It's all I can do to keep my mouth shut and let the year play out a bit - which I know is what I need to do, because DD has always had a better year than Parent Orientation alone would lead me to believe.
This is the first year that 4th graders have one teacher for the whole day; previously, they've had one for Language Arts and one for Math, with Science and Social Studies assigned to whichever teacher liked that subject better. The change is district-wide, so everyone is stuck with it, like it or not. DD's teacher is new to the district, and previously taught in a state where 4th grade was the year for high-stakes standardized testing in writing, so she's used to spending an entire year cramming writing technique into the kids. In our state, that year is 5th grade, so I really hope DD does not get 2 years in a row of writing-test cram.
Why do I think she can't math? The extra-credit scheme, as described in the written handout, doesn't work - if she does what she says she does, extra-credit can lower your grade. She also has math-proficient kids, in order to get something more interesting to do, do a Powerpoint presentation and oral report to the class as a way of demonstrating their proficiency. (My DD is not math-proficient in advance of being taught the material, and it's not clear to me whether she can say "OK, I've learned it now, let me move on." But I can guarantee you she'd rather write passive-aggressive complaints on her math worksheets than stand up in front of the class and explain long division.)
I think she can't science, either. She does open-book science tests, because even after the kids are taught the material in class and given a teacher-provided study guide to prep for tests, "elementary science textbooks are just too hard for kids to understand."
Also, one of the other district-wide changes is the elimination of the pretest against end-of-year proficiency targets. Which is good, because it's 3 or 4 days of testing on material that most of the kids have never even seen before. OTOH, it means DD has no obvious opportunity to demonstrate to her teacher how much of the material she already knows, which IME makes a big difference in how the teacher treats you. There are myriad bad behaviors that can be ascribed either to "bored smart kid" or "troublemaker," and the first kid gets a heck of a lot more slack than the second. Particularly when the kid in question is writing passive-aggressive complaints on her papers, rather than answering the problems.
