From where we sit at the University of California, it has long been easy for faculty to lament that too many first-year students arrive academically unprepared by their K-12 schools.
The latest version of this complaint took shape in the recent UC San Diego Faculty Senate report that 1 in 8 students arrive in need of remediation in math, among other deficiencies.
A media frenzy quickly followed suit. As a UC faculty researcher who has studied student preparation and success for the past two decades, I’m simultaneously encouraged by the renewed focus on a longstanding problem and dismayed by the instinct toward blame.
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First, we must fully acknowledge the role of the pandemic. The students highlighted in the UCSD report spent critical schooling years online, often with teachers who had uneven support, and in households with varying degrees of internet connectivity and parents who were navigating public-health fears, job loss and economic uncertainty.
None of the consequences should surprise us — widespread learning loss, especially for students already facing structural disadvantages. Predictably, students in more affluent communities weathered the period with fewer disruptions, widening well-documented opportunity gaps.
While the UCSD report nods to this reality, it falters by recommending a troubling new shortcut the university could use to identify “unprepared” students — labeling those who attended “LCFF+ schools” as inherently less ready.
LCFF refers to the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, which sends extra money to schools that serve high-need students. These schools enroll the highest concentrations of low-income students, English learners and foster youth — those who have had the most difficulty attaining college degrees.
This proxy is both misguided and inequitable.
Plenty of students from affluent high schools also fail to meet UCSD’s preparation metrics. Reliance on LCFF+ status risks becoming, at best, a lazy indicator and, at worst, a discriminatory mechanism for reducing enrollment of exactly the students who stand to gain the most from a UCSD degree and the economic mobility it can provide.
The deeper problem is the persistent lack of coherent collaboration between K–12 and higher education systems.
Students pay the price — through mixed messages, redundant and high stakes placement assessments, costly remedial coursework, unnecessary hurdles to financial aid and complex and burdensome pathways to college success.
These barriers and inefficiencies are not inevitable; they are the result of outdated practices and siloed systems that refuse to speak to one another.
California has engaged in efforts to bridge this divide by instituting a high school assessment system that is aligned to statewide academic standards and administered to all public high schoolers. Research shows that using these assessments as indicators of college readiness — at least for placement, if not admissions — would send a clear and consistent message: The best preparation for college is mastering the curriculum taught in California’s K-12 schools.
This alignment would reduce mixed signals and increase transparency for students, families and educators.
Other promising efforts include UC- and CalState-developed high school courses in expository reading/writing and math, along with professional development for K-12 teachers.
A more robust partnership between UC and K-12 schools should go further, by actively engaging high schools in reviewing aggregate assessment data, clarifying expectations for college majors, expanding on-ramps rather than gatekeeping on fields of study, and building stronger relationships with teachers and schools serving students with the greatest needs.
If UCSD and the UC system are serious about ensuring access, collaboration is the path forward.
The moment is ripe. Instead of allowing this report to fuel narratives of deficiency, UCSD can choose to lead by example. It should work alongside K–12 educators to ensure that California’s students are not sorted by circumstance but are supported in achieving the futures they deserve.
Michal Kurlaender is a professor of education at UC Davis and a faculty director of Policy Analysis for California Education. She wrote this commentary for CalMatters.
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