“What’s five minus two?” I asked my student, as I walked her through a linear equation when I was teaching middle school math.
Linear equations where you have to “solve for x” can be hard for students to grasp—I know they were for me when I was that age—especially because they are often the first time students are encountering any form of mathematical abstraction. So I’d anticipated that it might be difficult for her, as well as my other students, to get through this problem.
What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was her response to my simple question: She put five fingers up, and then put two fingers down.
“Three,” she told me.
I mean, she wasn’t wrong—five minus two is, indeed, three—but it concerned me that she didn’t know that off the top of her head, and that she still had to use a method we expect from much younger children. How could anyone expect her to successfully solve linear equations when she clearly hadn’t been taught the very basics of addition and subtraction?
But I realized this must be a much greater problem than this one student: it was the failure of a system that subjected her during the COVID era to school closures when she was in elementary school, and then passed her on to the next grade, whether or not she actually understood the material she was supposed to have learned.
It didn’t shock me, then, when I saw the University of California, San Diego in the headlines last week for a faculty report it published which noted that since 2020, the university has “experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students—particularly in mathematics.”
Despite UCSD being one of the top public universities in the country, the report found that its first-year students who are not able to meet middle school math standards have grown thirty-fold in the past five years, from less than 1% of the cohort in 2020 to one-eighth of the cohort in 2025.
And yet, the report notes, “almost all of these students [have] taken beyond the minimum [high school-level] required math curriculum, and many with high grades.”
In other words, students may be passing high-level high school math on paper—often even receiving straight As!—even though they lack content knowledge.
There are two stories here: one about college admissions and one about K-12 education. These go hand in hand.
As far as college admissions are concerned, the faculty report is entirely correct in pointing out that “[a]dmitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure.” There is no kindness in admitting underprepared students and throwing them into calculus, hoping they’ll somehow become competent scientists and engineers, or in forcing them into remedial education and crossing our fingers that they’ll quickly grasp the knowledge they were supposed to have learned a decade prior in elementary school.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, it’s not: UCSD’s remedial math course, initially designed in 2016 to cover gaps from high school math, has since been redesigned to cover concepts from 1st through 8th grade—yes, 1st grade. Thanks to systemic grade inflation at the K-12 level, which is mentioned by the faculty report, many of these students are getting As and passing on to the next grade with no idea that they are as behind as they are.
Moreover, because the University of California system has killed standardized testing, its colleges now have no context with which to evaluate the often inflated high school grades received by applicants. Consider the difference between a 4.0 student who receives a 90th percentile SAT score and a 4.0 student who receives a 20th percentile SAT score. The former is likely academically competent, while the latter has likely just been passed through the system and given inflated grades.
If admitted, the latter student will not only drag down the rest of the class and eat up resources that should be going toward higher level teaching and research; he or she is also more likely to drop out, often with student loans and no degree with which to pay them back. It’s a lose-lose for everyone involved, perhaps most of all the underqualified student.
But that raises the question: Why are so many American students so behind in math to begin with?
To even attempt to come up with an answer to that, we have to understand that colleges are only as good as their inputs—in other words, their students—and that K-12 education is what really forms said students.
Unfortunately, K-12 education itself has been lagging.
Math education, like all education in recent years, has fallen prey to faddish, supposedly “progressive” curriculum, with so-called inquiry-based learning replacing rote memorization. While inquiry-based learning is supposed to encourage more creative thinking, making students learn math for themselves, what it actually does is frustrate the vast majority of students who require structure and guidance.
As the Fordham Institute’s Jeanette Luna writes, “For example, to multiply 12 by 7 in an inquiry-based classroom, some students might add 12 seven times, while others take the sum of 10×7 and 2×7—whereas a student who has memorized their math facts can quickly and confidently recall ‘84!’ without needing to engage in higher-order thinking.”
Being able to recall that fact is crucial when, for instance, students need to solve quickly for x and focus on understanding the concept rather than getting stuck in multiplying and dividing.
Additionally, progressive initiatives that kill middle school algebra and gifted-and-talented programs in the name of “equity” and “inclusion” have had the exact opposite effect, marginalizing students who have a natural knack for math and needlessly hampering them—all while rival nations that invest in their most talented youth surpass us technologically.
We can’t afford to dumb down our education system—one which, despite its flaws, remains the envy of the world—in service of ideas that have failed to deliver both educational outcomes and material, scientific progress. If America is to retain its position in the world, our educational system needs to get serious again: we need to end grade inflation, restore standardized testing, return to merit-based college admissions, and challenge students at all levels, whether in kindergarten or in college, to do the best they can possibly do.
Oh, and when I taught math, I had one rule: no one was allowed to say “I’m bad at math” in my classroom. Every child has the potential. Whether or not adults tap into it is a different matter altogether, one I certainly hope we can unite on.
