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Oops, sorry..
Yes, the linked article is the one I was referring to

Hi Lori,

My dd8 is schedule to start honors pre-algebra this fall. She had to take the placement test from JHU CTY for grades 5-7 before being allowed to sign up for the class. She will also be tested for placement the first week of school for math placement there. The JHU CTY placement test is pretty comprehensive and difficult (they actually had some trig and advance algebra questions thrown in there). Maybe you could have your son take a placement test or do an out of level test?

CFK ^^AoPS classes are an eye opener, aren't they

My son "did" a serious math camp this summer. It was an eye opener for him (AoPS was more of the same for me), a true eye opener.
I will write more about his experience when he gets back home from a boy scout camp.

Also, my dd likes working on the CML problems. They are very challenging and really tests their problem solving ability and higher reasoning. I believe Mathcounts also publishes books that have all the problems they used in competition.

Bianca, does your DD do it^^ by herself, in a clasroom or with you?

I recommend including some enrichment like Ed Zaccarro books along with ALEKS or regular elementary classroom math. Once you get to algebra AoPS and math contests are good forms of enrichment. Elementary and secondary math education is lacking in this country. I went through Calculus in high school and made all A's. When I got to college I realized that I learned a great deal of "how to do math" in K-12 but not much about "the whys behind the math." I figured much of that out in my college level engineering classes. It was not that the concepts were difficult; it had more to do with the way the concepts were presented.

Oh, sing it, sister! That's how I felt about my math education, too, and it's one of the things I'm really trying to avoid with DS7. I want him to be a thinker in math, not just a doer, like I was/am.

Kriston, et al, you might find this interesting; right now in our elementary school system there is a struggle between folks who have instituted a new system of math based on the whys and what fors behind math (pattern recognition, estimation, etc.), and parents who feel their kids are not getting enough ROTE math work to reinforce concepts. Really, I think we are lucky they are at least trying to go broad, and when Dh and I feel ds8 needs more rote work on an area, we cover that at home. - The repetitive work is the easiest part to work on at home, imo.
I mean literally I see ds8 coming home with work dealing with concepts applicable to computer science, science in general, pure math, (math for funs sake!) etc. In 1st grade he was inspired to make up a game involving tallying up various truck types as we drive. We still enjoy playing this one on the road together, and the accompanying discussion of why in this area or city there might be more of one type... Maybe the whole system will be a bust, but I see my son still enjoying math, so I think that is ok.

Ah, yes, these are the Math Wars.

FWIW (not much!), I do think that there's a need for practice of arithmetic skills. I just don't think that arithmetic = math, and I don't think drill-and-kill is the way to teach math.