Academic Requirements

University of California regents Wednesday gave preliminary approval to a controversial change in freshman admission standards that would drop the requirement for two SAT subject exams and make more students eligible for a review of their applications while guaranteeing entry to fewer. The change is considered among the most sweeping admissions policy shifts by the university in years.

While high schools across the state are toughening their graduation requirements to prepare students for college, one of the state's largest school districts is planning to make it easier for students to graduate. In a proposal that would cut out health, college and career planning, world geography and earth science as required courses, the Santa Ana Unified School District is seeking to reduce the number of credits necessary to graduate.

The University of California may offer some relief to test-weary applicants by shedding part of a 40-year-old requirement for freshman admission. And many high school students are saying amen to that. An influential faculty panel wants to drop two of the standardized exams that all applicants now must take for acceptance at UC's nine undergraduate campuses.

The new state policy of requiring algebra in the eighth grade will set up unprepared students for failure while holding back others with solid math skills, a new report has concluded. These predictions, based on national data, come in the wake of an algebra mandate that the state Board of Education, under pressure from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, adopted in July.

Partly in response to budget problems, UCLA has retreated from a graduation requirement that most students must take at least one seminar-style class with a small enrollment and significant interaction with the professor. Some seniors have complained that not enough such seminars were offered and that they had been unable to find spots in these lower-division classes, which are typically designed for about 20 students and have a discussion format very different from large lecture hall courses.

Despite recent improvements, Latino and black students continue to lag behind whites and Asians in becoming academically eligible to enter California's two public university systems, according to a state report released Tuesday.

On Saturdays, Chris Lopez makes about $100 selling tickets at a Glendale nightclub. It's good money for a 17-year-old, but after he graduates from Lincoln High School, Lopez wants to go to college and study law or criminal justice. There's one problem, though: He won't have time to finish the classes he needs to apply. Months before graduation, Lopez learned that he hasn't taken enough of the academic classes necessary to be admitted to a four-year state university.

This year's high school seniors with disabilities would be spared from California's new high school exit exam under a legislative agreement announced Thursday. A deal negotiated by state officials would excuse seniors from that obligation if they have physical, learning or emotional disabilities that may have contributed to past failures on the test. Existing rules would have required all students in the class of 2006 to pass the test of English and math to earn diplomas.

Two schools in Los Angeles County are among the first to undergo state sanctions for insufficient academic improvement over the last three years under a new voluntary program for troubled campuses, education officials said Tuesday. Antelope Valley High School and Wilsona Elementary School, both in Lancaster, are among six campuses facing the new measures in the state's Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program.

Alma Zavala immigrated four years ago from the Mexican state of Michoacan to Santa Ana, a bustling city dense with new immigrants. Ashley Daigle was reared in Chino Hills, former dairy farm country that is being rapidly developed into tidy subdivisions with names such as Agave and Citrus Commons. The high school seniors, who grew up in seemingly different worlds, have a common goal: They must pass the state's new high school exit exam this week or they will be denied diplomas in June.