There have been many good reviews of Foerster's Algebra I book but the reviews have been more mixed for his higher level books. The main criticisms seem to be a disconnect between the instruction in the book and the difficulty of the problem sets as well as the explanations not being clear enough.

I have purchased the Changing Frontiers book and light units but haven't received them yet. I'll post back when I've had a chance to review them.

Perhaps I'm being too practical but unless you have unlimited financial means, I would simply cross out any school that didn't provide very significant aid or full tuition. It appears that you have full tuition offers from USC and Simmons. In addition, I believe that Brown and Princeton offer significant aid even to higher income households although maybe not to the extent of Stanford and Harvard. Most of these universities are large enough that a student can find a niche. If she wants a woman's college, I would look at Simmons. If she wants California then USC. If the net COA is low enough, I do think Princeton and Brown might be more heavily recruited for IB simply by virtue of being Ivies and on the East Coast. Keep in mind as others have said there are loads of kids who want to do IB and selection for those jobs is extremely competitive and the jobs are very demanding. I have to say your daughter's list of schools and financial aid offers is eye opening and highlights the rather capricious nature of the college selection and financial aid process. While USC offers full tuition, you have many lower tier schools providing little to no merit on your list.

Jennifer - If you child can make it through CLE 700, I think they could move on to CLE's Algebra or any other Algebra. You're probably aware of the ways to accelerate CLE - working through the summer, doing an extra lesson on quiz days, skipping quizzes and tests entirely, or crossing out some of the review. At any rate, because of all the mixed review, CLE is a little harder to compact then some other courses. If long term retention of concepts is a problem, I would continue with CLE as long as possible.If that's not an issue, then maybe jump to another pre-algebra earlier. BCM is very much a mastery based curriculum although there is some natural repetition because of the way the concepts build on each other.

I haven't seen mention of these yet so I thought I'd pass on this information for those seeking some new Middle School history options. These are reasonably priced, open and go courses from Christian publishers. Notgrass - From Adam to Us - World History This new World History course from Notgrass is a one year survey course recommended for students from ages 10-14. It comes with daily lesson plans and includes several components in addition to the main text. Right now it's only available in digital format but I read on another board that they might offer print copies later. Notgrass also has a middle school American History course which has been out for a few years. CLE - Changing Frontiers - American History CLE has just published a brand new textbook on American History for 8th grade covering the sweep of history from pre-Columbus to today .It's designed as a one year survey course and can be used with 10 Light Units or workbooks which feature daily lesson plans and review. They don't have any samples up yet on their website but hopefully they'll add some soon. CLE - Latin American History and Geography I have used one of CLE's other newer options, their 6th grade Social Studies, which is a full year course on Latin America. It includes both history and geography. I know this probably isn't a popular curriculum option for most but it's a great textbook and course for those interested.

Many of the stories in the 1st and 2nd grade readers focus on everyday family situations and character building lessons and are very quaint. As the years progress, the stories definitely do improve each year and become more diverse and worldly. In 6th and up, they feature a few notable classic writers such as Pearl Buck and Tolstoy as well. My boys haven't always found the stories captivating but they're relatively short and we do other reading that fills that "high interest" niche to round things out. I've personally looked at and tried a lot of different reading curriculums looking for the "perfect" one and I've ended up back at CLE even though it represents some compromises for me because of its ease, simplicity, and thoroughness.

Have you looked at CLE Reading? It is not secular like MOSDOS but I think it would fit your objectives and is quite economical. There is a reader for each grade level with the literary selections to be read. Then there are individual work books, called Light Units, which have the literary teaching and review. These are designed to be done independently by the student but can also be revised orally with a teacher. They also have a teacher's guide/answer key available. The entire package costs only about $30 for the year. It is very open and go for the student and teacher. At the 4th grade levels and up it is only a half year course so you could spread it over a year doing it only 2 - 3 days a week. I have used the entire series from K-8 and they do a fantastic job of developing literary analysis and reading skills in a gentle incremental yet comprehensive manner.

My understanding is they don't have sales although they do offer a discount for purchases made at conventions. Sometimes, you can also find used CLE materials on Homeschoolclassifieds, ebay, or the CLE yahoo group.

