NYT op-ed’s wildly woke argument against SATs includes shocking admission that students struggle with ‘basic math’

A New York Times writer came out swinging against the push to bring back admissions tests at the University of California — even as she admitted that students are struggling with “basic math.”

But all of that is worth it, Miriam Pawal argued, because the university is now more inclusive.

“Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates,” she wrote, hailing the “exceptional” university system for its “commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence.”

She buttressed her point with statistics about how around 40% of its students are the first in their families to attend college. “More than half qualify for free tuition,” she gushed.

“When the University of California eliminated the SAT requirement for admission in 2021, UCLA saw a significant jump in applications from high-achieving black and Latino students, for whom the standardized tests had been a barrier,” she said.

“The percentages of underrepresented students have crept up, through a variety of initiatives. The California Dream Act gave undocumented students access to financial aid, as well as in-state tuition.”

Pawal has been doing the rounds promoting her new book, “California Dream: The Making and Remaking of the University of California” — which cases the nation’s largest and most prestigious public university system as first and foremost “an engine of upward mobility.”

Even readers of the lefty New York Times were skeptical of her take.

“The problem is that the UCs did sacrifice excellence to increase access,” one commenter said.

“As a UCLA and UC Berkeley alum, I am deeply concerned that the UC’s current admissions criteria are incompatible with maintaining the standards of excellence and ultimately the reputations of UCLA and UC Berkeley relative to other top 20 universities,” another said.

The University of California Board of Regents voted in 2020 to stop considering SAT and ACT scores in admissions after lawyers representing low-income students argued the exams were “racist.”

But now student standards are falling, and professors are revolting over students who haven’t even mastered high school math or can can barely read a sentence. Some students arrive at UC campuses — which are continually ranked among the best in the nation — “five to eight years behind” in math, according to the profs.

More than 680 professors across the University of California system signed an open letter in May urging the tests be reinstated, saying they’ve had to water down curricula to the point they’ve been forced to teach “middle school” math in Calculus and other courses.

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the letter read.

“Furthermore, the widening spread between underprepared and well-prepared students creates polarized courses, weakening the foundation available to many students and making it harder to teach at the level required for advanced STEM work,” the professors continued.

But Pawal brushed off the teachers’ concerns in her missive, arguing the real issue at hand is getting students through the door and putting diplomas in hands, whether they can do math or not.

“The University of California needs to redouble its commitment to forge its own path, to remain a beacon of hope, albeit flickering,” she wrote.

“Now is not the moment to regress.”