Are HS teachers required to allow 1 retake?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids learn more when they have a chance to relearn and retake. I know that there’s a belief it leads to grade inflation but the point is for kids to learn. We’ve had a few teachers in MCPS allow it over the years but first the teachers required students to participate in a reteaching activity. I thought this was sensible.

One of my 3 kids attended a private school where they could retake to earn back 50%. It was a real motivator for him to keep at difficult concepts.


When would the reteaching happen? At lunch or after school? And teachers should spend their weekends grading and regrading. At some point, this job is not sustainable especially since the pay is not great. I have friends making 150k working fully remote and maybe putting in 30 hours a week. MCPS needs to give teachers an extra planning period

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I offer retakes and I can't even tell you how many students don't take me up on it.

Then, you have nothing to offer on this issue, which is teachers refusing to follow the policy.

Ugh go away. You have nothing to offer in life so that's why you troll here...isn't it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I offer retakes and I can't even tell you how many students don't take me up on it.

Then, you have nothing to offer on this issue, which is teachers refusing to follow the policy.

Actually, this poster does have something to add. PP- what class or subject matter do you allow retakes?

Thank you! Many teachers are discouraged from offering them because students aren't interested. I have offered them in all my core science and elective classes. Except for summative (end of a topic assessments).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I offer retakes and I can't even tell you how many students don't take me up on it.

Then, you have nothing to offer on this issue, which is teachers refusing to follow the policy.

Actually, this poster does have something to add. PP- what class or subject matter do you allow retakes?

Thank you! Many teachers are discouraged from offering them because students aren't interested. I have offered them in all my core science and elective classes. Except for summative (end of a topic assessments).

Thank you for doing what you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a requirement to offer one per marking period. However, even as a fellow teacher, I was unable to get one particular English teacher to comply. I documented her refusal. Sent it to the department head and grade level administrator. Nothing ever happened.

Ugh you are the teacher's kid we hate to have

The one who makes you do your job?
So sorry you were inconvenienced. Go work somewhere else. No sympathy for jerk teachers who don’t follow the rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a requirement to offer one per marking period. However, even as a fellow teacher, I was unable to get one particular English teacher to comply. I documented her refusal. Sent it to the department head and grade level administrator. Nothing ever happened.

Ugh you are the teacher's kid we hate to have

The one who makes you do your job?
So sorry you were inconvenienced. Go work somewhere else. No sympathy for jerk teachers who don’t follow the rules.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree. Hopefully your child didn’t inherit your attitude. I feel for your child and students with someone who is so overbearing. Please let us know the school you work at so our kids don’t have you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a requirement to offer one per marking period. However, even as a fellow teacher, I was unable to get one particular English teacher to comply. I documented her refusal. Sent it to the department head and grade level administrator. Nothing ever happened.

Ugh you are the teacher's kid we hate to have

The one who makes you do your job?
So sorry you were inconvenienced. Go work somewhere else. No sympathy for jerk teachers who don’t follow the rules.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree. Hopefully your child didn’t inherit your attitude. I feel for your child and students with someone who is so overbearing. Please let us know the school you work at so our kids don’t have you.

Troll fail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids learn more when they have a chance to relearn and retake. I know that there’s a belief it leads to grade inflation but the point is for kids to learn. We’ve had a few teachers in MCPS allow it over the years but first the teachers required students to participate in a reteaching activity. I thought this was sensible.

One of my 3 kids attended a private school where they could retake to earn back 50%. It was a real motivator for him to keep at difficult concepts.


When would the reteaching happen? At lunch or after school? And teachers should spend their weekends grading and regrading. At some point, this job is not sustainable especially since the pay is not great. I have friends making 150k working fully remote and maybe putting in 30 hours a week. MCPS needs to give teachers an extra planning period

This point seems to be buried. Teaching was an unsustainable job before retakes and revisions were added.

I’m a very organized person. I’m buried under different testing requirements because of 504s and IEPs. Add the constant revolving door of reviews and retakes, and now one assignment can represent over 20 hours of work for me. So many different versions. So many different students taking tests in different ways at different times. So many students coming in for review.

So what happens? Teachers keep leaving for jobs that can actually be done in 40 hours. I have friends with my degree who are paid 3 times what I make and they admit to working 20 hours a week. It’s very appealing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a requirement to offer one per marking period. However, even as a fellow teacher, I was unable to get one particular English teacher to comply. I documented her refusal. Sent it to the department head and grade level administrator. Nothing ever happened.

Ugh you are the teacher's kid we hate to have

The one who makes you do your job?
So sorry you were inconvenienced. Go work somewhere else. No sympathy for jerk teachers who don’t follow the rules.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree. Hopefully your child didn’t inherit your attitude. I feel for your child and students with someone who is so overbearing. Please let us know the school you work at so our kids don’t have you.

