Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Math placement.

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1.) Can the school accommodate an acceleration of that many years? If he is in elementary, does the elementary school have kids doing Algebra? And once he finishes Algebra, then what?

2) Does he have gaps in knowledge? For instance DS8 also scored very high on MAP (like maybe a 9th grade equivalent), but he is very shaky on some lower level concepts because most of what he knows comes from Khan Academy and he's done very little actual practice. He also does very well with multiple choice tests and can guess well without knowing exactly how to do the computations.

3) Is there an actual pencil/paper pre-test the school can give him of lower level concepts to make sure he doesn't have large gaps?

4)Is his writing good enough for Algebra, and if not are any accommodations in place? Executive functioning ability to organize and remember assignments? DD was accelerated to 8th grade math when she was 8, and the teacher expected her to be able to take notes, show her work, and organize her notebook like a kid in middle school. She has ADHD so does poorly with that anyway, but it was a major problem.

In my district the youngest grade I've ever heard a student take Algebra class in was 5th grade. Setting them up for Calculus as a H.S. freshman. The scale I'm talking about is one kid every few years in a huge district. In order to take this in 5th grade the district required parent transport to the junior high to take the class with the 7th graders (~1/5 students at our junior high used take Algebra in 7th grade), and when they went to junior high transport to the high school. One of my son's classmates in his gifted program did this.

My husband who (years & years ago) finished all of H.S. math by the end of junior high did it by being tutored and going very quickly in middle school. (6-8) Rather than moving to Algebra in elementary school. This was before homeschooling & all these online programs existed.

As to what class your son might be able to take next fall. Has you school switched to "Common Core"? If so you know the difference in their math sequences? If the district uses Common Core in junior high perhaps the class you should look at your son taking would be the Common Core 8 class. It's a cross between pre-Algebra, beginning Algebra & some Geometry.

That is extremely high for an 8-year-old, but no - our school would not do it. I hope that your school is more flexible. If he likes AoPS, I would ask the school if they would allow him to continue with it (and if not, have him do AoPS outside of school anyway). This is the same position we are in right now with our 2 DYS, btw. Extremely high MAP scores, high IQ test scores, high out-of-level test results...but school is completely inflexible claiming the "Common Core" requires each stay in their age-for-grade math.

I hope that you have better luck than we are having. DD9 is about to start an AoPS course this summer, and DS6 is doing Beast Academy. All of this is, unfortunately, outside of school.

If your school is willing to do next grade in pre-Algebra with the idea of Algebra in 4th I'd go for it. Worst thing that happens is he it doesn't work out and he repeats next years class. Sounds more advanced than most schools I know.

In my opinion the skill for Algebra you son can't do without solid practice is fractions. Adding, multiplying, LCD, HCM, and reducing with fractions into the two digit over three digit range until he is very comfortable and recognizes the tricks to solve problems faster. If he really has only seen some of these topics briefly in Khan & AoPS that might not be enough. I've tutored 8th grade students in Algebra that struggled primarily because they were still uncomfortable and slow at manipulating fractions. But since it sounds like your son is talking Pre-Algebra next year that should give him a lot of practice with fractions. It's usually a big topic in any Pre-Algebra class.

I was just asking a friend this exact same question. We are in the same boat (our son is 8/2nd grade as well). Her advice was to take a look at the curriculum (sometimes pre-algebra in one place is harder than algebra in another place). Our son wants to do algebra as he hates repetition but I see value in it (to some extent). I think we will wait till fall to figure things out (will see what sort of MAP growth he has over the summer and also because I am tapped out with schools right now !

In my opinion the quality of the course and teacher has a lot/everything to do with what your next steps are.

My ds12 was scoring similar in 2nd on MAPS and other test. The tests will give an evaluation of strengths and weakness. At the end of 2nd according to NWEA his strengths were Measurement and Problem Solving and weakness was Algebra and Functions. Another test he took spring of the same year within weeks evaluated his Strengths were Computations and Algebra Functions and Weakness was problem solving.

