I've never managed to master much beyond the nuts and bolts of math. I was an honor student who could ace almost every subject, but ninth grade geometry tripped me up. I slipped through with a C, but needed three tries to pass trigonometry, with a D.
I couldn't understand the point of all that mathematical mumbo jumbo. And not once in the 40 years since I finished school have I ever been asked to factor a polynomial or calculate the cosine of anything.
Maybe that's why I'm not convinced that every California State University-bound student needs four years of high school math or quantitative reasoning courses just to be considered for admission.
Do we really want to keep students like me out of college because of an obsession with the supremacy of STEM? After all, there are still plenty of careers that don't require expertise in the meaning of imaginary numbers or the minutiae of quadratic equations.
As I followed the debate these past months about whether Cal State should raise admission standards by requiring an additional year of math, I couldn't help but think back to all those nights I spent hunched over homework, feeling dumb because I couldn't get my head around complicated formulas that I would never need.
I get the goal of the university's proposed change: to better prepare students to tackle college courses that can lead to high-demand careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
But I think the CSU trustees made a wise move in delaying their decision until they study how it might affect prospective applicants.
The primary complaint, from educators and activists, is that the new standard would disproportionately disadvantage black, Latino and low-income students, who tend to score lower than whites and Asians on standardized math exams _ and who are also more likely to attend schools with less experienced teachers, more crowded classes and fewer high-level math courses.
But this is more than an issue of equity. High school is too late to raise the bar.
Fewer than one-third of California's 11th-graders met grade-level standards in math last year. Scores were up a bit from previous years. But one troubling trend persists. Students post middling math scores in third grade, but their performance drops every year after that.
Instead of toughening standards at the tail end of their journey, how about we better equip them early on to meet the standards we've already got?
