An open letter to the University of California Regents requesting that standardized testing be re-introduced into admissions, >200 UC Professors signatures
Personally I always thought it was crazy that standardized testing was removed as admissions criteria post-COVID. I understand that it can be skewed by racial and socioeconomic strata, but that's...
We write as University of California mathematics faculty, joined by faculty from other STEM
disciplines. UC has long served students from every background and has been a powerful
engine of social mobility for the people of California. That public trust must be protected for
future generations. Today, UC’s mission is at risk. To preserve that mission:
We call for the reinstatement of the SAT/ACT mathematics requirement for applicants to
STEM majors beginning with the 2027 admissions cycle, alongside STEM faculty
oversight of readiness standards and admissions practices affecting those majors.
Over the past five years, we have seen a widening divergence in mathematical preparation
levels within the same classroom. This trend indicates that current admissions practices do not
provide a sufficiently reliable check on mathematical readiness for STEM majors. The UC San
Diego Senate–Administration Workgroup on Admissions report documents this crisis in stark
terms: in the last five years, the number of students whose mathematics skills fall below high
school level increased nearly thirtyfold; moreover, 70% of those students fall below middle
school levels, reaching roughly one in twelve members of the entering cohort. These findings
are corroborated by data across our campuses. For example, for three consecutive years, 20-
30% of UC Berkeley first-semester calculus students who participated in mathematical
diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits.
Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM
becomes structurally unattainable for students. We now observe preparation gaps so severe
that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the
material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively
demanding fields. UC has been a national leader in supporting under-resourced students to do
well in mathematics. However, UC has finite resources and can help only so many students,
and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach.
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. UC is increasingly unable to provide its
students with the education needed to become leaders in California’s scientific, technological,
and economic future. We are already seeing the warning signs: longer pathways through
prerequisite material, reduced readiness for advanced coursework, and growing pressure to
dilute quantitative rigor. Left unaddressed, these trends will lead to declining graduation rates,
longer time to degree, and reduced completion of STEM majors, with consequences for
California’s highly skilled STEM workforce.
Personally I always thought it was crazy that standardized testing was removed as admissions criteria post-COVID. I understand that it can be skewed by racial and socioeconomic strata, but that's education in general. It's like if you had a table that was skewed to one side, measured it with a level, and decided to get rid of the level.
There's certainly issues with the SAT/ACT - it probably shouldn't be administered by a private company (although, considering that the Department of Education was dissolved, probably a blessing in disguise right now...), it probably shouldn't cost money per test - but the solution is to fix the skewed table, at least to some degree. Have the Department of Education (oh, yeah, doesn't exist anymore) administer the test, make it so that all students of all incomes can retake it, say, 3 times at no cost, make test prep a standard program at public schools (which, to be fair, it already is in many of them - it was offered as a "period 0" option or afterschool when I was in high school).
It's another example of something done with good intentions, but without being fully thought out. As if the majority of the socioeconomic and racial stratification of test scores was because of the test rather than structural factors of race and class.
It would be good to have public funding so every student can take the SAT/ACT, but I don't see any advantage to having the government administer it. It seems like it's all downside? Similarly, the...
It would be good to have public funding so every student can take the SAT/ACT, but I don't see any advantage to having the government administer it. It seems like it's all downside? Similarly, the TSA being federal employees at most airports turns out to be a bad idea, particularly for the employees, and I'm glad it's not the case at SFO.
It’s mainly for incentive alignment. The state is incentivized to want accurate testing for accurate student placement to maximize the effect allocation of resources in the education system and...
It’s mainly for incentive alignment. The state is incentivized to want accurate testing for accurate student placement to maximize the effect allocation of resources in the education system and produce the most educated populace, that will go on to have productive careers and increase the GDP per capita.
(Well, most governments, we have RFK Jr as health secretary)
What is the motivating incentives of the non-profit college board? It could be many things, from increasing its own influence to doing the bidding of particular influential universities.
At the moment, with the current administration, probably for the best it’s not run by the state. But ultimately the majority of education and education standards are set by the state, so it only makes sense for the standardized testing to be done by the state.
Incentives are often bad and they're always a blunt instrument, but in general, wanting to be broadly seen as useful by colleges and accepted as a legimate test by the public seem like good...
Incentives are often bad and they're always a blunt instrument, but in general, wanting to be broadly seen as useful by colleges and accepted as a legimate test by the public seem like good incentives?
