Leyla, I'd ask the teacher what the 1-4 scale is being measured against. In our schools, the score always was *supposed* to be reflective of end-of-grade skill mastery, so a drop to a 2 would be a true drop in skills, which would seem highly unlikely - but I would first check to be sure the scale measured against was the same for each quarter - it's possible your school is measuring against a scale that increases in level each semester or quarter.
If you find out that the measurement standard *didn't* change, then ask for specifics of why your dd's score dropped. It's possible it could be as simple as a *mistake* in reporting. If it's not that, it's going to be good to hear the teachers' explanation and then go from there - wherever it leads.
To be honest, I didn't put any worry or weight into those early elementary "1-4" "grades". They were mostly there to show "progress" on the part of the school - and had very little to do with my children's abilities or performance in school. When I questioned why my ds' scores weren't higher once when I had clear evidence (both in classroom work and teacher's comments) that ds was way ahead of grade level in that particular category - the teacher said (with a straight face) "I have to mark him lower than a 4 now because the number isn't supposed to be 4 until the end of the year." That's when I decided to just ignore the whole thing - it was all about having a good school report card, not about having meaningful data on any one student, and ultimately it didn't really make a difference for my kids in terms of what they were taught in the classroom or where they were placed in school. Performance in school *did* start to matter re placement once our kids were in upper elementary... and oddly enough... that's when our schools started using real grading systems to - that actually reflected student performance.
Sorry - I kinda rambled OT there. FWIW, I'd ask the teacher why there was a drop and if she tries to say it's a real drop in skill level, I'd ask why, and I'd ask what is being done to remediate for it in the classroom
polarbear
