<p>Well our school would have told thumper’s kid was that in their experience kids who were in the top third of 7th grade math did fine with Algebra in 8th grade, and most went on to do fine with AB or BC Calculus or AP Stats as seniors. (They used to only have about 15% of the class do algebra in 8th grade). I see no reason to close those doors in 7th grade if your kid seems to be reasonably good at math. If you have a kid who is less than comfortable with math, by all means delay algebra to 9th grade, but in my experience even my non-mathy kid did fine in math on a more accelerated track.</p>
<p>At any rate it all worked out fine for thumper’s D.</p>