State audit finds education money not serving high-needs students, calls for changes in funding law
11/06/2019CSU leaders appear ready to move forward with requiring extra year of high school math despite concerns
11/20/2019
Source: The 74
As the country’s largest four-year public university considers adding a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning requirement to its admissions standards, new data obtained by The 74 show that less than a quarter of L.A. Unified seniors last year took such a class.
About 23.5 percent of seniors — or 8,472 of 36,124 — were enrolled in a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning course during the 2018-19 school year, according to the district’s Office of General Counsel. The California State University system, which spans 23 campuses and serves some 481,000 students, will decide in the coming weeks whether to tack on this type of elective class to its admissions requirements for prospective freshmen, starting in fall 2027 when current fifth-graders enter college.
That more than 75 percent of seniors in the state’s largest school district were not enrolled in what could become a required CSU admissions course elicited serious concerns from advocates already worried about college access and readiness among L.A. Unified graduates, less than half of whom were on track to be eligible for CSU admissions last year under the current standards.
This should be “raising alarm bells for everyone,” said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, executive director of Education Trust-West. “We need to have a serious conversation as a state about who has access to college and who doesn’t.”
