One school I talked to actually said they deliberately keep kids down. After all the content of a Level Z book would be too "mature" for a second grade kid. I was speechless. Surely there are books out there that are the right level that are "appropriate" in content?
This is terrible. I think part of it is logistics -- maybe a class just can't support an advanced reader by having a reading group all to themselves (or a tiny percentage of the class) ? At my child's school, reading is tied to reading comprehension and writing (outlines/main ideas etc), so he gets dinged on writing (does the bare minimum) while he is actually very good at reading (reading + comprehension+ retelling)
