Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Report card or does her teacher really cares -long

This is more of “let me vent a little bit” post but hopefully someone can share their experiences as well.

So far I considered myself pretty lucky. Tested my DD6 last year (then 5), right before kindergarten just because her pre-K teacher insisted that she is “gifted for sure” (I was on a “she seems to be normal to me” side, as a lot of us). Testing was done at her current school since I am also “lucky” enough to be assigned to a school with full time gifted assessment specialist. Easily passed with highest scores in achievement/IQ. Grade skip was not an issue as soon as I mumbled this word – she is now 2d grader after 1st grade full immersion for half year last year.

She got 2d grade teacher that I hoped for as soon as I sent letter to principal requesting one. Her teacher has 20 years of experience, gifted certified (sic!), amazing recommendations from multiple parents on how much she pushed kids and how caring she is. My daughter runs to school every morning now (we had big issue with overall happiness last year as her 1st grade teacher wasn’t a good fit at all on personality level and who could care less about qualities of my child). Sounds great, right? Or, and we have gifted “program” that is 3 hour pull out once a week to talk about “stuff”. Well, could be worse… Except, my daughter still brining 100% on all tests/subjects, reads (still, after skip) 2 grades ahead by school assessment, etc. No differentiation of course and no letters from teacher “let’s discuss how to challenge her”).I was hoping that it is beginning of the year and I should give teacher “more time to settle”, get to know my kid...

So she brings her report card yesterday… Her reading level is lower at the end of the grade period compare to entrance test at the beginning 2d grade(so no “summer” kind of excuse we can pull here), also she gets all “2’s” on all accessed common core content standards and on top of it gets S (as satisfactory) in effort grade for Science… Let me tell you this – kids has ALL 100% on ALL assignments not counting in her “sciency” nature as many here can relate when she gets excited as soon as she hears “science experiment”…. The rest are “E’s”.

I am e-mailing her teacher to see why would she possibly give her “S” out of pure curiosity how this was decided on and how it is possible that her AR got worse. I am getting the following response: “I'm positive that … will be at the ... reading level in the near future, as we concentrate more on vocabulary and comprehension in second grade. The same goes for all her 'effort' grades.” What I am getting is that there are no real reasons I can give you to explain why it is what it is. I have to show progress to prove that I am a good teacher and since your kid is getting all 100% I cannot show her improvement without lowering her scores, even if it is effort only (since it is not measured by any “quantitative” measurements).

This pretty much topped all of my frustration. I was holding myself back for the past two months just because it is such a pleasure to see your child happy to go to school every day after half of the last school year’s teary mornings. I was also hoping that this teacher possessing “gifted” certification at least makes her aware of kids with different needs…

Now I see there will be no fairness, no “hey, you need appropriate challenge, since you already mastered all the areas, especially considering that you skipped a grade”, no “let’s show real picture of what this kid can do so that we can focus on what we can improve”. It all comes down to “scores” and “teacher evaluation” that ties to “improvement” and that disadvantages kids like mine. It is harder to show improvement in kids that are already mastered the grade level and word “differentiation” is a curse word around here.

I was plain told by her “gifted” teacher (from pullout program) that she was prohibited from going to classroom teachers and suggest any action regarding a kid unless specifically requested by the teacher… All my polite questions regarding this and that are stopped by these BS responses how wonderful my child is with the hint of “we already skipped her, what else do you want, “that” parent” feeling. I don’t care to hear how wonderful/amazing/smart she is. I am her mom, she will be amazing to me no matter what. It is about fairness in assessment of what you see in this kid who is in front of you and giving guidance as a teacher to what to work on. I am not asking about one-on-one instructions any more. I am not asking about making sure that she is working at her level of capabilities any more (after all, “all kids are gifted” here). At this point I am asking to fairly access her skills and capabilities and track them fairly so that I, as a parent, can see what to do and how to help her since system is failing her as many other gifted kids. I guess, I am mad at myself that I had this hope that I can find teacher who really cares about each kid’s success.

P.S. Sorry for being so excessively long and excuse my mistakes since this is not my native language. Don’t have anywhere to went…

I feel you... sometimes really experienced teachers who are highly recommended are terrible for kids who are really, truly "out there". Everyone LOOOOVED my DS's teacher last year.. but my son had a super hard time with her. She didn't appear to really have any patience for his difficulties, nor did she seem at all bothered by the fact that he knew 100% of the material and wasn't learning anything. Drove me crazy. This year has been much better (though not perfect!).

And .... breathe..... you actually might get more people reading that post if you edited it to put in some paragraph breaks!

Sorry you're feeling so frustrated on your daughter's behalf.

I didn't understand this:
ALL 100% on ALL assignments not counting in her “sciency” nature
but you seem to be concerned because
a) she's getting 100% on tests (all, or all except science, or?)
b) her recorded reading level has fallen (is it by much? what kind of assessment is it based on? could this be a fluke?)
c) she's been assigned Satisfactory rather than Excellent for an effort grade.

(I didn't understand “2’s” on all accessed common core content standards ; is that good or bad?)

