I was interested in Vigilanteman's post at 9 above, where he said that Japan "does... a good job of integrating math, geometry and algebra instead of teaching them as separate topics." I was average at best at math and algebra, but scored on the 99th percentile on the county standardized geometry exam, so my teacher made me take the exam over under supervision, and I still scored at the tippy-top. She had been teaching them altogether, and my grades were Cs, but the standardized exam only focused on drawings and proofs. Guess I'm just right-brained. Funny, I went on to become a designer.
The kid that struggles with algebra will often excel at geometry. Algebra is so much abstraction, an linear thinking. But geometry is shapes, and getting it is more intuitive. Anyway, it's not unusual to see someone bad at algebra be good at geometry, and that can build confidence for the student struggling with math.