Teacher who doesn’t offer retakes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a third grade teacher and I don’t offer retakes.

I'm betting you are over 50, OP.

The idea of a rigid "sink or swim" approach to childhood education is very Old School. Is the goal to evaluate performance or to gain mastery of a concept or idea?
If your goal is mastery, then retake-retake-retake UNTIL mastery is the name of the game. If it's just to tick the Pass/Fail box and give a gold star to the kids who got it on the first go (either by studying or b/c they didn't need to!) then that is a completely different system.

And what about the kids who do all their homework, listen carefully in class, ask questions when they don't understand something, study hard for exams and basically take personal responsibility for themselves and their own learning... what are they learning? Aside from not to bother.

This is just yet another step in the direction of "a trophy for everyone" which anyone who has been paying attention can easily see has NOT been working out well for the youth of today.

[Anonymous]

I agree with limited retakes. I also think that the the student should be expected to complete additional independent activities in order to be given acces to the retest. My DD had an amazing Physics teacher that offered points back on test if the students researched and wrote an explaination about each question that got wrong. They were then able to take a similar, but more difficult, exam. This allowed the students the opportunity to ensure they understood every concept. The end result was every one of the students in this class earned a 4 or 5 on the AP exam. This is where it mattered and showed that the retest policy really did work as a learning tool. I suppose the question is what is the goal of the teacher? Is it to teach or is that every student learns?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach middle school math, and I love the effect of retakes. Students actually care about their grades now. Before retakes, a kid would fail a test, trash it, and walk out of the room and forget about it.

Now, they fail the test, and immediately ask what they did wrong, if they can have extra practice on the topic, and what I suggest they do to prepare for the retake. My after school sessions are packed with kids trying to solidify their learning. It's not free points--they have to do a remediation assignment, and retake a second version of a full length test after school. They are learning. My end of year state scores are higher than before, study habits are improving, and kids are more engaged.

This makes me cringe as a high school teacher as my freshman keep asking about retakes and ways for extra credit because they didn’t study for the test and didn’t take it seriously. We don’t offer retakes and have noticed that yes, students care more about their grades but that retakes are inflating grades and not helping with long term mastery of the content. They have seen the test and are quickly memorizing to get a higher score. Study habits have gone downhill be they believe there is always another chance. You can’t meaure mastery by your SOL scores.

[Anonymous]

There is already a ton of content and homework. Studying for last week's test/paper for Half Credit in addition to the work assigned for this week is overwhelming and a colossal waste of valuable time.

If retests are regularly required something is broken. Either the teacher is not teaching effectively or the students are not studying.

It must be dreadful for students to always be looking backward trying to fix an old grade. Then they only earn half credit on the retest. If you are going to retest them at least give them full credit for their efforts.

You'll never get ahead when you are always trying to fix yesterday.

[Anonymous]

Personally, I don't think teachers should offer test retakes at any grade level. I do think that students should review their tests and make corrections for learning purposes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a third grade teacher and I don’t offer retakes.

I'm betting you are over 50, OP.

The idea of a rigid "sink or swim" approach to childhood education is very Old School. Is the goal to evaluate performance or to gain mastery of a concept or idea?
If your goal is mastery, then retake-retake-retake UNTIL mastery is the name of the game. If it's just to tick the Pass/Fail box and give a gold star to the kids who got it on the first go (either by studying or b/c they didn't need to!) then that is a completely different system.

And what about the kids who do all their homework, listen carefully in class, ask questions when they don't understand something, study hard for exams and basically take personal responsibility for themselves and their own learning... what are they learning? Aside from not to bother.

This is just yet another step in the direction of "a trophy for everyone" which anyone who has been paying attention can easily see has NOT been working out well for the youth of today.

My guess is you don't have multiple kids with differing strengths and abilities.
My son works *so* hard in school. He does his homework every day, on time. He also does extra work with me or DH. He listens in class, and his teachers report he participates and asks good questions. He studies hard all the time. He pretty much never forgets his homework, or loses assignments, or anything like that. He is absolutely the paragon of taking personal responsibility for himself and his learning.
And yet.... he doesn't get As on the first try. He works hard for Bs, and when he pulls out an A it's usually because he took advantage of relearning and retake opportunities.

Meanwhile, my daughter has very different strengths. School is easy for her and things come quickly to her. She doesn't work hard in school, rushes through her homework, yet still gets basically everything right. As are trivial. Her A on the first try on her tests aren't because she has some better work ethic or better personal responsibility.

I couldn't care less about DS getting a trophy or about DD getting the initial gold star. I want both my kids to learn and if it takes my son a little longer to learn things, than that's *way* more important to me than having my daughter think she's some uber-responsible kid just because she gets an A on the first try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach middle school math, and I love the effect of retakes. Students actually care about their grades now. Before retakes, a kid would fail a test, trash it, and walk out of the room and forget about it.