If your son has gone through the AoPS Pre-Algebra book, anything he does at the school will not be a challenge for him. The online courses are more challenging and different from the books so you might want to have him do that. Also look at their Intro to Number Theory and Intro to Counting and Probability courses.

My son did the books and is now repeating the courses via their online option. He is in 6th grade and is finishing Algebra II.

I am a big fan of AoPS and definitely prefer its curriculum over the poor implementations of the Common Core.

Further, as the Standardised testing ends up cumulatively killing about a full year of tuition over 12 years if you want your children to have Calculus under their belts by University you have to do something extra, homeschool entirely or go the private school route.

I have also read The Calculus Trap by Rusczyk and agree with its message. I am not in a rush to have my DD master what I would call HS level Maths (which includes Calculus BC) but in order to compete internationally for a STEM place at Uni I think she will need it (was that coherent?).

I have slowed things down a little - DD did AoPS Pre-alg (I&II) when she was 8/9 and Algebra I when she was 9/10. She did this after school and it ended up being just the right side of too much but close enough to make me back off. She gets it conceptually but doing it to strict deadlines after a full day of school and a lot of school homework was just taking too long.

Her future middle school is testing her with the end of middle school exam used to test for honours placement in HS on Thursday. I am not prepping her at all mainly because I want to see where she is having taken a break for a few months from AoPS Maths. We will see where she ends up. One potential option is to bus her to the HS but I do not want that. I would rather she just does the AoPS books in the library on her own instead but the school wants her to be in a class for the 'cooperative learning' (hogwash).

I am going to 'dilute' the mixture/titrate the dosage down by having DD work through the AoPS books first and take the classes after that. It will still involve after school work but it will be less intense.

I just do not see an ex-AoPS curriculum having the same rigour and challenge.

Side note to ruazkaz - which AoPS course(s) did you find so different from the text? We've only done Algebra I, but it was 100% the text, plus an extra ~10 challenge questions each week. I had been assuming this would be the same for the other courses for which there was a text?

To the OP, I would agree that if your DS has done all of the AoPS pre-Algebra text, they've probably already gone further and deeper than his school will, and he's ready for Algebra I academically, if not logistically. Perhaps there's some way he could do AoPS Algebra I while in his regular school, rather than travelling to another?

Some of the different views above, however, cause me to ask the question, has he fully done AoPS pre-Algebra, or just the basics? If he hasn't yet worked through the full set of challenge problems provided, then he could probably gain a lot by going back through the book in detail - perhaps while sitting in his school's pre-Algebra class, but while he focuses on the AoPS pre-Algebra challenge problems related to the topic at hand.

We are in fact (re-)doing something like this: DS 10 and I whomped through the AoPS pre-Algebra text in about 6 weeks last fall to get all the basic concepts, which were mostly new (he had only grade 4 regular math at the time), but which he grasped easily. We did all the associated Alcumus pre-Algebra questions but very few of the problems in the book. We figured we had "done" AoPS pre-Algebra. Nyet.

We then did (most of!) Algebra I on-line as an after school (though we couldn't quite keep up to the end). This is where I learned that the Alcumus problems are pretty straightforward applications of the concepts, when compared to what's in the text. We are now going back and re-doing the challenge questions in the Pre-Algebra text. Although DS grasped the concepts easily enough the first time, and didn't have conceptual difficulty with the Algebra course either, I am finding it worthwhile to go backwards and REALLY learn how to apply these seemingly simple concepts in all sorts of devious ways. I am humbly recognizing the need for depth over speed here, before we go on to Algebra II.

