On Wednesday, the San Dieguito Union High School District board of trustees will vote on a resolution I am sponsoring that calls on the University of California to reinstate SAT/ACT math score requirements for applicants to STEM programs.
This is in response to data that should alarm every parent, educator, and taxpayer in our community.
In 2020, the UC Board of Regents eliminated standardized test scores from undergraduate admissions in the name of equity. The result has been a disaster — not for the university’s enrollment numbers, but for the students who show up to campus and discover they are not prepared for their enrolled programs.
A November 2025 report from UC San Diego’s Senate Administration Workgroup on Admissions found that the share of entering freshmen requiring math remediation surged from under one percent to roughly one in eight students in five years. Seventy percent of those students have math skills below a middle school level. The university has been forced to create entirely new courses to reteach elementary and middle school mathematics to students who were told they were college-ready.
Perhaps the most striking finding is that among students placed into UCSD’s most remedial math course, one in four had earned a perfect 4.0 GPA in high school math. The grades said they were ready, but they were not. Grades, it turns out, are no longer a reliable signal of whether a student can handle college-level STEM coursework.
More than 1,400 UC faculty members signed an open letter urging the university to reinstate standardized math requirements for STEM applicants — including seven of nine UC Mathematics Department Chairs and more than 50 STEM department chairs across the system. These are not politicians or pundits. These are the professors in the classrooms watching this crisis unfold in real time. MIT came to the same conclusion and reinstated its testing requirement in 2022.
This matters directly to our community. The San Dieguito Union High School District is one of the highest-performing districts in California. Our students work hard, take rigorous courses, and earn the preparation for college.
When the UC admits students to STEM programs without verifying math readiness, every seat filled by a student who cannot complete the coursework is a seat unavailable to a student who can. Our students — students from Encinitas, Carlsbad, Del Mar, Carmel Valley, Rancho Santa Fe, and Solana Beach — are the ones displaced.
They did the work. They met the standard. And the university’s own admissions process can no longer tell the difference.
Some will argue that standardized tests are unfair. But the SAT math section tests foundational fluency — the same skills required to succeed in calculus and physics. It does not test wealth. It does not test prep-course access. It tests whether a student can do the math. And right now, nothing else in the UC admissions process is asking that question.
Admitting a student into a STEM program they are not prepared to complete is not equity, it is a setup for failure — course failure, accumulated debt, and departure without a degree. It’s like throwing someone who doesn’t know how to swim into the deep end of the pool. Real equity means matching students to programs where they can succeed. A math readiness check protects students, and removing it harms them.
The Cal State system, which is also test-blind for admissions, still uses SAT and ACT scores for course placement after students are admitted, implicitly acknowledging that grades alone do not predict math readiness.
No California school district has yet passed a resolution on this issue. On Wednesday, SDUHSD can be the first to send a clear signal that we see the same crisis that the university’s own faculty does, and that we expect it to be fixed.
Our district has always been a leader. This is a chance to lead again, for our students and all students in California.
Michael Allman represents Area 4 on the San Dieguito Union High School District board of trustees. The board meets at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 17, at the District Office, 710 Encinitas Blvd, Encinitas.
