OP, you sould rightly frustrated. I have not been impressed by any online math instruction. It can work as supplement or as a toy, but not to replace instruction. Instruction happens best in person. Do you have some time each week to site with your kids? You might want to look into getting some Singapore workbooks instead if you feel as though the schools can't or won't educate your kids appropriately.
If I sound frustrated here, you should see my other posts about Gifted Deniers...
Anyway folks here is what I'm doing. We went with Mathletics. Its based on Flash. The minus is no Flash on iPad (but they may be developing a custom app for the future). The plus is it is more graphical and manipulative than ALEKS.
I generally sit with my kids and work through it with them. Though, they seem to take the ball and run with it and do Mathletics on their own more and more. A tad easier to use than ALEKS.
FWIW my experience is we barely need the explanations anyway. I feel like both my DD6 and DS5 can do all the work up through 5th grade. We just need the software to delineate and organize the topics that cover that. And drill them a bit. I guess my approach is to give them the big picture even if we are losing some drills and depth on that. I mean for GT parents and their GT kids, how hard can this stuff be right? For example, now that we raced ahead to prime numbers, which is normally not taught until like 4th or 5th grade, that helps them understand simplifying fractions back on the 2nd grade material. Or, memorizing the times table early makes a lot of the earlier material easier and make more sense.