It sounds like you're hoping for a government that has good incentives, but we don't have that and aren't likely to get it. It all depends on who is in power. I do hope the Democrats get in again, but they will have their own agendas. They're likely to be interested in pleasing interest groups. Better to be an NGO and somewhat insulated from that.
Also, I think it's good that there are many colleges, public and private, and they can make their own decisions about admissions. If it were centralized then there would be less choice.
I don’t mean incentives in a specific way, I mean it in a general fashion. Incentives aren’t “bad”, it’s just… part of how things work? I’m not even sure what it would mean for the concept of...
Incentives are often bad and they're always a blunt instrument
I don’t mean incentives in a specific way, I mean it in a general fashion. Incentives aren’t “bad”, it’s just… part of how things work? I’m not even sure what it would mean for the concept of incentives to be bad.
The point is that most of the education system is run by the government. Most people go to public k-12 then go to a public university. The government has the biggest stake in whether or not the education system works. It only makes sense for them to also do the standardized test - they, as in, the government, have the most to gain and the most to lose.
If the CB misaligns with what the public education system is trying to do, what is the signaling system to cause reversion? Probably a very long one, where public outrage needs to build (which is hard when most people dgaf about the specifics of a test), universities need to drop the test, yada yada. That’s not good.
CB has done a decent job so far of being an impartial test creator and administrator. But for the long-term health of the system, it does not make sense for them to continue operating the main test that determines admissions for US public colleges. They can still exist as a supplementary test, potentially.
The problem is that the US government does not control education, for the most part. State and local governments do. California is fairly unique because it runs two separate college systems, UC...
The problem is that the US government does not control education, for the most part. State and local governments do. California is fairly unique because it runs two separate college systems, UC and CSU. As well as CCC which organizes community colleges and is actually the country’s largest higher ed system.
While the fed does exert some control the current administration is castrating the Department of Education in an effort to completely remove it.
To put things simply and as calmly as possible, many of the governments involved are not run by reasonable or rational people and are in many cases filled with people who want to reduce and restrict access to education as well as the quality of what is offered. This is an especially shitty time to be a young person in this country.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that because government is all over the place, the College Board is actually performing a very needed service of ensuring that students are being objectively measured by standards that are less likely to be influenced by local politics. I think that this could be considered to be a bad thing in progressive states like California or New York, but could be a great boon to poor and/or regressive states like Wyoming or Arkansas.
In this case, the University of California Regents doesn’t seem very responsive to the needs of UC Faculty? More generally, I don’t see why we should assume people working for one part of a...
In this case, the University of California Regents doesn’t seem very responsive to the needs of UC Faculty? More generally, I don’t see why we should assume people working for one part of a government would be responsive to the needs of some other part of a government. It might be true in specific cases, but there’s no general rule about how well or badly a bureaucracy works.
I don't think that this alignment exists - if the spirit of the will of the people existed like in Civilization, may be yes - but governments are made up of human actors. And if recent history has...
he state is incentivized to want accurate testing for accurate student placement to maximize the effect allocation of resources in the education system and produce the most educated populace, that will go on to have productive careers and increase the GDP per capita.
I don't think that this alignment exists - if the spirit of the will of the people existed like in Civilization, may be yes - but governments are made up of human actors. And if recent history has shown us anything, we'll get the US Government Standardized Test where every college student has to explain how Trump restored a new era of the US democracy when JD Vance becomes the next president.
There was a knee jerk reaction from a lot of liberal policymakers in the wake of the 2020 lockdowns and protests. A lot of stuff that didn’t really work and was only a passing fad, bandwagoning...
Personally I always thought it was crazy that standardized testing was removed as admissions criteria post-COVID.
It's another example of something done with good intentions, but without being fully thought out. As if the majority of the socioeconomic and racial stratification of test scores was because of the test rather than structural factors of race and class.
There was a knee jerk reaction from a lot of liberal policymakers in the wake of the 2020 lockdowns and protests. A lot of stuff that didn’t really work and was only a passing fad, bandwagoning happened so that nobody got accused of being racist. I feel like at the time there were people trying to push back against this specifically but they would, predictably, get a ton of backlash.
Been in a long time since I've been in K-12, and I don't have kids, but I vaguely remember that after I graduated high school in the mid-00s, that many school districts started allowing students...
Been in a long time since I've been in K-12, and I don't have kids, but I vaguely remember that after I graduated high school in the mid-00s, that many school districts started allowing students to take the ACT/SAT at least once on the district's dime, at school, during the school day. Am I just making that up?
