The night before I visited Suzanne Mayer's seventh-grade math classroom, I had a nightmare.

I dreamt Highline administrators dug up my old "Permanent Record," noted my math scores and revoked my Highline High diploma until I passed the WASL math test.

Fortunately, my visit was just to interview the Chinook Middle School teacher who had written me such a heartfelt letter. (See the letter at the bottom of this column)

Setting off Mayer was a Seattle TV reporter who stuck a microphone in her face and demanded, "What are you going to do in your classroom this year to ensure success for your students?"

What showed up later on television was a "very simple 30-second report on a very complicated problem," Mayer related.

Chinook in SeaTac made the news because no other Western Washington school is as far along on federal "Leave No Child Behind" sanctions.

I was a little cranky going into Chinook. I had been there and done the story before. Last year I wrote about the challenging demographics and the great new programs designed to turn things around.

But the school still failed.

I told Mayer that if the school was a pro sports team (except for the Mariners), the principal and teachers would have been fired long ago.

"If the solutions were out there, if we were ignoring all the data, we should be fired," Mayer replied. "But in reality, we are paying attention. We are constantly re-evaluating, shouting from the rooftops for more resources, doing a lot on our own.

"We are working 1000 percent, but we know it is not enough."

Maybe the district has been working so hard on literacy that math got ignored, I suggested.

"If a kid can't read, he can't do the math. He has to read the question. It's not just computation, there's the explanation piece," Meyer said.

There's been less research on math education so there is not a definitive answer on how to raise math scores quickly, according to Mayer.

"If there was an answer everybody would be doing it," Mayer said. "We know the goal. We just don't know how to get there."

Doesn't the WASL provide the accountability needed, I asked.

"Accountability in education is a very good thing. But the WASL doesn't measure progress. It measures the finish line," she replied.

Mayer added she might be able to bring a student up two grade levels in math from fourth grade to sixth grade in one year, but her students are tested on seventh-grade math skills.

"Making progress is not the end," Mayer said. "But my job is not done until every kid crosses the finish line."

Chinook's immigrant population does make for challenges, I suggested.

Mayer said she see a lot of frustrated parents during conferences.

"They came to this country for opportunity and they're kind of saying to me, 'Don't blow it.' Their kids might be different. Maybe they don't understand. We have to focus on the idea that education is opportunity."

On going on to higher education, Mayer says the students whose parents didn't go to college "don't have the drill down. It feels to them like climbing a mountain."

But take the students on a field trip to Microsoft where they can see professionals who look like them, they come back behaving differently. They even sit up in their chairs differently, Mayer said.

I asked her about a couple of education fads that look kind of squirrelly to the layman.

One is the theory that if you just teach the teachers, the kids will succeed. Paired with this is the idea of giving the students, who already are not learning enough, extra days off from school to make time for this added "professional development."

Is "professional development" that important?

"Absolutely," Mayer said. "A teacher must be willing to re-examine her teaching. Even the smartest kid could be better taught."

As for extra days off for students, "If the students are out for one day but you get one good idea that gets you five days ahead in the classroom, it's worth it."

When I learned Mayer spent 18 years as a tax attorney and certified public accountant for a Fortune 50 company before coming to Chinook, I had one last question, "Are you crazy?"

"When I get up at 5 a.m. and come park in a dirt driveway, I sometimes remember that I used to have a 21st floor corner office in New York," she said.

"There is no logic to this job. At the end of the day, we (teachers) love our kids even though we know what we do is never enough.

"I never had a bonus as good as the moment when a light bulb goes off in a student's head.

"It's very cool-much better than being a lawyer."

Eric Mathison can be reached at hteditor@robinsonnews.com or 206-388-1855.

(Editor's Note: Following is Suzanne Mayer's letter to the editor.)

On Tuesday, September 6th, KING 5 reporter Linda Brill came into my math classroom at Chinook Middle School, in the Highline School District. Having seen the preliminary WASL scores for my previous year's students, I knew why she was visiting our school. She asked me the questions that all my friends and family have been asking, "So how does it feel teaching math at a school where the WASL scores are so low, and what is your plan for this year?"

I gave her a number of different answers but in the end there really is no good response to that question. I take mathematics education classes, attend meetings, pore over research, collaborate with colleagues, and spend hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to deliver the best math lessons available to my classes. Like many others in my profession, I spend many more hours than I am paid for and spend my own earnings to pay for resources public schools and the students cannot afford. In the end, so far, it is still not enough to make all of my students successful in math.

I wish I had an answer to the other question Linda Brill asked, "What are you going to do in your classroom this year to ensure success for your students?" I know that in my school the teaching and administrative staff spends many hours discussing research on a variety of subjects, we visit each other's classrooms to see what works and what does not work, we review endless test scores, standardized as well as those that come from our curriculums. We are continually looking for patterns in our data to see if we can determine where there are holes in the knowledge of our students. We look at data by classroom, by class period, by teacher, by every data point available. We bring in professionals, researchers, and master teachers on every subject that we teach our students. We discuss school environment, classroom management, and assessment techniques. We test our assumptions, and then go back and begin our investigations over again. In the end, that too, is still not enough to make all of our students successful.

My message to Governor Gregoire, Linda Brill and the host of concerned parents and individuals who care about the state of education in Washington is that all our efforts are not enough and it will not be enough until all of our students are successful. If there is a solution that we have missed, tell us and we will immediately incorporate that into our classrooms. Until then we will continue to do what we have been doing, educating ourselves and constantly seeking the answers that we are all looking for.

I do want you to know that I bring to school each and every day thoughtful, passionate and endless dedication. Before becoming a teacher three years ago, I was a senior tax attorney in a Fortune 50 company and I know what hard work looks like and I know it exists in my school. The teaching and administrative staff at Chinook Middle School is filled with the most hopeful, positive group of individuals I have ever had the pleasure to call colleagues and friends, because we do know what is at stake if we fail.

I urge parents to look at the data, ALL of the data, not just the results of one test that, while important, is not everything that you need to know about our school OR our kids. Our students are not up to standard yet but we know our jobs as teachers are not done until they are. Leave the cameras behind, come to our classrooms; watch us in action, look at the gains our kids have made since coming to our school. Then we can work together to find solutions so that all our kids can succeed.

Suzanne Mayer

7th Grade Math Teacher

Chinook Middle School