I sat down with him during the first quarter and went line-by-line through the tests. His errors were generally careless. He knew the material & how to solve a particular problem... he just made sloppy and/or careless errors (same thing?) at every turn. He hadn't come to proofs yet, so no clue there.
It was near the end of the first quarter that I first raised my concerns with the teacher and was told that DS is doing fine; accuracy will come with maturity; he's understanding everything just fine -- DON'T WORRY! And I did pretty good about not worrying until now as we are in the middle of the 3rd quarter and I'm not seeing any improvement.
I'd say you're right to be concerned, and your teacher is wrong for not being concerned. If he's demonstrating mastery of the concepts, great, but if he's doing so and getting the wrong answers anyway, he needs to know that, and be held accountable. If not, he never learns anything from the mistakes, keeps on making the same ones, never learns how to check his answers, and eventually runs into a situation in which results matter (SAT score, college class, engineering project), and can't cope. Disaster results.
I tell my DD8 that mistakes are the best teachers.
