The responses here have been great as always!
As DS starts 9th grade + Alg II in the fall, he's gonna be in a sink or swim situation and I'm really hoping to get him at least treading water before then.
To his credit, after a discussion last night, he acknowledged that his A/B in math the past couple years aren't a fair representation of his performance because of the giveaway homework portion of the grade that has been masking his underlying problem.
Another email from the teacher reiterated her confidence that the accuracy on tests and the neater work habits were issues related more to maturity than anything else and that they would likely resolve on their own in a few years. (!?!?!)
The challenge for us, of course, is that he'll be a junior in a few years, which might be cutting things a bit close.
I know (or at least think I know) that he can do the work now, but nothing his dear old ogre of a dad can say will help. I've already begun reaching out to other people within his school.
The suggestion I'm running with is to lock him in a smaller box at night and also require that he work out all missed problems on his test with me, step by grueling step. The teacher that suggested this said that he definitely missed a lot of the "process" drilling during the years he did on independent study. He said his pre-alg classes will often only get one or two problems per night, but that they must be 100% complete, showing every blessed step along the way.
I suspect that I can blather on all I want about "show your work" and "take your time" but that he'll be better served by actually going through the process. And then, suspects the teacher, DS will decide that it's better to take a little more time on the actual test, and NOT have to teach his ogre-dad Geometry at night.
