[DontchaKnowit]

I taught summer school math to 8th graders for a brief spell. I was teaching them addition and subtraction. I shit you not.

It's really sad.

And it did not matter how they performed, if they showed up for class, we passed them and sent them along. Also if they didn't show up, we passed them and sent them along anyway.

We should be absolutely ashamed of the public school system in our country. It'd corruption and perverse incentives from the top all the way down. Disgusting.

[kazinator]

I clearly remember that eight grade math was algebra: basic stuff with polynomials like multiplying (2x + 1)(3x + 4), or dividing single terms like 4x^2y/2xy = 2x.

And that was likely behind where I would have been had I not immigrated to Canada from Europe, where I had been into basic one-variable linear equation solving by the end of fourth grade, plus other topics like sets. For instance we used a kind of set partitioning method to convert numbers into binary.

When I came to Canada in the fifth grade, the teacher took me to a room and probed me on various arithmetic of increasing difficulty. She was blown away that I could do long division of like a five digit number by a three dight number, either leaving it with a remainder, or else continuing into the fraction.

[darthrupert]

Please note that nearly every country in the West is facing similar downward curves. Also countries like Finland, who were at the top for several years.

The US school system may have its separate problems, but the wider issue is not just there.