If that happened, I always thought that was a great way to help even out the playing field. Those tests are not cheap. My family could pay them no problem, and I took the ACT twice, but the cost was high enough that my parents were like "You better study and not just blow this off..." (Spoiler: I did not study).
But I imagine that's a district by district, state by state, thing. Some states and districts can afford to do that, others can't. For whatever reasons, fiscal or ideological. So yeah, it should be subsidized by the federal government at the very least.
When I was in high school I was part of a program called Upward Bound which not only paid for my SAT, but also offered me tutoring classes to make sure I succeeded. I got a fairly good score to my...
When I was in high school I was part of a program called Upward Bound which not only paid for my SAT, but also offered me tutoring classes to make sure I succeeded. I got a fairly good score to my memory. Unfortunately I never went to university because of family issues.
That program is part a larger program called TRIO which has been under constant threats. The White House’s proposed 2026 budget removed all funding for it, but thankfully congress is slightly less idiotic regressive and allocated them some funds. Still, the program is significantly scaled back from when I was a student.
I grew up in Oregon and in the late 00's early 10's remember myself and family/friends not needing to pay for the first time taking the SAT, and we were required to pay for any retakes.
I grew up in Oregon and in the late 00's early 10's remember myself and family/friends not needing to pay for the first time taking the SAT, and we were required to pay for any retakes.
I took the ACT the first time in 2004, then again in 2005. And my family had to pay both times. I think even when my younger brother took the ACT in 2009/2010, parents had to pay. This was in the...
I took the ACT the first time in 2004, then again in 2005. And my family had to pay both times. I think even when my younger brother took the ACT in 2009/2010, parents had to pay. This was in the suburbs of Kansas City, MO.
Maybe it's where I lived, but in my area, we had to pay for all of our standardized testing on our own. SAT, ACT, and AP testing was all paid for by the students and there was almost no funding...
Maybe it's where I lived, but in my area, we had to pay for all of our standardized testing on our own. SAT, ACT, and AP testing was all paid for by the students and there was almost no funding for students who couldn't afford it (I was one one those students and my parents somehow came up with the money, even though we really didn't have it). This was in the Bay Area, CA
I've seen many articles from university professors pointing out the declining numeracy and literacy skills in new students and how it's impacting their classes, and seeing this signed by so many...
I've seen many articles from university professors pointing out the declining numeracy and literacy skills in new students and how it's impacting their classes, and seeing this signed by so many validates those concerns.
I'm in favour of these tests in theory, while I can't comment on the fairness/equity of how they're administered, I do think it's reasonable to expect prospective students to have a strong foundation before starting the course. It also provides a balance against the output of the mandatory school system and pushes students to take their classes more seriously if they want a higher education.
In the UK we have a "Foundation year" system where students who didn't do so well at school, or mature students who need it, can brush up their knowledge prior to the start of the main course with everyone else. Something similar would probably work in the US too?
Something similar exists in the US as well. At a representative school in the UC system, however - which is the system in this post - the number of students in remedial math courses jumped from...
n the UK we have a "Foundation year" system where students who didn't do so well at school, or mature students who need it, can brush up their knowledge prior to the start of the main course with everyone else. Something similar would probably work in the US too?
Something similar exists in the US as well. At a representative school in the UC system, however - which is the system in this post - the number of students in remedial math courses jumped from ~30/year in 2020 to ~900/year in 2025. It's simply too many students.
From that link, the additional program is just a summer class, ours is a full academic year and costs the same as one, too. The additional time probably alleviates the burden on professors and...
From that link, the additional program is just a summer class, ours is a full academic year and costs the same as one, too. The additional time probably alleviates the burden on professors and students since they're not having to cram before the course starts.
Also, they don't need to accept every student who wants to take the remedial course, they can just say no.
Even back in the mid/late 2000s when I started college, I knew so many people who were in remedial college classes. <100 level classes. And it was almost always math. I sorta did that, having...
Even back in the mid/late 2000s when I started college, I knew so many people who were in remedial college classes. <100 level classes. And it was almost always math.
I sorta did that, having taken Calc 1 as my first college math class, which I bombed. So then I went to College Algebra, but at least it was a 100-level class, then Pre-Calc (even though I took it in high school), then Calc 1 again. That helped out a lot. Plus padded my GPA a bit, which I needed!
The very short version of my take on all of this: A % of our issues with the college system stem from the issues with our public school system. Other countries have public school systems that...
