Sorry to make this the "All ALEKS, All the Time" channel, but I have one last comment (for now, anyhow).
When I switched our son over from 5th to 6th in ALEKS, his initial assessment showed him 85% complete for 6th. This made absolutely no sense to me, as I assumed that there'd be more new material than that to which he'd not yet been exposed. He's a smart kid and all, but c'mon.
It took a few calls to get someone at ALEKS to talk with me about this in any detail. In their program, the feller said, there is considerable overlap between the grades, just like in the state curriculum (according to him). And that because my son had already finished 5th inside of ALEKS, they didn't test him on anything in 6th that was already covered in 5th. In fact, the "placement" or "initial" assessment only asked him about 35 questions in all (mostly on new concepts), totally ignoring anything that he'd already "mastered" in the 5th grade level.
I'm tempted to have him take the assessment again as a new ALEKS student (via a free test drive) to see how he'd do. But I've got bigger fish to tackle and other metaphors to mix.
Then again, he did hit 94% on his school's end-of-year test for 6th, so go figure.
