I agree with mon. I have a child who liked to blend in so, while the teacher acknowledged that my DD was bright and knew everything she was tested on, it just really *never* occurred to her to attempt to figure out what my DD actually knew. The only thing that changed the situation was that I came here, figured out that subject acceleration (and later, grade accelerataion) were even options, and told the teacher and the school exactly what we wanted to see happen. We told them that we wanted above-grade-level testing and we wanted an ability test and that we wanted subject acceleration. And their resonse: "Wow, we never thought of that!"
I agree that it's definitely going to take more than the conference to work this out, but I think that you need to bring it up after listening to the teacher speak. A tactic that I think works well is saying that your son has been so sad/crying/not wanting to go to school and saying that he is so sad that he isn't learning new things. Then ask for the teacher's help in solving the problem. Teacher's often have almost a hyperfocus on a child's emotional health (to the exclusion of academic health) and asking for their help acknowledges that they have experience with a lot of kids (and who doesn't like to be needed?). Finally, bring up that you've been thinking a lot about the situation and that you think you have come up with some options that might work; when can you meet again to talk about it? Does he/she think it might be helpful to get anyone else to attend the meeting, too? And then make sure you say a big thank you for working on helping your little guy.
Good luck. I hope it goes well!
