Did the University of California Try to Bury a Consequential Vote on Math?
Chronicle of Higher Education, Stephanie M. Lee, 12-19-2023 via UCOP Daily News Clips, 12-20-23
This summer, a University of California panel voted to set the record straight on a controversial math admissions requirement. The vote had timely implications for K-12 schools across California: The state was days away from adopting new guidelines for math instruction, based partly on criteria that the UC system had been advertising. But the group did not disclose the vote right away. Emails obtained by The Chronicle show that after the committee’s July 7 meeting, members repeatedly pushed their chair, Barbara Knowlton, a psychologist at UCLA, to broadcast what they had decided: that courses billed as “data science” would no longer count as a substitute for algebra II, one of the UC system’s longstanding requirements. They cited widespread concerns that the courses were not preparing students for college-level math.
“Barbara, I think it would be dishonest to delete the language regarding the vote and withhold this information from the communication to the state Board of Education,” wrote one member of the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), the UC faculty committee that oversees admissions policies. “We do not get to rewrite what took place.” But the group’s internal emails, obtained through public-records requests, show that to the chagrin of members, Knowlton proposed issuing a statement that left out any mention of the vote, instead saying merely that data science was under discussion. A UC spokesperson then issued a similar statement to the press and to the state Board of Education.
News of the committee’s vote first became public through media reports, including in The Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, and EdSource. The exchanges illustrate how the most technical debates in the so-called math wars can arouse strongly held passions between camps with the same goal: to expand the pipeline of students entering STEM. In this case, faculty members who felt they had raised important concerns about courses labeled as “data science” reportedly spoke of “a conspiracy to silence the committee.”
Knowlton said by email that she thought the vote “was not sufficiently thought through,” making it premature to communicate it to the education board. She also wrote that she “strongly disagreed” with any perception that she tried to hide the July 7 vote. Ryan King, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, said that BOARS had taken an “action” that “established a policy direction” for math admissions, “but key implementation details had not been determined at that time.”
“One of the university’s highest priorities is to ensure that California high-school students are fully informed about UC admissions requirements and prepared to apply and enroll at UC,” he said by email.
‘We Are Complicit’
The UC system has traditionally required applicants to pass at least three years of math, including a second year of algebra or algebra II. But in August 2021, citing a decision made the previous year, BOARS announced that the UC system would accept a broader array of advanced math courses that could be taken instead of algebra II, a move it called an “equity issue” that could help send more students to college. Data science was promoted as one of the alternatives.
Robert L. Gould, a UCLA statistics instructor who developed the course “Introduction to Data Science,” wrote in 2021 that alternative math pathways are “important because algebra II has a high failure rate.” He added, “Many educators are justifiably concerned that the calculus pathway institutionalizes racial inequities by decreasing the number of Black and Latino students in college,” and that data-science courses could help diversify enrollment “by strengthening connections between students’ everyday lives and their academic careers.”
Hundreds of courses labeled data science have popped up across California, offering a blend of math, namely statistics, and computer science. Data science in some form is available in high schools in 19 states, including California, Oregon, and Ohio, which offer it as an alternative to algebra II, according to Zarek Drozda, director of Data Science 4 Everyone, a group based at the University of Chicago. He noted that students in those states can take algebra II before or after data science, if they have the desire and the space in their schedules.
“We do not get to rewrite what took place.”
But California has not established guidelines for what these courses should teach. Some of the most popular courses, such as “Introduction to Data Science” and “Explorations in Data Science,” which was developed at a research center at Stanford University, contain little algebra II and do not require it as a prerequisite, according to their syllabi, even though UC admissions policy requires advanced math courses for juniors and seniors to “build upon” algebra II.
So critics, led by STEM professors and professionals, say that students could be unprepared to take math courses that require an understanding of algebra II concepts, like logarithms and trigonometric functions. To major in data science and other quantitative fields at a UC campus, students generally need to arrive able to take calculus. Professors from across the UC system began writing to BOARS last year to express their concerns. By this summer, complaints had poured in from faculty at the Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Irvine, Riverside, and Santa Barbara campuses. The Academic Senate of the California State University system, which had adopted UC’s admissions requirements, passed a resolution that protested the “unilateral changes” that the UC system had apparently made.
On Friday, July 7, BOARS members gathered over Zoom to discuss their concerns about data-science courses and to hear from two UC professors with opposing views. The deadline for public comment for the third draft of the California math framework, which the state Board of Education had released the week before, was noon that day. The nonbinding policy said in part that data science could be offered in place of algebra II, citing the UC’s guidance.
Just before noon, BOARS sent a short statement to the state Board of Education saying there was “significant discussion” on data science. Then its members voted to no longer allow the current approved data-science courses to validate algebra II. They also voted to set up a work group to better define standards for advanced math, according to meeting minutes later posted online.
The day after the meeting, emails show, two members shared with the group a draft letter to send to the state Board of Education. The letter made clear that the group had unanimously voted “to remove existing data-science courses from the set of advanced mathematics courses that can substitute for algebra II,” a decision that was “effective immediately.” It explained that “the existing courses are not sufficiently rigorous and do not contain sufficient content in the topics of advanced algebra.”
