I Know My Son Isn't Doing His Homework. Why Doesn't HIs Report Card Show It? My child's report card is too good. But according to his teachers, I'm crazy to complain. Recognizable percentages and letters have disappeared. Progressing well is checked off for every subject, and the accompanying text (impersonal, prefab, nondescript and jargony) tells a different story from the one I've pieced together. My son is thrilled. Quoting from the report, he tells me he has exceeded his own expectations. The results are utterly respectable, but they don't reflect reality, and I know it. We've been dealing with the kind of work my son is really doing at school (or not doing) all year long. An e-mail in mid-October informed us we'd been duped. His cavalier and consistent "Nope" or "Finished it at school" responses to "Do you have any homework?" should have tipped us off earlier. I was suspicious, but trusting, and it was nicer to spend evenings watching movies or playing games. We were away for the weekend when the school finally burst our bubble: 2/10 on a math test, lack of focus, skipped and partially complete work sheets. Tears and promises to be honest and work harder were followed by my son's confession to a neglected English assignment. But don't worry, Mom, it's not due until Oct. 9. It was Friday of a long weekend and we were returning late Monday the 8th. He looked genuinely shocked, as if the calendar had done him wrong. He spent hours of our holiday weekend pulling it together. Poor attention to what had originally been assigned got him a mediocre mark for doing a great job on the wrong project. The consequence was a generous offer of two weeks to redo it for the A the teacher knew he was capable of. The night before it was due I asked if it was finished. He said "almost," that he had time in class to finalize it. The next day I asked, "So, did you hand it in?" Well, Mr. D said I didn't have to. It wouldn't make a difference to my grade anyway. The boldness of my son's actions - the lies, the excuses, the lack of desire to work hard or succeed - was upsetting enough, but the message that he'd be fine, that his performance didn't matter, was shocking. Math and French took the same path - student failure followed by teacher concessions. Don't worry, we were told: he's smart, this is typical of eighth-grade boys. Was this happening to anyone else? I spoke to a mother whose first-grade child received a glowing report card although the child couldn't read a word or recognize letters. But he's charming and likes to hold the door open for others. Another mom complained her seventh grader got decent marks on a writing assignment rife with spelling and grammatical errors. The ideas were good. Other parents said they suspected their child was doing worse than the marks implied, but it was unclear how the students were being assessed, so why rock that boat? When I met with the teachers, they acknowledged the problem but put a chunk of the blame on report card limitations. There was no level between progressing well and progressing with difficulty. O.K., but if he got 15 percent on a French test, why indicate that he "is beginning to identify and use the vocabulary, the grammar and language conventions appropriate to his grade level?" The teachers are lovely, committed, smart, quirky people. They like my son, think he's funny, bright and thoughtful. He thinks they're great and he loves school. That's a good chunk of the education battle won, right there. But when he fails, they fail him by failing to name it. I don't care how theoretically smart he is when the message he's getting is that there are no consequences to his indifference and lack of attention. What if it's not just an eighth-grade boy thing that will resolve with maturity? Next year he starts high school where he'll have more teachers who have less time to care. Marks that are higher than deserved might temporarily buoy self-esteem, but are ultimately short-sighted. We're in this for the long haul and for the learning. I think now would be a great time to get the harsh messages across. I'd like to think the problem lies with schools, teachers and grading, but it may not be simply pedagogical. We are the generation that values friendship with our children as much as, if not more than, parental guidance. I am guilty of this myself. Why should teachers be any different? Perhaps by lowering our expectations and mitigating their disappointments, we're letting our kids down.