We have them in second grade. :| We haven't filled them out in quite some time. Last year at the end of the year we backdated by filling in a partial list of titles he'd read, and his teacher said that was fine.
I think they're an attempt to gently encourage reading more at home, through a sort of nagging transferral process. Another purpose might be to simply keep tabs on someone's comfortable reading level. I see the negative intrusion as attempting to enlist the parent to force the child to read. I suppose it might work some of the time to get children reading a slight bit more, but it certainly won't encourage a love of reading or substantially impact fluency or comprehension. It's just too little extra practice.