To be honest, it sounds to me as though you might be overreacting just a little; I don't understand from what you say why you are suddenly against the teacher. Your DD is happy; you previously trusted the teacher; the teacher is telling you that she has room for improvement in vocabulary, comprehension and effort; all this is good. Is it that you don't believe something you're being told? Why?

I don't know about where you are, but here the kinds of tests that are marked are often being used just to see how much children remember of what they've just studied. In this case I don't worry if my DS gets 100%, in fact, I'd be more concerned if he didn't, because I know he has a good enough memory to remember everything, and if he didn't, it probably indicates that he wasn't attending.

Don't get me wrong - her teacher wonderful compare to what we had so far and this is why it is so shocking to see same attitude as we had before when it comes to assessment and "all kids are gifted" thing... No deviation from the standarts and no desire to do a little more for kids who need it.

Ok. Let me corroborate (and I will try to make my first post more readable).

Yes, she got all 100% on her science assignments/tests/projects but I was surprised by the effort grade in her science class that was given as “Satisfactory” not “Exceptional”. This is not due to the fact that I want my kid to get all E’s but just purely because I was wondering based on what this effort grade was given.

Based on my logic if kid gets 100% on all assignments and goes above and beyond when works on science projects (and gets praise from the teacher on that) giving this kids “S” as an effort grade is a little surprising. So I thought that teacher will corroborate on it and instead got the response I got that showed me that this report card has nothing useful for me and only shows that teacher reduced her effort grade to mark it up in the future to show “progress”. This is frustrating.

On top of that her reading level fallen from 32 to 28 within 9 weeks. Not a big deal for sure but combined with vague response “she will get to 44+ level in no time…” makes me wonder the same as I described with regards to her effort grade.

To further explain my frustration. These “2’s” that are given are pretty much what teacher thinks how child mastered particular standards outlined in common core requirements. Example: Standard to master – Count within 1000, skip count by 5, 10, 100. Possible codes (grades) 1 – Not yet, 2 – Developing proficiency, 3 – Meets with Proficiency. So basically they telling me that my kid, who can do this since she was 4 years old, still “Developing proficiency”. And the reason for that plain “we have to show progress at the end of the year”. I've heared it so many times: we cannot give your child 3's because... see above.

I guess this report card was the “straw that broke camel’s back”. I don’t understand why kids like my daughter cannot be fairly accessed on what they can do instead of giving them “appropriate” grades/marks based on teacher’s needs…

Getting 100% on everything might as well mean she's still bored and therefore only shows satisfactory effort at school. It's hard to show more enthusiasm when you're not motivated. So I am not really surprised she is getting an "S" in science.

That was my thought too at first. But then I would expect her to get "S" in all other subjects (except math, maybe, where she did get occasional 95-98%...) and she didn't... So I think it is more relates to teacher/school unspoken evaluation policies and has little to do with child's real assessment.

I just wanted to chime in that I have definitely seen teachers who underassess kids at the beginning of the year so that they can show "growth" over the course of the year. In reality, though, the kids have shown proficiency at the beginning of the school year and make virtually no progress throughout the year because they are not being taught at their level or at any level beyond what is standard for that year. So, I could definitely see this happening to your daughter. Same with the 2s at this point in the year. I have been told by teachers that they have to show growth over the year so they can't say that a child has already mastered all the grade-level skills.

Also, if your DD is getting an S for effort in science, perhaps it's because she doesn't have to work at all to get the 100s she's getting. But if this is true, it seems to me like her grade of S should be a red flag to the teacher that she needs to be challenged. Unfortunately, I've rarely seen teachers - in my experience - who will make that connection on their own and start offering work that a child would actually have to work hard at.

Furthermore, I have been told by a principal and gifted coordinator that a grade acceleration was the accommodation and that no further accommodations would be made even when shown that the more advanced work was not enough.

Have you spoken with the principal?

I agree. We've dealt with this throughout DD's school career, btw. My school has even fudged my DD's beginning-and-end-of-year scores to make them "look" better. I know this because I'm a packrat and a 'documenter' and I have the originals.

My DD's fourth grade reading "pretest" was originally 97%, and her end of year was originally 89% (because she blew it off and was irritated by it). They INVERTED the two scores, no doubt because those scores raised red flags as they were. Yup. I have the dated originals, and I know that she scored far better on their little "measures of learning" test, there, before they "taught" her 4th grade reading. Pretty sure that wasn't reflecting very well on the school, so *VOILA*... now it does. Like magic. They did some similar shuffling with other scores, too. The problem has always been that the standard curriculum (even after three grade skips) isn't really "teaching" my child much of anything, year to year. So they have to fix that, see. Er-- or fix how it LOOKS, anyway.




Oh well. This isn't really about the gifted ed or your child It's about bureaucratic nonsense. Now you know.

In our district, there is a strict policy against assessing material that has not been taught yet. So if the year isn't over, the report card ceiling is 'expected progress'. This applies, for instance, to the 'knows the alphabet' section in kindergarten, even if the kid reads fluently at a 4th grade level.

Our teachers know better, they just aren't allowed to put it in writing. The +#^~#% report card is not necessarily a good reason to lose faith in the teacher. I don't know, but the reading level assessment may have a similar problem.

I hope this is all it is.