My issue is that I'm applying him to a competitive private school now, since his current school isn't meeting his needs, and he has a report card that shows he just "met the standards." That's the same report card a "C" student would get. I don't understand it at all.
Marcy, my sympathies.
BTDT with wanting to transfer schools and needing a stellar report card for my 1st grader who had finished 5th grade math and was doing pre-algebraish work and reading chapter books way beyond what I expected for his age. He got a "meets expectations" for counting up to some number for numeracy. They had many subcategories for math and all of them were graded as "meets the expectation". The teacher's performance evaluation (bonus etc) depended on showing a good growth curve from the first trimester to the last and hence the performance did not jump to "satisfactory" until the last trimester. I was unaware of this and spent a lot of time putting together a work sample portfolio and armed with data and numbers asked for a meeting and was told that they were only asked to test for counting up to 500 and he met her expectations (he missed 1 number because he counted super fast!).
Many people asked me why I was getting uptight about a 1st grader's report card. And the reason was the same as Marcy's - I needed to get DS into a highly competitive private school and his report card looked mediocre at best (he got a "below expectation" for art - poor kid later turned out to be color blind and had colored pictures using the wrong colored crayons).
Marcy, I used the data I had to prepare a data rich portfolio for the private school to consider in addition to his report card - I suggest using work samples, standardized testing scores, any score sheets from online programs like EPGY, talent search scores, contest wins, IQ test score summary, DYS qualification etc. to show that your child is more able than what the report card says. Good luck.