Sully, great thread.... I too have a DS8 in 2nd grade with fairly similar scores. He is underserved in his current public school's "upper math" class. For enrichment we have him in a local Math Circle at the University and EPGY at home. He is currently at the 5.6 grade level and trending towards 6th in EPGY. My wife and I both work so we squeeze in EPGY when we can. Question to all of you. At what level do you think it would be appropriate to transition him to AOPS Pre Algebra? I believe EPGY said end of 7th in their curriculum? I ordered the book and solution guide yesterday to take a peak:)

I am fascinated and amazed by all of your kids progress. Question, are you all fairly strong in math and able to go through these classes/lessons with your children yourself? We often watch the Kahn Academy video's on new subjects that he must learn. I find myself having to relearn many of the lessons myself:) I often wonder if I am doing my child a disservice(holding him back) by my own shortcomings in teaching and math. I was thinking about hiring a tutor. Would love to hear your thoughts.

DS says quite different, I am not able to compare.

DS did Intro to Number Theory via textbook. I read the online courses were different so we tried this one out (you can drop before the 3rd lesson and get a refund). DS said they do not use the book at all- similar topics but different descriptions, etc. He likes the online course very much so we plan to also repeat Intro to Counting and Probability and Intro to Geometry. I am happy to slow him down a bit.

I originally thought I could save by just having him self-study but am ok to pay if he finds online course useful.

Similar to another post, DS is working all challenge problems in the AoPS Algebra textbook. He is completing Algebra II in school and is solid in Algebra (AIME qualifier this year). I still thought it worthwhile to purchase the AoPS Algebra textbook to see if he is solid in Algebra. There are quite a few of the challenge problems in the Algebra book that give him some trouble.

We plan to get through the Algebra book and then do the online Intermediate Algebra, beginning in about April after AMC and hopefully AIME.

We haven't done EPGY, so I can't speak to that specific transition. However, I personally found the AoPS pre-Algebra book seemed to contain absolutely everything a child ought to have learned by that point from K on up. We came into it from grade 4, and most of the concepts were new, but well-explained and the problems worked you up from basic to seriously hard. My own experience is that you could do the pre-algebra instead of other courses (like grades 5-7!) to learn these materials, as long as you were able to take your own pace and spend as long as needed on the parts that were wholly new. You probably wouldn't want to try an AoPS on-line course without more pre-requirements though, as these move fast (i.e. a chapter a week, typically), and as I note in the previous post, it really is worth every minute you put in to working through all the harder problems in the text.


I'm a serious artsy, though I do have two years of university calculus from (egad) three decades back. I'm embarrassed to tell you how much I learned from the pre-Algebra book, never mind the Algebra. Even accounting for all I've forgotten, there's a ton there I never learned in the first place, especially in the whys and hows of things (which is why I LOVE AoPS - everything from first principles, everything for a reason, no rote processes). So I have to do the text/courses side-by-side with DS, and it's no small struggle to keep up. I assure myself that I am postponing dementia for a least a decade with this work! At some point he will truly leave me behind, but I'll keep going as long as I can. I can still out-compute him with ease, but he blows me away on all the conceptual bits...

My DD does the AoPS challenge problems in the book, Alcumus and the ones from the class.

IHO, the Alcumus ones are the easiest, the book ones sometimes make her stop and think but the hand graded one from the class almost always makes her stop and think.

Also, be sure to spend the extra money on the solutions manual as sometimes they reveal neat alternate ways of arriving at the same answer on the book problems.

Very good thought. DS often gets there a different route, or even using a totally different technique, so it's helpful to see how else the problem could be approached.

I will do the same in your shoes (i.e. stay with AOPS curriculum), no need backing off a great curriculum if she is doing well with it.

Re EPGY - my son did EPGY from 3rd up until Geometry. We had significant issues with their Geometry platform (proof environment) and then had a very bad experience trying to sort it out. Ultimately it was taking too long so we went to AoPS. I wish we had done AoPS from the start, although EPGY was much better than what he was doing at school.

We have not done the competition book yet, although he did do a weekend session for the AMC10 prep. We plan to do the full AMC 10 prep this year.