This high school test retake policy is wild

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love the policy. My kid jwho is a unior has an uw 4.0. She says she will retake anything below 93.5. She's a good student and if that makes her happy so be it. I like the determination.

Of course she has a 4.0! 😂
Aren’t you concerned she is unprepared for challenges ahead? It is very easy to retake a test. It’s not particularly difficult to do and it’s not a testament to grit.

Hey genius. She has a 4.0 uw and the policy just started this year. She couldn't do this before. I shared it to say she's a good student who cares about grades and will now use this policy to her advantage. Not afraid she's unprepared. She got those grades without a retake policy. It used to be only under 80 can retake and she's never gotten under 80. Also, I'm not sure what school your kids go to but at hers retakes require test corrections and then a retake. If it was so easy everyone would do it but 2 teachers on here said every kid doesn't. Try to keep up.

I posted above. I’m the mother of the college freshman dealing with actual consequences this year. I am extremely grateful she wasn’t crippled with this policy. You’ve already admitted that your DD is going to exploit this policy. So she’ll get a short term gain, but she won’t learn that she needs to do things properly the first and final time.

I’m also a teacher. Your daughter is causing a tremendous amount of extra work for already overtaxed teachers. I’m fully expecting this policy will drive more from the profession. Teachers lack the time to offer these unnecessary retests for A students, so this actually comes across as disrespectful.

So it’s lose - lose all around so you can get a couple more points on a test. And as for college admissions, colleges receive a summary sheet of district policies. They’ll know students’ As aren’t that authentic.

Also she never used retakes before. Not sure why people keep missing that. So she knows how to do well the fiest time. And now she will continue to do well the first time and then do even better the second. If she gets a 92 she aims for at least 93.5. Basically she want an A nothing less. It could be she never needs a retake but she will use it if she gets an A- or lower.

But she won’t get that opportunity in college. This sets her up for a rude awakening when her first grade has to actually stand. It is training her into bad habits, perhaps trying a bit less because she doesn’t NEED a strong A the first time. You don’t see it yet, but this isn’t a benefit. It’s a disservice.

And I also see you don’t care about the impact this has on teachers, many of whom already pull 65 hour weeks. Imagine the paperwork nightmare this is creating, and to what end?

The teachers lose.
The students lose.
FCPS’s reputation drops with colleges.

[Anonymous]

Is there a link to the policy?

[Anonymous]

My HS freshman has less test anxiety because of this policy. She knows that if she messes up, she has the opportunity to correct.

She’s taking an online course where every test has the opportunity for retake, and the scores are averaged. She’s starting behind the kids that had taken previous series of the course with this teacher, and had a bit of a rough start. Yet, she did not redo any of her tests, just worked really hard on the subsequent ones to bring up her grades. She will likely never use the FCPS retake policy.

I do wonder how the kids that put their teachers through the extra work for a point here and there will fare when it comes time to ask for LOR for their college applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love the policy. My kid jwho is a unior has an uw 4.0. She says she will retake anything below 93.5. She's a good student and if that makes her happy so be it. I like the determination.

Of course she has a 4.0! 😂
Aren’t you concerned she is unprepared for challenges ahead? It is very easy to retake a test. It’s not particularly difficult to do and it’s not a testament to grit.

My DD is a freshman at a state university. No retakes in any of her classes on any of her assignments. 33% penalties for late work (1 day late) in her STEM courses.

So these policies are horrible for college prep. I feel bad for the teachers who have to deal with this extra workload, and I feel bad for the college professors who are inevitably going to deal with this entitlement.

Same policy for my college kid. She said she would have rather her high school prepared her for college.

[Anonymous]

The reason the students who get 90 or 92 or 95 are retaking the test is because they see students who got in the 70's and 80's being able to retake tests to bring their grades up to the 90's.

So which is a better student - one who takes the test one time and gets a 92 or a student who takes the test two times and gets a 75 the first time and a 92 the second time in part because they have seen the format of the test?

Why are the grades not averaged? That is how it should be. You get a C- (a 70) the first time and if you get an A- ( 90 )the second time your score should be a B- (an 80), not an A- ( 90).

What happens if you get a lower grade? Do you get to keep the higher grade?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges will get that sheet whether she engages in the practice or not. So why not use the practice. Otherwise colleges get it and see she has an A- and wonder what's wrong with her.

