Advice would be wonderful!

We got DS's Kindergarten report card yesterday and while I am mostly happy with it (the areas he is 'approaching grade level' are the ones we expected) what makes me wonder is that nothing at all is marked 'Above grade level'. Nothing.

I'm trying to decide what to do about that (if anything). Doesn't it seem that they should be marking him above grade level when he can add, subtract, and somewhat multiply whereas grade lvl is knowing and counting to 30(by 3rd trimester, only to 10 for 1st). Or that he is reading and comprehending at least mid 2nd grade lvl when 'grade lvl' is matching consonant sounds to letters (for only 8-10 letters even).

The only parts that imply he is 'ahead' are that they 'checked' at grade lvl on ALL letters, sight words, and numbers instead of only doing the 10 they should know now.

Is this normal? If we were to change schools wouldn't we have issues - since according to this he's not even above grade lvl in anything?

They also don't report on the things they know he can do if they haven't done them in class. So he has a lot of blank spots where he has been doing that for awhile.

We are setting up a Student Study Team (SST) as I am concerned about what will be done for next year as nothing is really being done now. He also 'seems' to have some sensory issues and that may be impacting the areas he is not at lvl on. They all have to do with getting too distracted, not exhibiting enough self control, etc.

Courtney,

Your son sounds a bit like mine in terms of sensory issues etc. Also in K I remember getting those report cards with all "grade levels" (except for some behavioral issues due to the sensory stuff). I was very disappointed because I felt a report card should reveal some information about my child's academics. Finding out he could count and recognize letters was less than satisfying.

My children will be bringing home their report cards in a few days and I expect more of the same for my DS even now in fourth grade. My daughter who is MG in first grade but in a mixed 1/2 classroom will have a report card that more accurately reflects her abilities.

I will say that the public schools around here want nothing to do with accelerations or grade skips. We got lucky however, for first grade DS was enrolled in a Catholic school which I chose mainly for class size (only 8-9 kids per grade).
After about three weeks the school came to me and strongly urged me to let him skip up to second grade. That would never have happened in public school. Who knew the Catholic school would be so progressive? I also think the class size helped because it really made him stand out as more than a bit different.

Excuse the rambling, my point really is that now is the time to look into all the available schools in your area and see where they stand on gifted education/acceleration/skips etc. Talk to the principals and discuss your child and find out what options are out there before you get too far in DS's school career.

In the meantime, think about what your DS might need in to keep him intersted and engaged in class. (If he is busy learning the sensory stuff will calm down a bit). Go into your meeting with a plan. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

CourtneyB,
At my sons' school they use the terms 'meet' and 'exceed' grade level on the report card. As I understand it, the terms have to do with the state's minimum requirements and the level that the class is being taught and tested. So if the teacher is testing counting to 10, your child meets the sate requirements if he can count to 10. That was all that was tested. However, if the teacher is teaching to 100, then your child exceeds the state requirements when he is tested on 100.

I hope that makes sense.

The report card gives you an idea of the level at which your child is being taught and you could use it as a starting point for a conversation with the teacher or principal.

Thanks everyone for your input.

What bugs me the most is that his teacher knows he is reading as she's the one who did the reading test for him. She knows he can count higher than 30 as she told me so. So why don't they mark above grade level?

I'm hoping the SST will help and his teacher already told me that on speaking with the school psychologist they think if he does have sensory issues that are impacting anything that would qualify for OT through the school. So I can hold out the hope for that. I am the one who got the sst going though by calling the Assistant Superintendant about our options for next year.
Though he is starting to get 'squirmy' in class much more so I think the lack of academics and always doing stuff he already knows may be getting to him so we will need to do something this year.

He is in 1/2 day K so we have always done other stuff at home. Mostly EPGY where he has gone from the beg. K lvl all the way to 2.6 in math in less than a month. He loves to read and reads at least 20 mins a day at home (plus we read to him still) but I can't get him to take the leap to a chapter book yet. So I work with him on that at home as well.

