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EPGY is definitely more challenging for our son than ALEKS in the "6th Grade" level. I wish the folks at Stanford & UC Irvine (EPGY & ALEKS) could get together a develop a hybrid product.

I don't have much to offer here but I'll tell you my experience so far.

My son is in K just started getting pulled out for math and reading. Math is at the same time as recess so he has to miss half of his recess which he isn't happen about. Not only that but they forget to bring him to math a lot.

We've been doing EPGY at home for a little while so I suggested to the school that he be allowed to do that in his K class while they're doing math instead of going to 1st grade. I also explained that he's well into the 2nd grade material on there so 1st grade math is probably still not what he needs. Yesterday I was told that they probably won;t allow this because nobody would be able to sit there and watch him do the EPGY and if he did it all of the other kids would want to do it too (rolling eyes). I told the principal that he does it alone at home fine and doesn't need direction but she didn't seem to listen to that.

So right now he's not allowed to do it at school but I'm still fighting the fight on it. If I get anywhere I'll let you know

My DS5 is in K. A few months ago his teacher asked me to look up some math websites that might challenge him. I found EPGY through this list. We signed him up and the first words out of her mouth were, "can he do this in class?" I didn't even have to ask. After showing her how it works she immediately identified at least one other student who could benefit and asked if I could form a group. It didn't seem to even occur to her to "ask permission" for this type of instruction from any administrators as she has total control of her classroom.

How she works it into class is pretty simple. She has set times twice a day where the kids do "centers". Sometimes literacy centers and sometime math centers. There are many "centers" throughout the room that involve games, books, stories, math problems, you name it. Each center can be made easy or hard depending on the level of the children. Some of the centers use the computer stations, so my son does one session on EPGY during centers time. If time runs out he can just end the session and he can participate in the other centers if he wants. It's brilliant. I have to say she is the best teacher for my child and I think she is really smart herself.

As an aside, I live in Washington, DC and we have one of the worst school systems in the country and we are at the public school. Our school does draw from a highly educated population, but it just goes to show it depends so much on the teacher.

Also, we are paying for EPGY ourselves.

One thing my DS's teacher said to me was, I think he could focus and sit still more throughout the day if he was challenged more at least some of the time. (wow!) Perhaps you could convince a teacher to try it if she thought your child would be more compliant the rest of the day. Just a thought.

Feeling lucky,
Eleanor 05

We do something similar to EPGY (at least the online classroom bit), and we speak to schools directly and tell them about the benefits of signing their kids up to our program. Many schools that are under-funded (nearly all state schools in the UK are) find that our program is exceptionally good value for money, is not limited to a specific time, offers world-class tuition for independent thinkers, and actually gives the schools something to shout about.

If anyone wants advice on getting schools to see the benefits of these programs, get in contact with me - I'll very happy to offer any advice I can

That would be nice... I love EPGY, but I do think a few things need updating.

Hi Dandy,

Just saw the thread. If you don't mind me asking, how does the school assign DS's math grade for his official report cards?

We are in the very early stage of talking with the school for possible math acceleration ("above-grade" classroom vs. online learning), pending on what is "allowed" in the district. One of the concerns from the school was how will the student be graded if taking the course online? Do you take the average of daily percentile, use the end of the grade exam score, or throw a dart to determine the grade?

Thanks!
Mag

Dandy - how high up does ALEKS go? DS5 is using a computer program for his school now called "learning today" and it is really moving at the slowest pace ever. He gets so frustrated with the repetition and not being able to skip the repeated examples, etc. It still hasn't taught him anything in the math department to my knowledge. His school is in the process of assessing him for Math and all year have been giving him some random assignments that are between 4th-8th grade math material. So they are talking about what to do for next year. I have given them my opinions but not sure what they are doing as I have been told repeatedly that they are looking into "web based opportunities" and "telocommunication options." I am thinking (hopefully) that they may pick ALEKS due to financial aspects. They are also allowing him to use the singapore math workbooks in school that I bought him and the primary challenge math book. I am just wondering what they did with your DS for homework. One of the problems that we have now is that the teacher says that she does not have access to what DS is doing on the computer program so she does not give him the same kind of homework. She does give him advanced work, but just random assignments. It would be nice if homework built on what was being learned through EPGY or ALEKS. Does your school do this? How does it work?

In case it is helpful to anyone, I wanted to say that my DS8 (2nd grade) has been using aleks to replace math at school for about 2 weeks. So far it is working really well. At first I think it was a bit of a distraction for the other kids (curious about what he was doing), but that has settled down now and I guess the other kids just mostly ignore it. He started on 6th grade, but finished it in the first week. He is now doing pre-algebra and is about 75% finished.

As far as how they will determine grades for him, I believe they will still grade him on mastery of grade level stuff, but I have been forwarding the weekly reports that aleks sends me - shows how much time he spent working, what topics he mastered, etc. Seems this could be used for a grade if they wanted to.

We could also print homework from this, but the teacher said they were fine if I just signed that he did 1/2 hour of work online in the evening to replace math assignments (he would normally have math worksheets 2x/week). 1/2 hour is more than he would spend on the easy stuff they would send home, but he enjoys aleks and wants to spend more than 1/2 hour anyway and really hated the normal busy work.

My main concern was whether he should be doing something more challenging than aleks since he is moving through so quickly. I asked our family consultant (from DYS) about this. She said if he is happy with it and it is working well for school and home, I shouldn't worry about it for now. So, I am going with that opinion at this point. When he finishes this class, he should be ready for algebra. I believe aleks goes all the way up through many high school level classes.

Wow, this post got me looking to see what EPGY is, as someone had mentioned it as a possibility for DS7 next year instead of ALEKS, and it appears that EPGY is rather expensive! I can see why the school would be leaning toward ALEKS instead, although I don't know that they have heard of EPGY.

I hope we do ok with ALEKS next time!

EPGY is expensive on its own, but it's not badly priced through Open Enrollment.