"Evidently, UCSD's math faculty decided midstream that they wanted to ensure that students could answer math questions without a calculator. The reasons UCSD made this switch may be perfectly valid. But a decline in students' performance in the absence of calculators was entirely predictable, assuming that nothing else on the in-person, timed test had changed."
"A still of the math placement exam webpage from May 2024, saved on the Wayback Machine, shows that 'No Calculators are allowed on the MPE.' Two months earlier, the webpage states that 'Non-programmable calculators are permitted,' suggesting the policy change was implemented sometime in the spring of 2024."
UC San Diego published a November report showing a dramatic 30-fold increase in first-year students testing into remedial math courses since 2020. The report attributed this surge to COVID-19 pandemic impacts and increased enrollment from low-income high schools. However, a critical factor was omitted: the university eliminated calculator use on math placement exams in spring 2024. This policy change directly caused the performance decline, as students accustomed to calculator-assisted problem-solving performed worse on timed tests without them. The omission of this essential context from the original report led to widespread misinterpretation of the data in national media coverage and public discourse about student math readiness.
#math-education-policy #calculator-ban-impact #student-assessment #educational-equity #data-transparency
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