Or she can get an A and colleges will simply assume it’s the product of retests. That’s not good, either. It’s a signal to colleges that the district overinflates grades and the students may not be prepared for actual consequences.

But if they get the sheet they will assume what they want. How is this hard to understand?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s very unusual! What will these students do when they get to the real world?!

Yeah that test I took at my consulting job today was so hard

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love the policy. My kid jwho is a unior has an uw 4.0. She says she will retake anything below 93.5. She's a good student and if that makes her happy so be it. I like the determination.

Of course she has a 4.0! 😂
Aren’t you concerned she is unprepared for challenges ahead? It is very easy to retake a test. It’s not particularly difficult to do and it’s not a testament to grit.

Hey genius. She has a 4.0 uw and the policy just started this year. She couldn't do this before. I shared it to say she's a good student who cares about grades and will now use this policy to her advantage. Not afraid she's unprepared. She got those grades without a retake policy. It used to be only under 80 can retake and she's never gotten under 80. Also, I'm not sure what school your kids go to but at hers retakes require test corrections and then a retake. If it was so easy everyone would do it but 2 teachers on here said every kid doesn't. Try to keep up.

Sorry, no need to be so defensive, my kid isn’t in the district. I just find the whole policy wild. Your kid has a 4.0 in FCPS, which is very different than having a 4.0 in a more rigorous district (sorry).

Maybe but she has a 1580 SAT and 35 ACT so she will be just fine. Neither were superscored BTW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid just got his first test back and did well, but said most kids are retaking anything under 97 so that they can be sure they are in good shape in case the final ends up being hard.

This seems like it is going to push the highly perfectionist crowd to insanity.

I hope the kids that really need the retakes are doing it too.

The kids that really need to retake them always do it.

Snort. I can assure that they are not.

[Anonymous]

First assessment in the books and as expected, the only kids coming to use for retakes are the ones who scored 90%.

The kids who need the retakes don't ever take them because most of them got that grade by barely doing any work in the first place. They're certainly not interested in doing even more work in order to score a higher grade on an assessment they didn't care about in the first place.

We tried to tell parents at BTSN that it's going to be way too stressful for these kids if they plan on taking every, single test in all their classes twice in order to try to raise their grade on each of them. Parents all nodded in agreement but here are their kids...taking every test twice trying to eke out a few extra percentage points.

I suspect what will happen is that after awhile, many of the kids will realize that they either can't score higher the second time around OR that it barely has an impact on their grade to go from a 90 to a 92 and that it's not worth the effort.

[Anonymous]

Meanwhile, Madison kids are not allowed a single retake outside of every third assessment.

[Anonymous]

My son said he knew who all of the public schools kids were in his college classes because they always went up to the professors after a test to ask for a retake. He said many of them now put "no retakes" in the syllabus.

[Anonymous]

When I went to my kid's hs btsn the only teacher that mentioned retakes was math and she said if you get a worse score, the most recent score stands, other than that no one else mentioned it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reason the students who get 90 or 92 or 95 are retaking the test is because they see students who got in the 70's and 80's being able to retake tests to bring their grades up to the 90's.

So which is a better student - one who takes the test one time and gets a 92 or a student who takes the test two times and gets a 75 the first time and a 92 the second time in part because they have seen the format of the test?

Why are the grades not averaged? That is how it should be. You get a C- (a 70) the first time and if you get an A- ( 90 )the second time your score should be a B- (an 80), not an A- ( 90).

What happens if you get a lower grade? Do you get to keep the higher grade?

At our school, the most recent score stands but you can keep retaking I believe, my kid is determined to always get an A and never to do retakes. In middle school, never did he do retake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid just got his first test back and did well, but said most kids are retaking anything under 97 so that they can be sure they are in good shape in case the final ends up being hard.

This seems like it is going to push the highly perfectionist crowd to insanity.

I hope the kids that really need the retakes are doing it too.

+1 This exactly. My DS studied really hard and got a 22/23 on his first history quiz and was agonizing whether he should retake it to try for a 100. He had so much other work and I convinced him it wasn’t worth the time/effort for one extra point. But it absolutely sucks that someone who got a 60 or 70 the first round could potentially get 100 on the second round and seem to be a better student than my son.