I was reading this article on The Love-Hate Relationship with Saxon Math. In light of what has been discussed here I thought this was interesting. What are your thoughts? You can read the whole article here.
http://homeschoolreviews.com/forums/1/thread.aspx?id=92223MIXING OUTDATED EDITIONS WITH NEWER ONES: There is nothing wrong with using the older out-of-print editions of John Saxon’s original math books so long as you use all of them – from Math 54 to Math 87. However, for the student to be successful in the new third edition of Algebra 1, the student has to go from the older first edition of Math 87 to the second or third edition of Algebra ½ before attempting the third edition of the Saxon Algebra 1 course.
But when you start with a first edition of the Math 54 book in the fourth grade and then move to a second or third edition of Math 65 for the fifth grade; or you move from a first or second edition of the sixth grade Math 76 book to a second or third edition of the seventh grade Math 87 book,
you are subjecting the students to a frustrating challenge which in some cases does not allow them to make up the gap they encounter when they move from an academically weaker text to an academically stronger one. The new second or third editions of the fifth grade Saxon Math 65 are stronger in academic content then the older first edition of the sixth grade Math 76 book. Moving from the former to the latter is like skipping a book and going from a fifth grade to a seventh grade textbook. Again, using the entire selection of John’s original first edition math books is okay so long as you do not attempt to go from one of the old editions to a newer edition. If you must do this, please email or call me for assistance before you make the change.