As a kid from eastern europe, my first algebra lessons were in 1st grade. I was always baffled by algebra being introduced in grade 5 or 6 here in the US; grade 8 would be ridiculous. Kids my age in my hometown would be taking early calculus at that grade level.

We had algebra in kindergarten. By 6th grade we were doing calculus of variations.

Same here. Started algebra II just before kindergarten and finished linear algebra by next summer.

At my daughters school they had algebra in 6th and 7th grade, and it was only about an hour south of San Francisco. San Francisco is outlier bad in education in the US, and it is surrounded by a dozen communities with outlier-good schools. It is a double outlier.

https://schools.latimes.com/sat-scores/ranking/page/1/

South Bay public schools are leagues better than SFUSD, less politics and a lot more competitive

SF is actually contorting itself (ie, blatantly lying) to avoid showing the standardized test results which show how badly this policy has performed.