On July 9, Knowlton proposed minor edits, some of which the authors made. The next day at 3 p.m., two days before the education board was to vote on the math framework, one author asked if the letter was ready to be sent, noting that “time is of the essence.” Knowlton responded that night with a new proposed statement of her own. Instead of mentioning the data-science vote, it echoed what the group had already said publicly — that data science was under “significant discussion” — and added that a work group would iron out the details.
The other BOARS members had also proposed recommending that the education board tweak the math framework in a few ways: Remove references to the UC allowing data science to stand in for algebra II and add language clarifying what math incoming UC students should know. But Knowlton told the group that it wasn’t worth suggesting the latter, as “the deadline has also passed for edits.” This did not go over well.
“On Friday we voted — unanimously — that current data-science courses no longer validate algebra II,” wrote Joshua Berke, a neurology professor at UC San Francisco, adding, “I ask that you ensure all public communications clearly, openly, unequivocally, and immediately convey this unanimous BOARS decision.” Others chimed in to agree. “If BOARS does not inform [the state Board of Education] about Friday’s vote and the additional problems with the [framework] language,” wrote Laura Giuliano, an economics professor at UC Santa Cruz, “then we are complicit in misleading California high-school students and creating barriers to their success as potential UC students.” Knowlton stood firm: “I do not think we have the power to do this.”
According to their mission statements, BOARS sets admission policies and a separate administrative office carries out those policies by approving courses that count toward the requirements. Knowlton argued that BOARS was assuming the authority of the latter. So she chose to “consider the vote” as an expression of “unanimous concern about data-science courses,” she wrote.
The group pushed back. “I do not believe it is up to you … to choose whether to implement this unanimous BOARS decision or not,” Berke wrote. (Berke did not return a request for comment.) Berke and others also expressed alarm about what they perceived as a lack of transparency. BOARS was not consistently approving meeting minutes, they wrote, and spotty record-keeping could potentially allow UC staff to incorrectly interpret the group’s decisions. “In light of the apparent disagreement over how to interpret what was voted on,” Giuliano wrote, “I would like to request a copy of the minutes and request that they not be formally approved — and the recording of the meeting not be deleted — without the consent of all BOARS members who were in attendance at Friday’s meeting.” (Giuliano declined to comment.)
Sophie Volpp, a comparative-literature professor at UC Berkeley, added, “I want to emphasize that it would truly be of grave consequence if we send a statement to the state Board of Education that misrepresents the content of a two-part vote.” (Volpp declined to comment.)
'A Conspiracy'
On the evening of Tuesday, July 11, The Chronicle reported that BOARS had voted to disqualify data science as an algebra II replacement, citing internal emails and people who attended the meeting. An hour later, an email from the chair of the UC Academic Senate admonished BOARS members that “protocols regarding confidentiality have been violated” and that sharing the group’s posts was “subject to disciplinary action.” Later that night, a UC spokesperson sent a statement to The Chronicle and other outlets, reiterating that BOARS had “continued an ongoing dialogue” about what courses would satisfy the math requirement and that it had voted to set up a work group.
When the state education board met the next day, the board president read the statement aloud. The board unanimously approved the math framework, which was edited at the last minute to remove references to the UC endorsing data science as an algebra II substitute. Knowlton told The Chronicle by email that “data science” was not an official category of courses used by admissions, so UC staff would not have had an easy way of sorting out which courses did or did not qualify, and that a work group consisting of subject experts was more qualified to determine those criteria. The vote also did not specify a timeline, which would have indicated to current UC applicants that their courses were suddenly ineligible, she wrote. “Some members perceive a conspiracy to silence the committee or to misrepresent its position.”
“Given the lack of clarity about how the motion would be implemented, it seemed that it would not be helpful to transmit to the [state Board of Education] at that point,” she said. James Steintrager, who was vice chair of the UC Academic Senate at the time, said by email that “at no point did the UC Office of the President hide the July vote.” From the Senate’s perspective, he wrote, “the action that was voted on was not implementable.”
On July 17, BOARS met again and doubled down on its July 7 vote. This time, it clarified some exceptions: Data-science courses that have algebra II as a prerequisite would be allowed, and high-schoolers who took data science in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years would have validated the algebra II requirement. Meeting minutes indicate that tensions were running high: “Some members perceive a conspiracy to silence the committee or to misrepresent its position.”
Knowlton told The Chronicle that the July 7 vote would be reported in the meeting minutes and that she was simply trying to formulate the vote “in a way that could be implemented.” Five months later, BOARS is still debating the future of data science. By the end of December, its math work group is planning to issue recommendations, including on what data-science courses should teach in order to qualify as advanced math, according to documents posted online. That won’t be the final step: It will meet with a group of Academic Senate members from the UC and CSU systems, as well as California’s community colleges, to “align expectations of college preparation in math.” A report with the work group’s recommendations is expected to be issued by May 2024.
King, the UC spokesperson, said that the university “remains committed to ensuring that all students aspiring to attend UC have ample advance notice to enroll in and complete all courses required for admission.”
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