It really depends on your son’s facility for math. If math comes easily to him, then that’s fine – but if he needs more help, then he could end up with a weak foundation moving on. It won’t really help him that much on the PSAT & SAT because there are only a very small number of questions that are aimed at higher level math – it’s much more important on standardized testing to be able to quickly recognize the question type and know what the best strategy is in order to quickly answer the question. For example, sometimes the best test strategy is to simply plug the multiple choice answers into the formula and see what works rather than waste valuable time trying to work out the problem independently.
You might want to also check out the quality of the math teachers at your son’s school. Who would be his teacher for advanced algebra next year? If he takes the advanced course over the summer, would he go into precalc or trig next year? and who would be his teacher there?
My daughter tried to take trig over the summer at the local community college, but she dropped the course after a week because it was simply too fast paced for her to handle.
What are the real goals? If it is just the short-term goal of improving test scores, a test prep course might be much more effective. Your son would learn what he needs to know for the test.
If your son has a longer term goal of moving to a more advanced math track, so perhaps he could take AP calc as a senior — and if he is likely to be a colleges STEM major-- then the summer course may be the way to fill those goals.
Just keep in mind that for math, students really need to have a strong foundation before moving onto the next level. If a student gets only a cursory understanding from a summer course, the problem could come back to bit later on. Your son is getting A’s this year in geometry, but he could be struggling to get C’s next year in precalc if he goes in without adequate preparation and encounters a demanding teacher. You don’t want to repeat the problem he came in with due to weaknesses in his grade school math program.
And don’t assume that his PSAT scores are due to math level – if the score level is 95th percentile overall, it may just be that your son is a humanities kind of guy, and will always tend to be stronger on the verbal portions of tests than the math. Again, those tests aren’t really about math ability as much as they are about math speed and test-taking-ability.
Finally, what does your son want? He’s got great test scores already – is the desire to improve on the math scores coming from the parent, or from the student? Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that 95th percentile isn’t good enough or that your son needs to attend a prestige college to succeed. You don’t want to spend all summer arguing with your son about completing a math program he hates, only to find that his math score on the PSAT isn’t all that much better than it was before. There may be better ways he can be spending his time this summer, depending on his individual goals and interests.
) The G&T coordinator suggested that he take algebra online during the summer and retake the placement test, which he did. Although he didn’t have time to actually complete the course during the summer–due to other things he only had about 3 1/2 weeks–he retested and moved up to the correct level at the beginning of school, and never looked back.