Guess what, Val...the color coding is alive and well and being used in my DD's classroom. Yes it makes me livid.
In fact, she was probably "yellow" today because I neglected to sign her spelling test. I remembered it this morning after she went to school, and I feel horrible. It was my fault, she showed it to me and asked me to sign it but we didn't go inside for quite awhile after school yesterday and I stuck it away. Time change, nice weather, everything going on in the classroom/homework all different leading up to the almighty state assessments. She hasn't brought home a spelling test to sign in about six weeks so I sort of fell out of the habit.
I'll hear about it in about 1.5 hrs when I go pick her up.
My dd13's 1st grade teacher color coded the kids based on both behavior and achievement. They all had little pockets on the wall with their names on them and three colored popsicle sticks: green, yellow, and red. If they misbehaved, she called out, "Jenni, move your green" and Jenni would need to take the green popsicle stick out of her pocket. If you got down to red, there was some consequence. Dd was so petrified listing to the other kids get called out publicly that she never got in trouble.
The kids were also put in green, yellow, and red groups for reading and math. The green group was the advanced students, yellow average, and red kids who were behind. Again, although dd was all "green," this whole system sucked so badly and stressed dd out so much that we wound up removing her from school part of the way through and homeschooling the rest of the year.
Sorry, sidetrack...
