Once again, over again, one more time, beat up on the US over its "rotten" 'education'. Graduate/professional school? Nope. They're talking K-12. Then they

Once again, over again, one more time, beat up on the US over its "rotten" 'education'. Graduate/professional school? Nope. They're talking K-12. Then they are talking 'averages'. Yup. This beating up on the US is mostly just fun from public flogging, a scam, a way to get headlines. The US tried hard, poured in lots of money, bricks, mortar, etc., and it didn't work. Details: Frontline video on efforts of Michelle Rhee in the DC public schools: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education-of-michelle-rhee/ Transcript http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education/education-of-michelle-rhee/transcript-35/ If the Asians are so good at teaching math, then let them fix the DC public schools. Wait: Rhee is Asian. Oh, well, try the backup plan. Okay: 'Control'. Control on country of origin. I'll put it to you in blunt terms: Essentially the worst schools in the US do better than the schools in west Africa and Mexico. Some people won't like that point. So, I'll give another point: How do the students in Minnesota of Norwegian descent do compared with the students in Norway? That is, are we talking "US schools" or country of origin? Next, for "US math", I have a right to be torqued and offended and I am: I'm a native born US citizen educated only in the US and hold a Ph.D. in engineering from one of the best research universities in the world for my research accomplishments in applied math, complete with theorems and proofs. I've done just fine in "math", thank you. For math in Asia? From nearly all I've seen, math in Asia is not so good. I can think of some good work from Japan, but otherwise, no. For South Korea, one of their better college math majors came to the US for math grad school and right away had to conclude that they had learned no 'math' at all in college in South Korea and, instead, had just done some rote memorization with zero understanding. Then as a grad student they had to start over essentially as a freshman college math major. But articles like the OP keep talking about K-12 'math' where likely they mean mostly just simple arithmetic; not a biggie.