The very short version of my take on all of this:
A % of our issues with the college system stem from the issues with our public school system. Other countries have public school systems that produce meaningful results so you're less reliant on "must go to college"/"must take tests to even get into college". The US spends a ton on education and it's mostly in keeping admin and parents happy at a major cost to the children.
As such I feel that you can change whatever you want higher than that, but you're not addressing the root cause.
The US's system is not the best in the world, but it's pretty good. The US typically ranks in the top 15 countries in the world; a bit higher for pure reading metrics and a bit lower for pure...
Other countries have public school systems that produce meaningful results so you're less reliant on "must go to college"/"must take tests to even get into college". The US spends a ton on education and it's mostly in keeping admin and parents happy at a major cost to the children.
The US's system is not the best in the world, but it's pretty good. The US typically ranks in the top 15 countries in the world; a bit higher for pure reading metrics and a bit lower for pure mathematics metrics. For context the US often scores better than France, Germany, Australia, etc. It's pretty much only the Scandinavian states, South Korea, Taiwan, and microstates that consistently outscore the US.
Not saying the US public system doesn't have issues, obviously, but it's not like the US system doesn't produce meaningful results.
Most of these issues (declining literacy, phones in the classroom, aftershocks from COVID) are worldwide.
That doesn't much tie with what i've seen over the years. Just some quick searching gives me: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1 or perhaps less reliably...
That doesn't much tie with what i've seen over the years. Just some quick searching gives me:
But these tie with what I recall, which is that while the US "competes" in things like math, that's from a "how many good math students do we produce" not "% of total students who are decent at math", and that's caused by an atrocious skewing of the data depending on if you live in a rich education area like some CA/NY suburb, or not like....well most of the rest of the country.
Not saying the US public system doesn't have issues, obviously, but it's not like the US system doesn't produce meaningful results.
I mean, if it did, then why do we push things like the SAT/Bachelors/Masters so much as "proof of knowledge/ability to do work". The US GED is mostly worthless in comparison to other countries.
No offense intended but I think you might be misreading or misunderstanding something in those links. They are not about the cream of the crop; they're about normal people. From the first link you...
No offense intended but I think you might be misreading or misunderstanding something in those links. They are not about the cream of the crop; they're about normal people. From the first link you posted:
Question:
How does the achievement of American students compare to that of students in other countries?
Response:
Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy of 15-Year-Old Students
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), has measured the performance of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science literacy every 3 years since 2000, except for a 1-year delay in the current cycle (from 2021 to 2022) due to the coronavirus pandemic. In 2022, PISA was administered in 81 countries and education systems,1 including 37 member countries of the OECD.
PISA 2022 results in this indicator are reported by average scale scores, which range from 0 to 1,000.2 In addition to reporting overall scores, this indicator also presents international comparisons of achievement scores by student gender.3
In 2022, there were 5 education systems with higher average reading literacy scores for 15-year-olds than the United States, 25 with higher mathematics literacy scores, and 9 with higher science literacy scores.
You may very well be right. It's been quite awhile since i've looked at the data so I only glanced the charts. I'll have to dig into later then when I have time. Thanks for tolerating me here.
You may very well be right. It's been quite awhile since i've looked at the data so I only glanced the charts. I'll have to dig into later then when I have time. Thanks for tolerating me here.
Personally I always thought it was crazy that standardized testing was removed as admissions criteria post-COVID. I understand that it can be skewed by racial and socioeconomic strata, but that's education in general. It's like if you had a table that was skewed to one side, measured it with a level, and decided to get rid of the level.
There's certainly issues with the SAT/ACT - it probably shouldn't be administered by a private company (although, considering that the Department of Education was dissolved, probably a blessing in disguise right now...), it probably shouldn't cost money per test - but the solution is to fix the skewed table, at least to some degree. Have the Department of Education (oh, yeah, doesn't exist anymore) administer the test, make it so that all students of all incomes can retake it, say, 3 times at no cost, make test prep a standard program at public schools (which, to be fair, it already is in many of them - it was offered as a "period 0" option or afterschool when I was in high school).
Already most of the ivies / stanford already reinstated SAT/ACT as a requirement: https://yaledailynews.com/articles/yale-reinstates-standardized-testing-requirement-allows-ap-and-ib-scores
It's another example of something done with good intentions, but without being fully thought out. As if the majority of the socioeconomic and racial stratification of test scores was because of the test rather than structural factors of race and class.