At school he gets to do Accelerated Reading and then some 1st grade comprehension worksheets and occasionlly some math worksheets from 1st grade I think. But that's it at school. the homework is still K homework and he has to do that so he of course has to do extra work for it to be anything he learns with.

Thanks! I'm looking into some options. Only problem is we live in one of the best school districts but it only has 3 schools this year all K-8. The neighboring city has 3 school districts but from everything I've heard they aren't very good at all. There is a charter school there but not sure if it would be a good 'fit' for DS.

I'm seriously considering homeschooling him if they can't get a good plan in place for next year. He likes school but if things don't change I'm not sure that will really continue for long.

I think this is pretty standard mode of operation in a traditional public school. I know this is how our kindergarten and first grade report cards looked (we are homeschooling now). Everything was marked "as expected" and they didn't assess to see how far a child could go.

My son was assessed at 4th grade level in reading in the beginning of 1st grade. Which I thought was pretty low at the time, but I thought maybe they were picky. He self selected books higher than 4th grade level. At the end of the year, he was still marked down as 4th grade level. And I had seen his selections and comprehension go up at home over the course of the year. I asked the teacher about it and she just stammered and gave me a line on comprehension. I spoke to another PS teacher who said that's 4th grade's as high as they can assess 1st graders in our district.

Anyway - you might want to see if the district is capable of doing some achievement testing for you if you are planning to stay with your current school long term. Or at least find out if they would open to accepting outside testing as the basis for an educational plan for your son. You may have this issue at any traditional school - public or private. Unless it is specifically designed for gifted learners.

We had a similar argument with DS's K teacher last year. She knew he was reading but had marked him as "approaching the standard" on letter recognition A-Z because she only tested A-M the first semester. If you put kids at exceeding the standard in the beginning, there isn't a way to show the teacher made them grow... so she wouldn't do it. Never mind that she didn't actually make him grow, it looked like she did on paper.

He's in 1st now and we changed schools for a variety of reasons. His new public school has no hesitation in marking "met the standard" in the first trimester. The teacher even said at back to school night "if your child receives more than 2/3 of the standards in "met" category in the 1st trimester, we will have to talk about whether or not your child even belongs in 1st grade." We're expecting that talk at conferences this week :-)

They won't assess his reading level beyond 4th grade which is fine- they do not want him reading books above 4th grade level in class. I can understand from a teacher's perspective, the amount of trouble it would cause for them to have to screen for content. I don't want my 1st grader reading Twilight just because he can! Instead, they use 4th grade books for him and use a variety of comprehension and language usage materials. Last week he had to find 20 similes in the story, describe the comparison and look up synonyms in the thesaurus. The week before, they were talking about compound words and prefixes and suffixes. I think it's all very useful, high level work so it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I think this happened to us last year in public school. Regardless that DS was the top of the class, doing math and reading way ahead of others, the 1st grade teacher still marked him as "reaching the standard" in the first report card. In the last report card, she marked him as "exceeding the standard" in all areas.

This is how they do it at DS's school. I really wanted to cringe at all the 3s (meets requirements) because I knew they should be 3+s (exceeds requirements) on pretty much everything.

But for us, my focus was getting him comfortable with his grade skip, which happened just about the same time. And since he will be in the gifted pull out program, and this won't affect his GPA just yet, I'm ok with seeing 3s. Now, if he gets a 2, we'll have to have a chat.

Really sounds like the teachers are thinking outside the box. Love how they are trying to challenge him.

Wow - that sounds so sensible!

I'm jealous of your new school! I will bide my time until the SST meeting and just gather info. I already gave his teacher his EPGY report from last week as well as the school now has his psychoeducational report from 2 yrs ago. He's getting 'antsy' in class and has gone through many partners for math tubs (not sure what that really entails but I do know he was getting frustrated that they didn't know 'stuff'). I just don't think he'd do well in 1st though he loves older kids (and they usually love him too, lol) otherwise I think I'd push for him to move up.