Thanks so much! That gives me a lot more confidence asking for Algebra 1 for him when we go in for a meeting. There is only one 8th grade Algebra class at the middle school here, and a high school math teacher comes over to teach it. That kind of gives you an idea of the population - a child like my son is highly unusual here and people just don't know what to do with him, so I've found acceleration to be the only solution. They don't like the scheduling headache that I am causing them, and a big excuse that I am hearing against acceleration is that "he will be overwhelmed with the transition to middle school enough without adding an advanced math class to it." My thought is that taking a math class that is the equivalent of what he studied 2 years previously would be much more of a problem to adjust to than one that is at the right level.

Thanks so much for all of your help!
Melisa