I do not know the teachers quoted in the Aug. 31 article "Guidelines encourage minorities in math." As a sixth-grade math teacher in Wake County, I start the year telling all of my students that pre-algebra in seventh grade is their goal. At my school, failure is not an option. We work before school, after school, during lunch and in our classes to help students achieve their fullest potential.
At my school, I would like school board member John Tedesco to know, we do not focus on students' income levels instead of their academic ability. Many comments in this article were so insulting to the dedicated math teachers who work with the students of Wake County.
I am committed to seeing whether the SAS analysis is a good system. I have concerns. In some cases, a student's chance of being successful in algebra in eighth grade can change over 40 percent from one year to the next. If it leads to more student academic success, it will be an invaluable tool. But it is the math teachers who work every day in the classrooms sharing their love of mathematics to the excited and reluctant students who also lead to great academic progress.
