My DS 11 started middle school this year and the school is using IXL diagnostic math for him to work on independently in class. Is anyone familiar with this program? Is this good for advanced math students? Is there another program that might be better for him to do at home that is free or low cost? Thanks!

Thanks Portia. I will look into this. I am not a math person at all so feeling a little lost on what would be good. I spoke with DS and he said he was doing prealgebra problems last year when he still had access to his elementary math program. He has been doing some problems in algebra now and some calculus in the IXL program and really enjoys them. I think he would be ready for pre-algebra.

IXL is a good program to ensure kids master topics but it requires a lot of work and only teaches if you miss the question. I think many kids lack the discipline required to learn a lot through IXL.

As Portia indicated, AoPS is probably the best program for mathy kids. Their site has so much information and so many tools. Alcumus, Mathcounts Trainer, the Forum, the classes...

If your kid really likes math and is interested in learning, perhaps you could buy the Intro to Number Theory or the Counting and Probability books from AoPS and have him work through those.

My DS9 likes Khan Academy (free), but kids need some discipline or supervision to benefit from it. It has nice, optional videos to watch for all of the skills.

Thanks everyone for the resources. Thanks for the positive feedback ruazkaz regarding IXL. My son is pretty disciplined but does not have much supervision on what he is studying. I am grateful for some other options for him. Thanks!

My son hated IXL. He thought you got penalized too much for missing even one problem.

If your kid is pretty disciplined you might be able to go through AoPS pre-algebra using just the videos. Like ruazkaz said the Alcumus and Mathcounts Trainer is absolutely the best. You can vary the level and keep track of strengths and weaknesses. It is the best way to learn and not rush through a particular curriculum. Plenty of solutions to each problem.

Art of Problem Solving Volume 1: The Basics, is a great book to start with at this age.

IXL can be brutal and I know of many kids brought to tears by their grading algorithm...but my son still thinks it was worthwhile.

Initially, he would keep going until he got 100 on every exercise but finally he would go until he reached 90, then keep going but if he missed one he would stop and consider the exercise complete.

My son has used IXL at school, and has an unfavourable opinion of it. The subjects progress too slowly, which can be problematic if you have to meet a given benchmark of completion to "prove" mastery. I much prefer pen and paper options, like Sinagpore Math, which have end of chapter tests that allow you to test out of levels quickly.

We've also been required to sign up for Redbird's new version of EPGY at my son's school. I've been unimpressed with the GUI, to say the least, and have spent several hours troubleshooting a technical issue on their end.

That is wise of your son to look at it like that. It comes in time I guess.

Perfectionism made it not fun for my son when he was younger I suppose.

He got better with Mathcounts Trainer and Alcumus, He was still to worried about being on leader boards than trying to complete to 46 and moving on.

It is funny re getting to 46, son is in 9th and was practicing and dropped his score to 44 and started getting frustrated trying to get it back to 46. Believe me, there were times when it was awful with IXL...many bad times but overall very good. He used it as a method of teaching math and it is not good for that.

We used EPGY too and it was ok til we hit Geometry and there were so many technical issues that we stopped. At the time, we were not familiar with AoPS but used them instead of EPGY and never looked back. AoPS is great!!

Thanks everyone for the feedback. It definitely gives me more options for DS. He does not complain about IXL but he is unsupervised and enjoys the freedom of picking any problems he wants to work on. He does not seem to care about wrong answers but loves the challenge so of course goes straight to the calculus problems. I am hoping that he gets exposure to more of a variety of math subjects so he does not have learning gaps. He tried alcumus last night and really enjoyed the number theory problems. I am thinking about getting him the intro book as a start.