The Report Card

The Report Card is a 2004 middle grade novel by prolific children’s author Andrew Clements that tells the story of a young genius who has kept her intelligence a secret for her entire life. Nora Rowley has never worried about report cards, but by fifth grade, she realizes the negative impact of grades and test scores on her classmates—especially her best friend, Stephen Curtis—and decides to do something about it. The story explores themes about the importance of grades, the responsibilities around using intelligence well, and the beauty of the ordinary. Clements taught in public schools north of Chicago for seven years before becoming a full-time writer, drawing inspiration from his education experience. He has since published over 80 books, including Frindle (1996) and No Talking (2007), Things Not Seen (2002), The School Story (2001) and has received several awards and accolades. In 2005, The Report Card won the William Allen White Children’s Book Award, a student-voted award in the state of Kansas. This guide references the 2012 Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Reprint e-book edition of the novel.

Plot Summary

Nora Rowley, 9, has her report card in-hand on the bus ride home, and her best friend, Stephen Curtis, keeps pestering about her grades. Nora finally relents, and Stephen—shocked—discovers her report card is mostly Ds. Stephen remains in the dark about two things: First, Nora is secretly a genius, and she earned those Ds on purpose. Second, she got those Ds for Stephen’s sake.

Nora can remember every detail of her life from the time her mom bottle-fed her. She has known she is different from an early age, but she doesn’t like the way people watch her when she displays her intelligence. Consequently, Nora quickly learns how to hide her extraordinary gift. In kindergarten, Nora discovers that the best way to appear average is to imitate her peers. She cycles through every classmate, studying their behaviors and activities, and she notices that her favorite person to study is Stephen. She slowly befriends him, and they remain friends throughout their school years. In fourth grade, Stephen’s patience and love of learning, which Nora admires, dims when the standardized Connecticut Mastery Testing (CMT) ranks him in a lower percentile of students. He starts believing that he’s unintelligent, and school becomes a stressor rather than a place of curiosity. Stephen’s school anxiety is the catalyst that triggers Nora’s plans to uproot the grade system.

The Rowley family always makes a nice dinner on evenings when report cards come home. After dinner and dessert, Nora’s older siblings read aloud their report cards—Ann boasts straight-As while Todd gets mostly Bs—but Nora refuses to share her grades with the family. Dad angrily insists that Nora cannot leave the dinner table until she reads her report card, so she sits there until he carries her up to bed hours later. By the following morning, Mom and Dad have read the report card, and they ground Nora for the weekend.

On Monday, Nora correctly assumes that her parents will have a conversation with the principal, Mrs. Hackney. After Nora’s parents arrive, she notices her teachers scrambling for their gradebooks, running in and out of the meeting. Later, Mrs. Hackney summons Nora to the office, where she finds her parents, teachers, and school guidance counselor, Dr. Trindler. Mom asks the teachers why they never notified her of Nora’s low grades. One teacher explains that Nora’s grade was a low C for most of the term, and then she failed the last assignment before they finalized grades, dropping her to a D. The other teachers confirm that the same pattern occurred in their classes. Mrs. Hackney arranges for Nora to undergo additional evaluation with Dr. Trindler.

The next day, the kind librarian, Mrs. Byrne, pulls Nora aside. A few days prior, Nora failed the Internet research project in her class. Mrs. Byrne now confronts Nora about her baffling Internet search history, which caught her attention for its peculiarity and sheer length: The website list shows that Nora reads advanced topics, takes a college class, and even corresponds with a research specialist. Knowing she can’t escape the truth, Nora confesses her secret for the first time. Mrs. Byrne processes the news and asks why Nora’s grades are so low. Nora explains her plan. She wants to expose how grades and test scores can hurt students educationally, emotionally, and socially: They add undue pressure to perform well at school, they make the lower-scoring kids feel unable to catch up, and they make the high-scoring kids feel superior to their classmates. Nora asks Mrs. Byrne not to share her secret, and Mrs. Byrne reluctantly agrees.

Nora has her first appointment with Dr. Trindler, who presents her with an IQ test. Unlike the CMT, Nora doesn’t have time to prepare, and therefore she doesn’t know how many questions to miss to earn an average score. She takes a guess, answering 70% of the questions correctly. The next day, Mrs. Byrne summons Nora to the library. Earlier that day, Dr. Trindler’s assistant—dying to tell someone the office gossip—spilled confidential news to Mrs. Byrne during their morning carpool: According to Dr. Trindler, Nora’s IQ is approximately 188, which is well above the genius threshold. With this development, Nora’s secret becomes much more difficult to hide.

During lunch, Nora overhears her classmate Merton Lake insulting Stephen’s intelligence. Nora snaps, whips around, and humbles him with her own brilliance. At the end of her rant, she notices Dr. Trindler watching her from the doorway. Later, Dr. Trindler confronts her about the shocking IQ score; he didn’t believe the results at first, but after witnessing Nora’s outburst in the cafeteria, he starts believing her true abilities. By dinner, Nora’s family knows about her giftedness, and Mom starts planning the blueprint for her future. Nora tells Stephen the news over the phone. At first, he feels betrayed by her deceit, but he starts concocting a new plan when she explains why she got such a poor report card on purpose. They collaborate on this new scheme: She will first play into everyone’s expectations of her genius persona, and then she will proceed to fail all her quizzes and tests, drawing attention to grades and their uselessness.

Mrs. Hackney confronts Nora about her grades much sooner than she anticipated, and the conversation makes Nora reevaluate what she hopes to accomplish. Mrs. Byrne expresses disappointment in Nora’s choices, encouraging her to try simply doing the next right thing. Nora isolates herself that weekend, ignoring Stephen’s calls, and then stays home “sick” from school the following Monday. Regardless, Mom drags Nora to school midday when an emergency arises: Nearly her entire class has scored zeroes on every quiz taken that day in protest. Nora enters a meeting with parents, teachers, and even the superintendent. To suppress the rebellion, Mrs. Hackney calls for Nora’s two-week suspension, but Mrs. Byrne defends her intentions, arguing that the punishment is too severe. Nora asks to speak directly to her classmates, promising to accept any consequence deemed appropriate. Nora publicly apologizes to her peers, admits that her actions caused events to spiral out of control, and affirms that students should always do their best at school, regardless of how much grades matter. Her candor both tempers the rebellion and softens the administrators, who repeal her suspension. She tells Mrs. Hackney and her parents that she doesn’t want to enter the gifted program or skip ahead a few grades; she just wants to be a normal kid. Her mom excuses her from the meeting, allowing Nora to continue her day as usual, even though Nora herself, as she has proven, is anything but ordinary.