Dear Editor,
I enjoyed reading Friday’s Dispatch about the eighth-grade promotions to high school; but I am also feeling sad because I know some of those promoted will have difficulty in high school because they really don’t read well or they have great difficulty in math.
It may come as a surprise to many of you but quite a few of these incoming high school students do not know the addition and multiplication facts that you probably mastered before you entered fifth grade. The high school teachers aren’t miracle workers. How can they teach any really significant math to those who don’t know the number facts? They can’t! Is there anything that can be done this summer to help these students before school starts?
Lower grade teachers and administrators, are you working on your plans for this coming year to make sure all students master the number facts?
It won’t help these entering high school this fall; but I hope part of the new extra math instruction period the school board approved for middle schools will include yearly testing of each student individually to see if the student has almost instantaneous recall of all the number facts.
For students who have not mastered these facts I hope they will be given daily, individualized teaching of those facts until they are mastered. This should be a high priority and will certainly help them to learn the rest of the math in their curriculum. I also hope the school board will adopt minimum eighth-grade reading and math test scores to be promoted to high school.
David Fenley Clark, retired math teacher, Gilroy
The Golden Quill is awarded occasionally for a well-written letter.
