I took my first algebra class in 7th grade (early 90s, Maryland). I remember struggling initially (in part because we had moved from another state the summer before, and my prior math class didn't quite prepare me for it), but an hour or two of my dad explaining it to me at home made things "click" and I was fine after that. The class was a good size (probably around 30 kids), so it's not like this was a tiny accelerated-learning class (it wasn't the "standard" class, though; it was definitely the "honors" level or something like that).
By the end of high school, I'd taken the equivalent of two semesters of university-level calculus, which allowed me to skip those classes when I went to college, and take more challenging courses. It's hard to imagine students who first take algebra in 9th grade progressing to anything beyond the most basic of calculus (at best) before graduating from high school.
Judging by other responses here, I'm not even a particularly special or advanced case, with some kids being introduced to basic algebra many years before I was. Which makes sense. If you can teach a kid "1 + 1 = ?", then at some point shortly after, you can start to teach "1 + ? = 2". Bam: basic algebra.
It just sounds like instead of getting students to stretch, we're pushing the gifted kids down to the lowest common denominator. It makes me assume that school administrators just want to avoid conflict with parents and hurt feelings among kids when they bucket students between remedial/standard/honors classes. We're sacrificing education for temporary good feelings.