DW consulted with me, and I stated my position: I do not want DD to attend any tutoring, as this would be an indication the school could use to show how DD was not ready for 4th grade, and should be held back. DD was adequately prepared for the 3rd grade version (iLEAP) when she was homeschooled through 2nd and 3rd grades for approximately 3 hours a day, they have her for 8 hours and are responsible for advancing her only one grade level, so there are no excuses.
In my bitter experience, bad teaching can undo wonderful previous learning. Last year my DS11 had a fantastic teacher. He got As and Bs in math without any help from us or outside tutoring. He's verbally gifted but not super-mathy. His end-of-year test scores were very good, with more than half in the 8th stanine range and none below the 5th or 6th (don't remember). Great.
Fast forward to this year.
The entire 6th grade has been forced into pre-algebra and he is LOST. The book is a dog's dinner of bad mathematics and the teacher has been nicknamed Math Harpy by another member of this forum. DS11 generally gets Ds and Fs. Between the Harpy and the non-textbook, we aren't surprised. IMO, my eldest son (taking pre-calculus at age 13 and won the school math award in 7th grade) would have crapped out in this course.
We finally started DS11 with a math tutor in December (2-3 times per week), where he's reviewing elements of 5th grade math (NOT pre-algebra), with sixth grade math to follow later. The last time he was there, he did 10 sections with his teacher in an hour (average in this center is 3-4). He says, "Math is my friend again."
My advice to you is to
teach your daughter or get her a good tutor. I agree that teaching her is the school's job, but
she's the one who's going to be lost to mathematics if she doesn't learn how to work with fractions, and
you and your wife are the only people who can save her. If the school was going to give her a proper understanding of mathematics, it would have done so by now. Sure, they can slap a Band-Aid on her, and it may get her through high-stakes tests.
But that doesn't mean she'll actually understand anything. And unfortunately, they may very well decide to hold her back if she doesn't pass. Perhaps they will even use her failure as a justification for claiming, "Sorry, your kid isn't gifted."
