They'll probably give him 3's next trimester and then 4's. That way they can pat themselves on the back because he has made so much progress.
This is exactly what our elementary school did - when I saw my ds' first "report" with 3s on it and questioned it, I was informed that "4" correlated to having mastered grade-level curriculum requirements, so "of course" none of the students would have a "4" mid-year.... (no matter what they actually knew or were capable of). The kids who had variations from 3s were only the kids who were technically falling "behind" and hadn't mastered basic skills. The teacher simply said that the 3 reflected where the class was at in being *introduced* to the curriculum. So if the class was doing single-digit addition and hadn't seen single-digit subtraction yet, but that would happen before the end of the year, the class couldn't be *at* level 4 yet because they hadn't learned single-digit subtraction yet. Even if any one individual child had been single-digit subtracting since they were two
On the flip side, this type of reporting also had no correlation with the type of challenging work ds was offered in the classroom - way back in K when he was receiving "3s" his teacher was giving him independently challenging math work and reading/spelling word lists that she had to create just for him because she'd "never had a child that advanced before". But, um, yeah, he was only at "level 3" until it was the "appropriate" time for him to be an official "level 4".
I agree with somewhere that report cards from elementary school were basically meaningless to us as parents. They are much more relevant now that our kids are in middle school and receiving actual grades on the work they turn in and tests they take and those grades in turn are put together into an actual grade on a report card. Oddly enough, my kids are also much more motivated by the grades-for-actual-work system... go figure!
polarbear
