ggoebel: Thanks for the suggestion about establishing level of performance and/or mastery. This is actually where I think I will be going. I'm waiting to here from the teacher as to when is a good time to observe. After that, I think I will ask if son can take some of the mastery tests from the end of the curriculum.
When I spoke with the consultant at Saxon she suggested that I ask to review the whole curriculum and then see if son could pass some of the assessments at the end of the curriculum. She emphasized how the assessments are not cumulative, often repetitive and there is not just one assessment that would give us an idea of mastery. But I think if we could at least give son some assessments for material that hasn't been taught yet then the math teacher would start to understand what I mean. And you are right, I can't really ask them to teach at his level if we don't really know what level that is.
I don't think he is ready for Aleks yet, but will keep it in my toolbox as I'm sure it will come in handy later! Meantime, he is doing 1st to 2nd grade math computer games and workbooks at home. And we do lots of enrichment with games and what I call "functional math." So he is learning in spite of attending school!
