Momma Lion Does Not Play.

Furious does not even describe.  No- my daughter does not score a 0 in math.  And if she does, well that's certainly not "proficiently performing on grade level" as your letter clearly states in bold.  Do NOT pretend to give my daughter a real assessment test by a random teacher at school, not explain the directions, and then let her run out crying because she doesn't understand the directions and then give her a zero on an exam during the second week of school.  If someone has failed here- it is you, dear school.  I am about to lose my marbles.   It will be polite, but should you not do your job correctly, it will not be pretty.  We don't mess around with education in my house.  My letter to the principal.....

Dear Ms. Morris,

I hope this email finds you well.  It appears as though we have an issue that needs to be discussed.  My daughter, Gabriela Catalina, has always (to my knowledge) been incredibly successful in both reading in math.  She started school a year early and scored in the 95% on the gifted and talented test at four years old (literally, seven days after she turned four) when we were living in New York and was in the highest math and reading class- scoring well beyond her peers who were almost a year older than her.  When we moved to Rochester, Minnesota, she was in the highest math and reading groups and retested for gifted there.  In second grade (at Somerset), she got mostly ES’s and, to my understanding, was in the highest math and reading groups (Ms. Robbins did make a point to tell me every time I saw her how brilliant she thought Gabriela Catalina was).  Last year, Gabriela Catalina tested into the highly gifted program at Chevy Chase.   I had some questions about whether she was in the correct math group this year, since we gave her the option of attending the highly gifted program and she chose to stay at Somerset (we are moving next summer so we didn’t think that was fair to her).

I received a very disturbing letter from you today.  This letter says that on a math test- of which none of us knew she was going to have, and no one bothered to let her know in advance, given to her by a teacher she's never had- that she scored a 0/10….. How does one go from being highly gifted to scoring a 0???  This letter also says that she is proficient in math.  I haven’t been an elementary school teacher for a few years now so maybe I’m not understanding….  Can you please explain to me how 0 points means she is proficient in math?

This says to me either one of two things.  This says either 1- the administrator of the test didn’t really care about her success or understanding of the instructions and was just administering the test to placate our family or 2- my daughter has zero knowledge of math and therefore should have an IEP and probably a private tutor.  If my daughter, as a fourth grader, truly scores a 0 on a test- well this is clearly problematic.   I’m not too sure what to make of this here.  In either case, I’m sure you would agree that a meeting over this is quite necessary.  Please let me know of your availability and my husband and I are more than happy to come down and figure out what math support she needs because we now have a big problem in our house.  Our daughter, who since she was a year old has done very well in math and loved math and felt confident, came home in tears yesterday saying that she doesn’t know anything in math.  I’m sure you agree that this is unacceptable.  Thank you so much for your time.

Best,

Kiki