A few more reviews of the new PSAT: The Redesigned PSAT: Delivering Opporunity or a Missed Opportunity Impressions on the New Practice PSAT College Board Steps Back from Harder PSAT

Bud not Buddy was a favorite of my boys. The Toothpaste Millionaire is also good. Also, several of the books by Laurence Yep such as Dragonwings and Dragon Gate. The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps, Chang's Paper Pony and Wagon Wheels would also be easier reads. For Native Americans, any book by Kenneth Thomasma.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the op's original question at the same time I can see why someone might not want to share this information.However,it's hard to draw comparisons or make inferences about things like SATs, homeschooling and college outcomes if you have no data to draw on. In many high schools, parents and students have access to Naviance which gives detailed information on the combinations of SATs, grades and college application outcomes. This gives them a good gauge for comparison. It would be great if something similar was available to the homeschooling community. Of course, this might be a little bit more difficult since grades and curriculum are not as standardized as in a brick and mortar school. Currently, Parchment offers scattergrams similar to Naviance relating SAT/GPA/and college applications. However, the data is self reported so perhaps not as statistically sound as one might hope but still a good starting point. I

The link for Word Wealth Jr. on Archive.org is strange. It works for me when I click on it and I pasted it directly from the page. At any rate, the problem seems to be there are two listings for this title and one is incorrect and as pointed out links to an old english book by mistake but the other one works. Alternatively, you might try using this google search and clicking on the 1st link. You want the one that has (1962) in the title "Word wealth junior, a vocabulary book and speller (1962)".

Here is a recent thread that might be helpful.

You can take a look at Word Wealth Jr. at archive.org. You do need to create an account there to borrow it first.

There's a brief comparison of some of the differences in this thread from someone who has used both.

There are some more options on this similar discussion from the HS board.

Here's his web site Reason Prep.

Here's a nice video review of the new PSAT if you don't want to wade through the actual test.

Thank you - definitely some reassuring advice there.

Here are some other options: K12 IAcademy Memoria Press Virtual High School Virtual Virginia U of MIami Global Academy Middlebury Interactive Georgia Virtual Learning

For the 12 yo, Virtual Homeschool Group has a free self paced course for Apologia General Science. I've read good things about the higher level VHSG science courses. For the history/literature, you might take a look at Landry Academy. They have a course called Adventures in World History - A Step Beyond American Girls. It's designed for 7th/8th graders and based on the Girls of Many Lands series. I've copied a brief excerpt from Landry's site in quotes below. Landry also has a similar course based on Percy Jackson for Ancient Times and the Henty books (more for boys). If you were doing American history, something like Notgrass' America the Beautiful might work too. For something really different, I always thought Where the Brook and the River Meet (a unit study based on the Anne of Green Gables books) looked interesting - but I only have boys so who knows.

For the 11 yo, you might look at Onlineg3 or Athena's Advanced Academy. These two providers offer courses oriented toward gifted children so the material is higher level but I believe the output requirements are usually less demanding than a similar course elsewhere. You don't need to be gifted to take these, they just skew toward younger ages I believe. Athena's has classes using SOTW 1-4 and Onlineg3 has classes using Hakim's Story of US among others.

As Mark provided above, I think the main area of difference you'll find in the Common Core textbooks is the addition of more probability and statistics to the normal Algebra I topics (see Ch. 12 above). I'd personally go with Foerster over Glencoe or any other modern "big textbook" company book for supplementation. Foerster is a clean, straight forward text in design - the instruction is presented followed by related exercises. It is known for its solid explanations and sequencing of material and for very strong word problems. Glencoe and similar contemporary texts are more visually busy and cluttered and often bloated with non-essential information designed to make the math relevant to students or prepare them for standardized tests. While this look may be appealing to some students, I think it's more of a distraction and harder to determine the essential instructional material without the guidance of a teacher. I couldn't find the exact edition of Glencoe but here's a link to a pdf of an earlier edition of Glencoe's Algebra. If you click on p.7 here, you can see a sample page of Foerster's Algebra text for comparison. If you're looking for more challenging material, try Art of Problem Solving's text. There are also videos to accompany the text and Alcumus, an online math practice tool. If you're looking for a refreshing, non-standard approach that can help with conceptualizing Algebra, try Danica Mckellar's book. This book has some great analogies that would be especially appealing to girls.

I think the Process Skills in Problem Solving series is a good one for supplementing CLE. They cover some of the other conceptual approaches you see in SIngapore such as the Bar Models. They provide more instruction than the Challenging Word Problem books in the conceptual areas while still being supplemental books. If you want something more visual and independent, you might also consider Math Buddies, an online teaching supplement from the publishers of Singapore Math.

I think it would be hard to find something that combines US, Canada, Mexico and Central America. Most of the time you'll find a single text just for US or Canada. Mexico and Central America are often covered in a course on Latin America because of the cultural/historical similarities. However, there is Prentice Hall World Explorer has a single volume on US and Canada., they also have a separate volume for Latin America. Another similar textbook series is Prentice Hall World Studies US & Canada and Latin America. Both of these series are for middle school. CLE has a full year study on Latin America for sixth grade. It's an excellent new text. Rod and Staff also has a similar course but it's not as up to date.