Gavin Newsom sidestepped a direct stance on reinstating SAT requirements for University of California admissions when pressed at a Wednesday press conference.
The governor, 57, was speaking in Hayward at Schafer Park Elementary School when a reporter asked about an open letter from more than 1,200 UC professors warning that incoming freshmen increasingly lack basic math skills. The letter, which has since gathered more than 1,450 signatures including Nobel laureates and leading scientists, calls for the UC system to bring back standardized test scores for STEM applicants.
“I have feelings about this, there’s anecdotes about this, but I want to see the data,” Newsom said at the event, where he was highlighting state education spending.
The professor-led campaign gained momentum after a UC San Diego Senate-Administration Working Group found a 30-fold spike in students lacking basic math skills. In 2020, only 30 incoming freshmen at the campus tested below high school math level. By 2025, that number had jumped to 900, according to the panel’s findings.
“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, a math professor at UC Berkeley, in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard.
Stankova, who co-authored the open letter with four other UC Berkeley faculty members, described the situation in stark terms during a recent interview about the campaign.
“It’s not a concern, it’s a crisis,” she said. “One of our co-authors described it like a car going down the hill, and the brakes are off. What are you going to do? You’re not going to stop and create a committee to study the mechanics of the car — you’re going to pull the emergency brake, then rethink what’s going on.”
The professors argue that the elimination of SAT and ACT testing as an admissions requirement in 2020 has contributed to the problem, with grade inflation masking true academic readiness. Critics of the test-optional policy note that other major universities including Caltech, Stanford and several Ivy League institutions have already reversed course and reinstated standardized testing requirements.
Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California Board of Education, addressed the ongoing deliberations during the same period as Newsom’s comments.
“There are some different options for testing if they choose to bring it back, and [University of California Regents] are looking at that now,” she added.
The University of California Board of Regents is expected to formally take up the standardized testing question next year. If math faculty are successful in their push, the fall 2028 admission cycle would be the earliest a reinstated test requirement could take effect.
Newsom’s deflection on the SAT question came as he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, touted California’s “jaw-dropping” investments in childhood education. The governor highlighted an expansion in “community schools” offering services ranging from free healthy food to laundry and eye care for families.
California has boosted per-pupil spending to more than $28,000 annually, including a 43% increase in special education spending to $2.4 billion in this year’s state budget. The governor’s office claims its universal transitional kindergarten program, first rolled out in the 2022-2023 school year, has saved families $14,000 per year.
Despite the spending increases, state data shows less than half of California students score “proficient” or “advanced” in math and reading. Just 37% of students met math standards in 2025, compared to 48% in reading.
Newsom said he was “confident” that this year’s results, set to be released in October, would show improvement.
In the viral moment that helped spark the professor rebellion, Stankova described a fall office hours session where first-year calculus students struggled with middle-school algebra. She told everyone to drop their pens and walked through solving for x from the equation 7x – 5 = 9 step by step. The episode crystallized what she and colleagues had been observing across UC campuses: a widening preparedness gap that has forced educators to slow down advanced coursework.
The UC Academic Senate is currently reviewing admissions policy on standardized test scores, with its Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools expected to deliver recommendations. The full Senate heard from the board’s chair on Thursday about the ongoing deliberations.
Not all faculty support reinstating the exams. Bjorn Birnir, chair of the math department at UC Santa Barbara, was one of two UC math department chairs who declined to sign the open letter.
“All it will do is keep students out of mathematics, and it may push some students, especially underrepresented students, out of the UC system,” Birnir said.
The debate has drawn national attention as one of the most prominent fights over standardized testing since the pandemic-era shift away from the exams.
The UC Board of Regents is expected to take up the standardized testing issue next year.