SEATTLE - Very harsh words about Washington state's math programs were voiced Friday from nationally renowned math experts.

The professors are in Seattle for a seminar on the math crisis. With nearly half of Washington’s 10th graders failing the math WASL, critics say the state's math standards get an "F" and should be completely scrapped. They say the WASL should be completely reworked.

At the University of Washington, Professor Cliff Mass says, incoming students' math skills are too weak.

"I've really had to dumb the class at least in the math aspect because they are just less capable now than they were 15, 20 years ago," he said.

He said each year their ability to do simple math continues to decline. In fact, an influential national group of math teachers says the United States is failing at math.

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Experts say students rely too much on calculators.

In fourth grade, students in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan have the best math skills. American students rank 12th.

By eighth grade, American students rank 15^th, outskilled by students in Latvia, Russia and the Slovak republic.

National experts at a forum in Seattle say Washington state should scrap its math standards and start over. They suggest getting rid of calculators until at least the 6th grade, and focus on basic arithmetic.

“That’s one thing that has parents rightly upset -- their children are being denied arithmetic in a way its kind of intellectual child abuse,” said Prof. David Kline at California State.

Also, they call Washington’s WASL math test appalling.

"The test has to be reworked, completely reworked,” Prof. David Milgram at Stanford University. “And professional mathematicians have to go over the questions before they see the light of day."

These experts say the "new math, fuzzy math, integrated math" are not working and hat it's time to get back to basics or be counted out.

"If we're going to teach them something that isn’t math and call it math. They’re not going to learn what they need to know. The jobs out there are not going to be taken by Americans," Milgram said.