Principal reasons the United States public education math ranking is 27th among other industrial nations: Public schools have low academic standards for grade level achievements compared with other nations, as exemplified when foreign students relocate to the United States they perform two or three grade levels higher than American students.

Public education system insufficiently allocates instructional time on math. The average international school year is 200 plus days per and Japan with 243 days. Our public school year is typically 180 days.

International students have more instructional days per year and more instructional time per day allocated to math, this combined with higher academic math requirement, places our public schools in a non-competitive position with the rest of the world. International, educated graduates have educational advantages and superior motivation making them ideally suited to capture the best American jobs.

The travesty is we are underutilizing the potential of American students while spending substantially more taxpayers dollars per capita then the rest of the world.

Don Albright

Sequim