We had this issue in 1st...in fact, after reading your post I looked at your location to see if you might be talking about the same teacher. We're not, which means there is more than one. Sigh.
Ours was in-class work, and when I talked to her she claimed that DS was not reading for comprehension, but only decoding so she wanted him to go down a couple of reading levels to make sure he could comprehend. Problem was, it was so simplistic he was getting frustrated with the questions because they were so obvious that he was having "but that couldn't possibly be the answer, it's too obvious" problem and getting stuck. And he found a couple of the books to be embarrassing.
We went back and forth on it for a while, with the teacher insisting I was overestimating his abilities, until finally I realized he wasn't being graded on any of it that it was actually the "enrichment, providing depth and complexity" that is promised in the TAG program. HA! (that is not the humorous "ha", but rather a disgusted one).
We rebelled and I told him not to worry about it anymore. That I knew it was frustrating and that as long as he was keeping up with reading at home, it was fine.
Obviously, there were more issues with this teacher. This was really only the tip of the iceberg. Thankfully, the administration was both willing and able to help us out, so we ended up having an OK year in the end.
I like your idea of having him review the books he's reading at home. I think that sends a powerful and, hopefully, constructive message.
At the end of the day, I think the real issue lies with assigning the kids a specific book. Why can't these teachers let them choose a book? Would the sky fall on their heads? I guess they don't want to risk having to read something new in order to grade the work...
