I think wine is the correct next step.

That sounds right.

Wouldn't it be better for them to kick ass at regular math and get comfortable with it there, rather than struggle with accelerated and dread the subject?

Thanks Hec and Connie. Emmett's experience is precisely what I would worry about for her. She so dreaded math last year, and it was such a heartbreaking slog. We do have a tutor for her that she started to work with last Spring. I'm going to ask the tutor to work with her mostly on math and test taking strategies. I figure I can work with her on the English and the history at home.

Mac is not in any high level classes even though he is completely capable of being in at least 2. He won't do the work required so it is it worth trying to push and drag him.

In my experience, putting kids into more difficult math classes when they're not ready for them is a recipe for disaster. The ones who are good at school stuff will figure out tricks and methods for how to get the right answers, but never actually learn anything, and those tricks that they figure out will often be based on totally wrong ideas that they'll have to unlearn in later classes.

Em is going into pre-calc this year which is on the accelerated track. We are a little concerned about it, but it's where her math teacher thinks she should be. She also has AP English, AP Biology, and a college-credit history class. I took that kind of course load in HS too, but I remember it wasn't easy. The other scary thing about it is that it's been a long time since I've done any calc and my wife never took it, so she may be getting beyond our ability to help out.

A little warning if you use Autotrader since I'm thinking of it after getting an Autotrader alert in my email. When I signed up to get alerts on some saved searches, I hadn't logged in in a long time so I had forgotten my password and it wasn't in my password manager for some reason. So I used the 'forgot my password' thingie and they e-mailed me my ACTUAL PASSWORD. If they can tell me what my password actually is, I really question their commitment to security.

Rest assured that with what I'm working on (that I can't say much about until later this year) that we don't store your actual password anywhere.

Em is going into pre-calc this year which is on the accelerated track. We are a little concerned about it, but it's where her math teacher thinks she should be. She also has AP English, AP Biology, and a college-credit history class. I took that kind of course load in HS too, but I remember it wasn't easy. The other scary thing about it is that it's been a long time since I've done any calc and my wife never took it, so she may be getting beyond our ability to help out.

Khan Academy can be pretty useful.

What is Khan Academy?

It's a bunch of online videos, explaining pretty much every high school math concept.