Research · UC testing review
"Show me the data": the school-level numbers behind the UC math debate
The governor asked for data. More than 3,000 UC faculty asked for a testing requirement. For 1,121 California high schools, the two public datasets that bear on the question — state math proficiency and UC admissions outcomes — can already be joined, school by school.
Free for editorial use with attribution to High School Reach · Custom cuts on request · Analysis computed August 21, 2026
This brief, in plain English
What happened: UC San Diego's Senate-Administration Workgroup found that the number of freshmen placing below high school math standards grew nearly thirtyfold between 2020 and 2025 — about one in eight of the 2025 entering class, with one in twelve below middle school standards. More than 3,000 UC faculty, including five Nobel laureates and seven of the nine UC mathematics department chairs, signed open letters urging a return of admissions testing. Asked about it Wednesday, Governor Newsom took no position: "Show me the data."
The gap this brief fills: six years into test-free admissions, the debate runs on campus-level anecdotes and system-wide averages. The school-level question — which high schools send students who meet the state's own math standard, and which send many UC admits anyway — is answerable today from public files. Nobody had joined them.
What the join shows: math proficiency and UC admissions outcomes rise together strongly (correlation 0.72) — schools where at least 70% of juniors meet the math standard post a median UC Reach Score of 69, against 14 where fewer than 40% do. But the relationship is far from airtight: 20 of the 100 highest-Reach public high schools post grade-11 math proficiency below 50%. A fifth of the UC's biggest feeder schools graduate classes in which fewer than half of tested juniors met the state math standard.
One honest caution: these are school-level datasets, not the same students tracked through both systems, and the state test is a different instrument from UC placement exams. This brief measures the pipeline, not any individual admit. Full caveats below.
The moment
On Wednesday, at a back-to-school event, Governor Newsom was asked whether the UC should bring back the SAT and ACT. He declined to take a side, said he was open to evidence, noted that some contrary data is emerging, and summarized his position in four words: "Show me the data."
The question was prompted by open letters from UC faculty — more than 3,000 signatures across a STEM letter (2,300+, including five Nobel laureates and seven of the nine UC mathematics department chairs) and a social-sciences and humanities letter (900) — and by the UC San Diego Senate-Administration Workgroup report the letters cite. The report's own words: "Between 2020 and 2025, the number of freshmen whose math placement exam results indicate them not meeting high school standard grew nearly thirtyfold, despite all of these students having taken beyond the minimum UCOP-required math curriculum, and with high grades. In the 2025 incoming class, this group constitutes roughly one-eighth of our entire entering cohort. Moreover, more than 70% of these students are also not meeting middle school standards, representing one in twelve entering students."
A week earlier, Berkeley teaching professor Zvezdelina Stankova — holder of the national top award for college math teaching — wrote in the San Francisco Standard that some of her students arrive five to eight years behind, with office hours spent on fractions rather than calculus. The University has opened a formal response: the Academic Senate's review of standardized testing policy, which its chair has said will "follow the evidence wherever it leads," is expected by the end of the academic year.
What the public data can already answer
California publishes both halves of the governor's question. The state's CAASPP/SBAC results report, school by school, what share of grade-11 students met the state mathematics standard. The University of California publishes, school by school, how many students each high school got admitted to each UC campus. For 1,121 public and charter high schools — schools with at least 50 seniors and at least 30 tested juniors — both numbers exist for the most recent published year.
| Grade-11 math proficiency (SBAC, met or exceeded) | Schools | Median UC Reach Score |
|---|---|---|
| 70% or higher | 44 | 69 |
| 40–70% | 267 | 32 |
| Under 40% | 810 | 14 |
The two measures rise together, strongly — the school-level correlation is 0.72, and the statewide picture is sobering on its own: the median California high school posts a grade-11 math proficiency of 21%. But the relationship is not airtight, and the exceptions are where the faculty's concern becomes visible in public data. Among the 100 public high schools with the highest UC Reach Scores — the UC system's biggest feeder schools — the median math proficiency is 63%, and 20 of the 100 post proficiency below 50%. Those schools send large numbers of students into the UC from classes in which fewer than half of tested juniors met the state's own math standard.
That is the shape of the question the Academic Senate's review has to answer — not whether preparation and admission are related (they are), but what happens in the gap between them, now that no common measure sits at the door.
What this data does not say
- These are school-level joins, not tracked students. A school's UC admits are not necessarily the same students who tested below standard. Nothing here says any individual admit was unprepared.
- The instruments differ. The state's grade-11 SBAC and UC campuses' math placement exams measure different things at different moments. The UCSD figures and ours are complementary, not the same measurement.
- UC Reach counts admissions offers, not enrollment — a student admitted to three campuses counts at each. It measures the breadth of options a class earned.
- Private schools are invisible here. CAASPP covers public and charter schools only — so a meaningful slice of UC's applicant pool has no public preparedness measure at all. That absence is itself part of the story.
- Correlation is not mechanism. This brief measures the pipeline. It does not adjudicate why the relationship loosens at some schools, and it takes no position on the testing policy itself.
Where to look school by school
Every California high school's page on this site carries both halves — its SBAC results and its campus-by-campus UC admissions record — alongside eight years of enrollment history: the statewide rankings are the front door. The submitter-advantage evidence from selective colleges' own reports is at Do test scores still matter?. Method notes: UC Reach Score = admits to the six most selective UC campuses per 100 seniors, from UC's school-by-school files; proficiency = SBAC grade-11 mathematics, met-or-exceeded, All Students, most recent published year; schools with under 50 seniors or under 30 tested juniors are excluded, as are schools failing our data-integrity checks.
Sources: UCSD Senate-Administration Workgroup report as quoted in the faculty letter FAQ (p. 6) · UC Student Success letters and signature counts · Fox News, Aug 20, 2026 (Newsom remarks) · San Francisco Standard, Aug 15, 2026 (Stankova op-ed) · EdSource, Jul 21, 2026 (Academic Senate review) · CAASPP research files · University of California school-by-school admissions data.