Yes. YES.

Had a quick check-in conference with N's teacher who--you have no reason to remember if you're not as obsessed with the education of my son as I am--was out from mid-September until mid-October. We looked at his reading and his writing and his math, and where he is in all of it, and she told us a little about the ways in which he is making sure his needs are met in the classroom. (SO glad to hear that he's a total pest at times...and I mean that sincerely. And no, those aren't the words she used. But they're the ones she meant.)

She also showed us some of his tests, and how he had TANKED on them, and then how she had taken him aside and had him retake them with her next to him, telling him what needed doing in each section, though requiring him to do the reading/answering on his own, and how he came pretty darned close to acing them at that point. Or at least the parts of them that she could get him to do before he shut down. (When he's done, he's DONE--that's something that anyone who has EVER worked with this child knows. He's nice about it; he's a cooperative kid. But when he's hit his stopping point, you just can't get anything else useful out of him.)

And then she made my year by leaning back in her chair and saying, "This is why I'm not at all concerned about whether he's learning the material, because I think it's obvious he is. My concerns are about how he is or isn't able to show us what he's learned."

Yes. Yesyesyes. Exactly. Yes. Not slow, just not always able to prove that in a quantifiable way.

Now if we could just figure out how we get him over that barrier...because it's not exactly a recipe for academic success.