California Voice: Colleges must partner with K-12 schools — not blame them — for students facing barriers

From where we sit at the University of California, it has long been easy for faculty to lament that too many first-year students arrive academically unprepared by their K-12 schools.

The latest version of this complaint took shape in the recent UC San Diego Faculty Senate report that 1 in 8 students arrive in need of remediation in math, among other deficiencies.

A media frenzy quickly followed suit. As a UC faculty researcher who has studied student preparation and success for the past two decades...