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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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Academia
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To answer at least part of this: I’ve heard that high school teachers in failing schools were put under enormous pressure by administrators (who themselves were pressured by state level policies) to pass a large fraction of their students.
This is true. Teachers get a ton of pressure to pass under performers and get creative with how.
You’re going to need a gatekeeping system (entrance exam) between high school and college if you want students who can actually read, write, add, and subtract. High school education has mostly been gutted across the US.
At many universities you’re still going to get students admitted on sports scholarships that don’t meet academic requirements. Sports brings in big money to universities.
So you've got a bunch of kids walking out the door with D- in Trigonometry.
I have no idea how that affects admissions at Berkeley, especially when the Op-Ed writer claims kids with straight As in Calc II who are getting passed over.
The SAT doesn't even test for this. It caps out at Algebra and Geometry. Why go to bat for a program that is testing under what freshmen at Berkeley would be presumably be admitted for?
They can't get funding otherwise and the whole school would fall. They see it as letting a few bad ones through for the good of all. You know what they say about apples though.