I was a teacher for a little more than 10 years.  I did try to be positive as much as possible, or at least say one decent thing about the kid, before an area of improvement.  The catch more flies with honey principle.  Of course, some kids were holy terrors and 'vivacious' might be my word for 'won't sit still to save their life'.

So those decent things were sometimes more of a 'bless your heart' moment, if you know what I mean.

They do try to put some positive things on the report card - but generally, if your kid is misbehaving a lot in school, you know it.  Are DH and BM not hearing that he has issues in school? There are some kids who do well in school and poorly at home due to family problems/poor parenting. They respond well to rules and structure in school but don't get them at home.

A lot of times Kids are different at school than they are at home.

My DD did excellent at school with both behavior and grades and in all 12 years of school I never received any negative comment or heard anything negative from any school officials. She was a rather difficult and at times rude teenager at home. I was a single mom and worked a lot and likely didn't give her enough attention :( 

I heard from a lot of parents (I teach high school) that they are surprised how well their kids behave at school as they are rather difficult at home. I hear from a lot of parents now that they have new appreciation for us during pandemics because they stuck at home with their poorly behaved kids (often these kids are excellent in school!) and we deal with them all day. But they are not a problem for us!

Kids are a lot different at school than at home. I'm a teacher and usually try to make a positive comment about some of their strengths. 

At parent/teacher conference, SD10 teacher said she volunteered to help out in the classroom and was very quiet. Total oppoisite of what we saw at home. It really surprised DH too. If he asks her about chores, it's never "please pick me to help!" it's followed by grunts, moans, and excuses of why she doesn't want to do it. 

But by having his teacher say those things, you KNOW he is capable, he just chooses to not be the same at home.

I was a bit of a hellion in school, while my sisters were perfect angels. There were definite differences in the report card comments we got, although the teachers usually tried to find at least one positive comment to include, even for me. At least in our schools, there were "pre-made" comments for the teacher to choose from, which made adding comments quicker and easier. 

Where I'm from it isn't necessary to include comments on their report cards and in fact most teachers don't bother. We have to call home to notify parents of their child's first "failure" grade and also contact them regularly if they get behind or miss too many days. We have two parent-teacher conference days-one for fall, one for spring. Anything that needs to be said wouldn't be on a report card but said prior in a phone call or email or face to face conference. Report cards are 'A little too late' for notes. 

All that being said, yes. If we're having a PTC we are encourage to start off with identifying the child's strengths then show evidence of where they struggle as well as charted examples of ways we've tried to help then ask parent for suggestions or their opinions on how to also help their child. 

When I was a teacher, I was so overworked that I never had time to put comments on report cards unless there was a major issue or unless the kid was an amazing sweetie.