Now, they fail the test, and immediately ask what they did wrong, if they can have extra practice on the topic, and what I suggest they do to prepare for the retake. My after school sessions are packed with kids trying to solidify their learning. It's not free points--they have to do a remediation assignment, and retake a second version of a full length test after school. They are learning. My end of year state scores are higher than before, study habits are improving, and kids are more engaged.

This makes me cringe as a high school teacher as my freshman keep asking about retakes and ways for extra credit because they didn’t study for the test and didn’t take it seriously. We don’t offer retakes and have noticed that yes, students care more about their grades but that retakes are inflating grades and not helping with long term mastery of the content.[i] They have seen the test and are quickly memorizing to get a higher score. Study habits have gone downhill be they believe there is always another chance. You can’t meaure mastery by your SOL scores.

That really surprises me that you don't think/haven't experienced rework to improve long term mastery of the content.

[Anonymous]

In the lower grades, I can see how limited opportunities for retakes may help, like 1 retake per quarter, or 2 but only in 1st semester, or 3 per year. So the kids learn to study hard but still have a safety net if they really need it.

[Anonymous]

I used to teach in a "mastery learning" school, and it was a disaster in the upper grades. Students were given unlimited opportunities to retake, as failure to master material meant, of course, that the teacher needed to find a new way to present the material, and would thus spend time devising new lesson plans to teach material to students who didn't pass an exam.

Result: a SMALL number of students worked hard, and the mastery learning system was great for them. The majority of students were lazy, and had poor study skills after years of being permitted "retakes" for "mastery." Many high school students seemed to view a first test as a sort of study guide, s they knew exactly what to study when they felt like actually buckling down to pass a retake.

I tried so hard to make mastery learning work. I took the job because I was excited about a full "mastery learning" curriculum (not so radical: see Bloom's taxonomy). But it turned out to be a horrible system. Mastery learning sounds great in theory, but does not work in high school.

Students who graduated, and who communicated with me in their first year of college, often struggled in an environment in which deadlines were "real", and the student needed to develop a study plan and habits to enable them to master material for a hard deadline/"real" test the first try.

[Anonymous]

For those of you that want retakes—what should they be valued at? Full credit? Partial credit? Up to a 75%? What is the cut off grade for students to take a retake?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those of you that want retakes—what should they be valued at? Full credit? Partial credit? Up to a 75%? What is the cut off grade for students to take a retake?

I think that depends on the grade level.
Because in high school, the reality is that the grade *is* a competition on some level. So I can totally understand how it's not fair for a retake to get the same credit as an initial test. And I understand the angst about retakes in high school in general.

But in elementary and middle school, grades aren't a competition (or shouldn't be!) They are a tool to communicate between the school and parents, and a tool for teachers to get insight into what the child did and didn't know.
In our district, K and 1st is on a "mastery" grading scale. So your grade is whatever you know at the end of the quarter. If you get a ton of Cs and Ds, but then something "clicks" the last week of the quarter, then your final grade could still be an A.
I'd be totally OK with that method expanded up throughout elementary school. I want to know what my kid knows and what they're struggling with. I couldn't possibly care less what little Suzy's grade is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you that want retakes—what should they be valued at? Full credit? Partial credit? Up to a 75%? What is the cut off grade for students to take a retake?

I think that depends on the grade level.
Because in high school, the reality is that the grade *is* a competition on some level. So I can totally understand how it's not fair for a retake to get the same credit as an initial test. And I understand the angst about retakes in high school in general.

But in elementary and middle school, grades aren't a competition (or shouldn't be!) They are a tool to communicate between the school and parents, and a tool for teachers to get insight into what the child did and didn't know.
In our district, K and 1st is on a "mastery" grading scale. So your grade is whatever you know at the end of the quarter. If you get a ton of Cs and Ds, but then something "clicks" the last week of the quarter, then your final grade could still be an A.
I'd be totally OK with that method expanded up throughout elementary school. I want to know what my kid knows and what they're struggling with. I couldn't possibly care less what little Suzy's grade is.

I don’t think most are taking about retakes in K or 1st grade though...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a third grade teacher and I don’t offer retakes.

I'm betting you are over 50, OP.

The idea of a rigid "sink or swim" approach to childhood education is very Old School.

Nope. Early 30s.

[Anonymous]

As a wise woman once said, Ain’t nobody got time for that.

[Anonymous]

I approve of making sure every kid understand the material the missed on a test. It is very important that they do.

Grades don't matter until high school, and frankly report cards at that age should be comments only; but understanding the material and being able to demonstrate that in a test setting is important enough that retakes should be mandatory for a grade below a B.