It would be good to have public funding so every student can take the SAT/ACT, but I don't see any advantage to having the government administer it. It seems like it's all downside? Similarly, the TSA being federal employees at most airports turns out to be a bad idea, particularly for the employees, and I'm glad it's not the case at SFO.
It’s mainly for incentive alignment. The state is incentivized to want accurate testing for accurate student placement to maximize the effect allocation of resources in the education system and produce the most educated populace, that will go on to have productive careers and increase the GDP per capita.
(Well, most governments, we have RFK Jr as health secretary)
What is the motivating incentives of the non-profit college board? It could be many things, from increasing its own influence to doing the bidding of particular influential universities.
At the moment, with the current administration, probably for the best it’s not run by the state. But ultimately the majority of education and education standards are set by the state, so it only makes sense for the standardized testing to be done by the state.
Incentives are often bad and they're always a blunt instrument, but in general, wanting to be broadly seen as useful by colleges and accepted as a legimate test by the public seem like good incentives?
It sounds like you're hoping for a government that has good incentives, but we don't have that and aren't likely to get it. It all depends on who is in power. I do hope the Democrats get in again, but they will have their own agendas. They're likely to be interested in pleasing interest groups. Better to be an NGO and somewhat insulated from that.
Also, I think it's good that there are many colleges, public and private, and they can make their own decisions about admissions. If it were centralized then there would be less choice.
I don’t mean incentives in a specific way, I mean it in a general fashion. Incentives aren’t “bad”, it’s just… part of how things work? I’m not even sure what it would mean for the concept of incentives to be bad.
The point is that most of the education system is run by the government. Most people go to public k-12 then go to a public university. The government has the biggest stake in whether or not the education system works. It only makes sense for them to also do the standardized test - they, as in, the government, have the most to gain and the most to lose.
If the CB misaligns with what the public education system is trying to do, what is the signaling system to cause reversion? Probably a very long one, where public outrage needs to build (which is hard when most people dgaf about the specifics of a test), universities need to drop the test, yada yada. That’s not good.
CB has done a decent job so far of being an impartial test creator and administrator. But for the long-term health of the system, it does not make sense for them to continue operating the main test that determines admissions for US public colleges. They can still exist as a supplementary test, potentially.
The problem is that the US government does not control education, for the most part. State and local governments do. California is fairly unique because it runs two separate college systems, UC and CSU. As well as CCC which organizes community colleges and is actually the country’s largest higher ed system.
While the fed does exert some control the current administration is castrating the Department of Education in an effort to completely remove it.
To put things simply and as calmly as possible, many of the governments involved are not run by reasonable or rational people and are in many cases filled with people who want to reduce and restrict access to education as well as the quality of what is offered. This is an especially shitty time to be a young person in this country.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that because government is all over the place, the College Board is actually performing a very needed service of ensuring that students are being objectively measured by standards that are less likely to be influenced by local politics. I think that this could be considered to be a bad thing in progressive states like California or New York, but could be a great boon to poor and/or regressive states like Wyoming or Arkansas.
In this case, the University of California Regents doesn’t seem very responsive to the needs of UC Faculty? More generally, I don’t see why we should assume people working for one part of a government would be responsive to the needs of some other part of a government. It might be true in specific cases, but there’s no general rule about how well or badly a bureaucracy works.
I don't think that this alignment exists - if the spirit of the will of the people existed like in Civilization, may be yes - but governments are made up of human actors. And if recent history has shown us anything, we'll get the US Government Standardized Test where every college student has to explain how Trump restored a new era of the US democracy when JD Vance becomes the next president.
There was a knee jerk reaction from a lot of liberal policymakers in the wake of the 2020 lockdowns and protests. A lot of stuff that didn’t really work and was only a passing fad, bandwagoning happened so that nobody got accused of being racist. I feel like at the time there were people trying to push back against this specifically but they would, predictably, get a ton of backlash.
Been in a long time since I've been in K-12, and I don't have kids, but I vaguely remember that after I graduated high school in the mid-00s, that many school districts started allowing students to take the ACT/SAT at least once on the district's dime, at school, during the school day. Am I just making that up?
If that happened, I always thought that was a great way to help even out the playing field. Those tests are not cheap. My family could pay them no problem, and I took the ACT twice, but the cost was high enough that my parents were like "You better study and not just blow this off..." (Spoiler: I did not study).
But I imagine that's a district by district, state by state, thing. Some states and districts can afford to do that, others can't. For whatever reasons, fiscal or ideological. So yeah, it should be subsidized by the federal government at the very least.
