After faculty protests and a debate over racial equity, the state’s public universities reconsider whether high school students can skip a foundational course.
That year, public universities in the state — including Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — loosened their admissions criteria, telling high schools that they would consider applicants who had skipped Algebra II, a cornerstone of math instruction.
In its place, students could take data science — a mix of math, statistics and computer science without widely agreed upon high school standards. Allowing data science, the universities said, was an “equity issue” that could send more students to college. But it also raised concerns that some teenagers would be channeled into less challenging coursework, limiting their opportunities once they got there.
Now, the California experiment is under review.
On Wednesday, the State Board of Education voted to remove its endorsement of data science as a substitute for Algebra II as part of new guidelines for K-12 schools.
“We have to be careful and deliberate about ensuring rigor,” Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the state board, said before the vote.
