Berkeley Math Professor Sounds Alarm on Liberal 'Test-Blind' Policies, Warns Many Students Badly Behind – Democratic Accent

College students can’t do middle-school math after test-blind admissions: UC Berkeley professor

Students are up to eight years behind, professor says Calculus students at the University of California Berkeley don’t know how to work with elementary-level fractions, one professor wrote in a recent op-ed. “I teach mathematics at UC Berkeley. Three days a week, I stand in front of lecture halls with 500 to 1,400 students. By the second week of the semester, I already know who is in… Source

Berkeley math professor sounds alarm on liberal 'test-blind' policies, warns many students badly behind – Democratic Accent

A Berkeley mathematics professor is sounding the alarm that many students are woefully unprepared when they arrive at college because the University of California system’s progressive “test-blind” policies have proven disastrous. “Three days a week, I stand in front of lecture halls with 500 to 1,400 students. By the second week of the semester, I already know who is in trouble,” Professor Zvezdelina Stankova wrote in a San Francico Standard op-…

Some students at Berkeley University can’t even do middle school math

According to a report from The San Francisco Standard, UC Berkeley mathematics professor Zvezdelina Stankova describes a stark reality unfolding in her lecture halls: students admitted under the University of California’s test-blind policy who arrive for calculus yet struggle with foundational skills typically mastered years earlier. In an opinion piece published August 15, 2026, Stankova […]

I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can’t do middle school math

Since the University of California abandoned the SAT and ACT, thousands of faculty say it’s admitting students who aren’t prepared for the coursework. Will UC listen?