>As a side note, I don't remember being taught algebra before the 9th grade either, in an excellent school district, and I was in a gifted class. I still kept m

>As a side note, I don't remember being taught algebra before the 9th grade either, in an excellent school district, and I was in a gifted class. I still kept my algebra textbook from the 10th grade and it's pretty standard algebra. In fact, I didn't even learn Calculus until college and I wasn't negatively impacted by that at all. However, this was almost 30 years ago so I'm sure educational standards have increased, but it's funny that what I learned back then is no longer "good enough". When I learned algebra it was taught in the 8th grade or 7th grade AP. My younger sibling (only a decade apart) was learning it in the 6th grade while not placed in an advanced class. It will vary by state and school district, I imagine. It also appears to me that Preschool is less and less "optional" and more and more "required" with many expectations for Kindergarten students to know things that would have been taught to students who attended Preschool, so students who did not attend Preschool are already behind their peers before even entering the 1st grade...