Troll fail. [/quote

Not really. But you have to live with yourself and I don’t. ✌️

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The grading becomes completely unmanageable for core classes if you allow retakes

We’re talking about teachers who do not allow even one retake.
—MCPS teacher who allows 2-3 a marking period.

We have several teachers who are not allowing any retakes and many kids are failing the class. They give a quiz every week, with only a few questions on the test (often just two), so if you get one wrong or even partially wrong you fail and the entire test.

This is what I have noticed that is really poorly designed. If you give a quiz with four questions the only opportunities for grades are a perfect score or a C or F. I feel like graded assessments should have an opportunity for a B grade too.

You can give a 4 question quiz as long as you allow partial credit and the quizzes are worth at least 8 points.

We had identifications when I was in prep school that were 3 points each if perfect, but at least 1- 2 points for an answer with some accuracy and evidence of critical thinking. You learned how to write a logical answer even if you forgot a few details. I remember earning a point for being able to explain why I knew a person was not a leader of a specific political party although I couldn’t recall what he did.

That sounds fair but this isn’t what is being done in MCPS.

This was the hardest and most frustrating part when my kid got to MS. Quizzes were 3-5 questions. It was either perfect score or failing. Which as other PPs pointed out does terrible things to kids grades because the quizzes and test are worth 90% of the grade. Kid figured it out in order to make good grades, but it does seem unfair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The grading becomes completely unmanageable for core classes if you allow retakes

We’re talking about teachers who do not allow even one retake.
—MCPS teacher who allows 2-3 a marking period.

We have several teachers who are not allowing any retakes and many kids are failing the class. They give a quiz every week, with only a few questions on the test (often just two), so if you get one wrong or even partially wrong you fail and the entire test.

This is what I have noticed that is really poorly designed. If you give a quiz with four questions the only opportunities for grades are a perfect score or a C or F. I feel like graded assessments should have an opportunity for a B grade too.

You can give a 4 question quiz as long as you allow partial credit and the quizzes are worth at least 8 points.

We had identifications when I was in prep school that were 3 points each if perfect, but at least 1- 2 points for an answer with some accuracy and evidence of critical thinking. You learned how to write a logical answer even if you forgot a few details. I remember earning a point for being able to explain why I knew a person was not a leader of a specific political party although I couldn’t recall what he did.

That sounds fair but this isn’t what is being done in MCPS.

This was the hardest and most frustrating part when my kid got to MS. Quizzes were 3-5 questions. It was either perfect score or failing. Which as other PPs pointed out does terrible things to kids grades because the quizzes and test are worth 90% of the grade. Kid figured it out in order to make good grades, but it does seem unfair.

Average of "perfect" plus "failing" is A or B, so what's the problem?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For most classes, my children have been allowed retakes on quizzes and tests, but not on assessments

What's the diff between a quiz, test, and assessment?

Nothing.

The 2 official categories are
Practice/Preparation (10% of grade)
Tasks/Assessments (90% of grade)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids learn more when they have a chance to relearn and retake. I know that there’s a belief it leads to grade inflation but the point is for kids to learn. We’ve had a few teachers in MCPS allow it over the years but first the teachers required students to participate in a reteaching activity. I thought this was sensible.

One of my 3 kids attended a private school where they could retake to earn back 50%. It was a real motivator for him to keep at difficult concepts.

Ask yourself what’s the goal?

Goal is for other kids to get lower grades so my kid can get into HYPMSCTIG

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The grading becomes completely unmanageable for core classes if you allow retakes

We’re talking about teachers who do not allow even one retake.
—MCPS teacher who allows 2-3 a marking period.

We have several teachers who are not allowing any retakes and many kids are failing the class. They give a quiz every week, with only a few questions on the test (often just two), so if you get one wrong or even partially wrong you fail and the entire test.

This is what I have noticed that is really poorly designed. If you give a quiz with four questions the only opportunities for grades are a perfect score or a C or F. I feel like graded assessments should have an opportunity for a B grade too.

Individual items don't have letter grades. Only the quarterly total gets a letter grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The grading becomes completely unmanageable for core classes if you allow retakes

We’re talking about teachers who do not allow even one retake.
—MCPS teacher who allows 2-3 a marking period.

We have several teachers who are not allowing any retakes and many kids are failing the class. They give a quiz every week, with only a few questions on the test (often just two), so if you get one wrong or even partially wrong you fail and the entire test.

This is what I have noticed that is really poorly designed. If you give a quiz with four questions the only opportunities for grades are a perfect score or a C or F. I feel like graded assessments should have an opportunity for a B grade too.

Individual items don't have letter grades. Only the quarterly total gets a letter grade.

Kids know 90% on an assignment is an A, but 89% is a B.