If you wouldn't want a teacher who couldn't read at a high school level teaching your kid to read, why would you want a teacher who can't do algebra teaching your elementary student math?
Well, it's a fair question. Actually, I'm not sure that all of DD's teachers can actually read and write at a true 12th grade level. But I suppose the answer is that occasionally, in the course of reading and writing even at the third grade level, you may run into a much more advanced concept, word, or skill, and you'd like the teacher to be able to explain it. I see how the same could possibly hold for math--and yet, realistically, a child is much more likely to run into the word "phenomenon" or to ask about how to use a colon than he or she is to ask how to graph a function. Or so it seems to me, with the very real exception of kids like ours.
I realize that I am coming at this with the prejudices of someone who is no longer all that functional in high school math. (I can certainly do basic algebra and geometry and all the other basic stuff of math that one uses in daily living, and I've picked up some basic stats, but ask me to write a complex proof or do trig? Forget it. I'm high average at math, at best. I never took calculus, and I worked hard to get a B+ in trig.) I'm perfectly comfortable helping my second grader with her homework, but she does ask theoretical math questions that stump me a bit at times--however, she shows signs of being gifted in math.
