“Sarah had nine pennies and nine dimes. How many coins did she have in all?” In 2023, instructors for UC San Diego “observed a new and alarming spread of skill gaps” in remedial math, “with many severe gaps going back to mathematics taught in middle and elementary school,” according to a new report from the school. The university tested these students, and a fifth could not answer how many coins Sarah has. The university’s response was to create an extra-remedial math class to prepare students for the regular remedial class.

The report begins: “Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students—particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort.”

Colorado students in fourth and eighth grade outperform California students in math, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, although a third of Colorado eighth graders fall below basic skills. So I’d be interested to read about what Colorado colleges are seeing in terms of basic literacy and numeracy among incoming students. I have written often about the overall sorry state of K–12 education in Colorado.

The UC San Diego report has got the alarm bells ringing at Marginal Revolution, the Free Press, and elsewhere. Alex Tabarrok writes for MR, “The report exposes a hard truth: expanding access without preserving standards risks the very idea of a higher education.”

My family’s homeschool experience

It’s no brag to say that my ten-year-old homeschooled son readily stated the number of coins as well as their total value; it’s only a second-grade problem.

UC San Diego also asked their students an eighth grade problem: “Solve 10 – 2(4 – 6x) = 0.” Only a fifth of the college students in remedial math got this one right. My son also missed this one, first because he forgot his order of operations, next because he lost track of a sign. On the third try, though, he finally nailed it down. Whew!

The challenging Dimensions Math materials that we use introduce basic algebra concepts early on. My child also has played the Dragonbox algebra app, and we’ve worked a bit with equations.

We raced ahead in math for several years, but we’ve spent two years going through the fifth grade materials. I’m totally fine with that, because we’re working on the foundational skills of working with fractions and decimals and converting one to the other. We’ve also been working with difficult story problems, basic geometry, and charts and graphs. We don’t use calculators yet. I am highly confident that my child has the solid foundation he needs to advance into algebra. I see what he’s learning, he’s acing the tests, he’s testing well ahead of grade level, and I know that he’s not just letting AI do the work for him.

This sort of flexibility is one of the main benefits of homeschooling. When my child was ready to race ahead in math, we raced ahead. Now that the material is harder for him, we’re taking our time and making sure he thoroughly understands it. We’re on track to finish the fifth grade material by the end of the calendar year, and I expect that we’ll be at least half way through the sixth grade work by the time he starts sixth grade.

My child also needed some extra work with spelling. He’s an advanced reader; right now he’s going through Rick Riordan’s “Heroes of Olympus” series. But his spelling, like his dad’s, was not great. Reading and spelling are different skills. So we went back to a second-grade Spectrum spelling book, and that worked great. We finished that in two months, and we should be able to quickly push ahead to grade level. Again, we can adapt our projects to our child’s needs.

We get through our core literacy and numeracy work in about two hours per day. Okay, this gets stretched out sometimes due to messing around. And we do this work every day, including weekends, except for holidays and trips. Meanwhile, schools typically waste vast oceans of a student’s time.

Because my child gets the basics done efficiently, he has plenty of time to play with his friends (this is real “socialization”) and pursue his own interests.

Our child’s geology and paleontology clubs have become a core part of his education. Recently he wrote a review of Amy Atwater’s children’s book, “The Fossil Keeper’s Treasure.” This ran in the geology club’s newsletter, so my ten-year-old now is a published author.

Over the summer our child dug out 50-million-year-old fish fossils and found dinosaur bone fragments. He spent hours prepping his “towel show” exhibit for geology club. Recently we drove to Aurora to hear a talk by Gussie Maccracken, a paleobotanist for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. (The Aurora history museum has up a good dino exhibit that you should check out.)

On top of all of this we add science and Spanish videos, history readings, hikes, and more.

I realize that most families are not going to homeschool. I think more people should consider it. Regardless, parents and schools can learn a lot from the homeschool experience about deep and adaptive learning and the power of pursuing personal interests.

I don’t know how my child’s interests will develop from here or what schooling will look like for us over the coming years. I do know that my child is developing the knowledge and skills he needs for success in life.

Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.