When I was in high school I was part of a program called Upward Bound which not only paid for my SAT, but also offered me tutoring classes to make sure I succeeded. I got a fairly good score to my memory. Unfortunately I never went to university because of family issues.
That program is part a larger program called TRIO which has been under constant threats. The White House’s proposed 2026 budget removed all funding for it, but thankfully congress is slightly less
idioticregressive and allocated them some funds. Still, the program is significantly scaled back from when I was a student.I grew up in Oregon and in the late 00's early 10's remember myself and family/friends not needing to pay for the first time taking the SAT, and we were required to pay for any retakes.
I took the ACT the first time in 2004, then again in 2005. And my family had to pay both times. I think even when my younger brother took the ACT in 2009/2010, parents had to pay. This was in the suburbs of Kansas City, MO.
Maybe it's where I lived, but in my area, we had to pay for all of our standardized testing on our own. SAT, ACT, and AP testing was all paid for by the students and there was almost no funding for students who couldn't afford it (I was one one those students and my parents somehow came up with the money, even though we really didn't have it). This was in the Bay Area, CA
I've seen many articles from university professors pointing out the declining numeracy and literacy skills in new students and how it's impacting their classes, and seeing this signed by so many validates those concerns.
I'm in favour of these tests in theory, while I can't comment on the fairness/equity of how they're administered, I do think it's reasonable to expect prospective students to have a strong foundation before starting the course. It also provides a balance against the output of the mandatory school system and pushes students to take their classes more seriously if they want a higher education.
In the UK we have a "Foundation year" system where students who didn't do so well at school, or mature students who need it, can brush up their knowledge prior to the start of the main course with everyone else. Something similar would probably work in the US too?
Something similar exists in the US as well. At a representative school in the UC system, however - which is the system in this post - the number of students in remedial math courses jumped from ~30/year in 2020 to ~900/year in 2025. It's simply too many students.
From that link, the additional program is just a summer class, ours is a full academic year and costs the same as one, too. The additional time probably alleviates the burden on professors and students since they're not having to cram before the course starts.
Also, they don't need to accept every student who wants to take the remedial course, they can just say no.
Well, yeah, but that's not really the point, is it?
Even back in the mid/late 2000s when I started college, I knew so many people who were in remedial college classes. <100 level classes. And it was almost always math.
I sorta did that, having taken Calc 1 as my first college math class, which I bombed. So then I went to College Algebra, but at least it was a 100-level class, then Pre-Calc (even though I took it in high school), then Calc 1 again. That helped out a lot. Plus padded my GPA a bit, which I needed!
The very short version of my take on all of this:
A % of our issues with the college system stem from the issues with our public school system. Other countries have public school systems that produce meaningful results so you're less reliant on "must go to college"/"must take tests to even get into college". The US spends a ton on education and it's mostly in keeping admin and parents happy at a major cost to the children.
As such I feel that you can change whatever you want higher than that, but you're not addressing the root cause.
The US's system is not the best in the world, but it's pretty good. The US typically ranks in the top 15 countries in the world; a bit higher for pure reading metrics and a bit lower for pure mathematics metrics. For context the US often scores better than France, Germany, Australia, etc. It's pretty much only the Scandinavian states, South Korea, Taiwan, and microstates that consistently outscore the US.
Not saying the US public system doesn't have issues, obviously, but it's not like the US system doesn't produce meaningful results.
Most of these issues (declining literacy, phones in the classroom, aftershocks from COVID) are worldwide.
That doesn't much tie with what i've seen over the years. Just some quick searching gives me:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1
or perhaps less reliably
https://worldtop20.org/worldbesteducationsystem/
But these tie with what I recall, which is that while the US "competes" in things like math, that's from a "how many good math students do we produce" not "% of total students who are decent at math", and that's caused by an atrocious skewing of the data depending on if you live in a rich education area like some CA/NY suburb, or not like....well most of the rest of the country.
I mean, if it did, then why do we push things like the SAT/Bachelors/Masters so much as "proof of knowledge/ability to do work". The US GED is mostly worthless in comparison to other countries.
No offense intended but I think you might be misreading or misunderstanding something in those links. They are not about the cream of the crop; they're about normal people. From the first link you posted:
You may very well be right. It's been quite awhile since i've looked at the data so I only glanced the charts. I'll have to dig into later then when I have time. Thanks for tolerating me here.
No problem at all.