Report Cards

The girls received their first report cards of the year on January 20th.  I was looking forward to the report card to get a better sense of how the kids were doing in their new classes.  Since I am not involved as I was in Prague and I do not see the kids teachers on a daily or even weekly basis I feel quite out of touch with their progress.  Not surprisingly though I was disappointed with the report cards.  I am not disappointed in my children but rather in the report cards themselves.  The system is ridiculous and does not give an accurate depiction of how well the children are doing.  There is a four point system of which a 4 is basically unattainable.  The 4 is saved for the unusual genius child apparently.  So the highest you can really get is a 3.  The girls got all twos and threes which pretty much every child gets.  Now I will grant that I cannot grade my children in every aspect of their learning.  I do not know how well they are learning science concepts because there are no tests that come home with grades on them.  I can however, tell you how well my children are doing in math and reading since we work on these every night.  The goal for Sofia's class is to complete 60 math facts in 3 minutes by the end of the year.  Sofia has done this already.  Sofia does have math tests that come home and I will grant that the beginning was rough as she was learning the way to do math here as well as learning her US money but she has steadily improved and got 1 wrong on the last test and zero wrong on the test before that.  Her reading is well beyond her class level and she even scored top scores on the standardized reading test.  She has received the challenge spelling words every week except for maybe two weeks.  How she received a "2" on any math, reading and spelling is beyond me.  She also received a two in P.E.! She is highly coordinated and very athletic so how does that equate to a 2??  Ali's report card was just as poorly completed.  In the comments section Ali's teacher noted that Ali is reading "above grade level" yet when you look in the numbers section she has a "2"! How is that possible??

 I was quite worked up about the report cards as you can probably tell but I have calmed down a lot.  I  have decided to just ignore the report cards at this stage and not worry about it until there are firm tests in all subjects so they can receive a grade based on pure numbers and not on random assessments made by a teacher.  It just seems it is one more way to make all kids feel good by giving everyone twos and threes.  I do not understand why it is a bad thing if a child is really good in something to recognize him/her and when they are doing poorly to point it out so they can work harder to achieve.  Frankly it is a punishment to those kids who are really achieving since it makes them feel that no matter how hard they work they can never reach the best grade.