The courses benefit teachers, too. California teachers say that Math A empowers them. Although the state department of education compiled the Math A units, teachers may choose which units they cover and the exams and materials they use. Change isn't easy Because reform initiatives met with initial resistance in both states, changing the curriculum required some politicking and readjustment. In California, for example, some teachers complained about the lack of a textbook for the Math A course and the amount of additional preparation required to teach it.
Teachers also seem to be shooting at a moving target.
In the schools studied, teachers face high rates of student mobility and student absenteeism. High percentages of students transfer in and out of the schools, so that teachers must work with different subsets of students in the same semester, complicating attempts to prepare students for the next course in the sequence. Another problem compromises the success of transitional math programs. Some upper-level students take the transition math courses only because they need to earn an additional math credit. This practice was more common in the Rochester and San Diego school districts, which require students to have three math credits to graduate, in comparison to two credits in Buffalo and San Francisco.