinking depends.
The report points to pandemic disruptions, the removal of standardized tests like the SAT, and grade inflation masking academic weakness. But these are symptoms, not causes. The deeper problem is an ideological takeover of America’s K-12 system -- an approach that dismisses standardized tests as “products of white supremacy” and inflates grades to preserve the illusion of success. It’s an approach that relies on a teaching philosophy that promotes activism in the classroom for causes like decolonization (“down with America”) and anti-racism (solving racism with more racism), all at the expense of core academic proficiency.
No one made this clearer than Cecily Myart-Cruz, head of Los Angeles’s teachers union, who said: “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”
California’s Ethnic Studies mandate, which took hold over the past five years, coincides with a sharp decline in statewide test scores for grades 3-8 and 11 in English Language Arts and math. While activists spent years crafting curricula that demonize America, Israel, Jews, and the West, students were robbed of the opportunity to master fundamentals.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member