Show interest in what your child is learning by helping out with homework or volunteering in the classroom. If your child sees you attending school board and PTA meetings, she'll have little doubt as to whether you think school is important. Take the grading scale, for instance. A's and B's liberally. Therefore students may attain different grade point averages in different classrooms and at different schools even if the quality of their school work is about the same.
Report cards can also reflect the particular educational values of different schools and districts.
Some schools emphasize the basics, meaning, for example, that a child's grade in language arts or English may primarily reflect his or her command of grammar and writing mechanics. Other schools emphasize creative expression, and may give higher grades to students who write with flair and strongly voiced opinions, while being more lenient on the mechanics. While most public middle schools and high schools assign letter grades of A to F to student course work, many elementary schools do not. Other schools assign no grades at all, but rather have teachers write a narrative, or detailed comments, about each student. Many parents find these narratives particularly helpful, as they not only assess a student's progress but explain how the teacher feels strengths and weaknesses may best be addressed.