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.

Actually, they've expanded into a whole lot of other subjects and grade levels. But it started out as high school math. The videos, in my opinion, tend to be a bit duller than they need to be, but they explain things pretty well.

Cool. Thanks! I'll let her know about it and maybe I can use it myself if I need to brush up to help her out.

Casper got a lecture on the 1st day of 7th grade math (standard track) that students had a CHOICE to work hard and get on the honors track if they wanted.

She told me this, and then paused for a couple of minutes, and told me her goals was to get to honors math for 8th grade.

This from a girl who thinks she is not good at math! (She's okay. Her main problem is lack of memorization of times tables. She also went to gifted elementary with a few kids who were CRAZY good at math, so her standards for "good at math" may be inflated.)