Reply to This high school test retake policy is wild

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]High school isn't college.  I'm tired of hearing that they need to be the same.  There are tons of rules and policies that differ between the two.  They should not be the same; they serve two very different purposes, two very different populations.

If you want to argue that AP courses should mirror college policies, okay, I guess (but even then I'd argue they aren't the same).[/quote]

This isn’t the path I want for my own child. I don’t want the school to set low expectations that my child is supposed to magically overcome when she goes to college.

This isn’t preparation at all, and it’s only going to burn through more teachers at a time we can’t afford to lose them.[/quote]

So when does it stop? Should 7th grade look like college? Kindergarten?

K-12 schooling isn't college. Kids can and will adapt to new policies, just like they did when they came from elementary to middle and had to switch classes for the first time, or went from middle to high school and had their first final exams. We don't need to make 10 year olds change classes, take finals, and never redo assignments because that is how college will work down the road.

There are two drastically different opinions on the purpose of k-12 school.  It's either 1) To get students to learn as much as possible by the time they graduate or 2) To rank kids for college applications.  Retakes help the first, and hinder the second. I feel like #1 is far more important though, so I'm happily willing to let #2 suffer a bit if it means my students gain more knowledge at the end of the day.

--math teacher and parent[/quote]

HS math teacher and I completely disagree with you and agree with the PP.

A summative is when you get to display mastery, after many opportunities to make mistakes on homework and quizzes and remediate issues so you actually gain more knowledge.

The current policy means that a lot of students don't even study for the test and treat it as a first try, thinking they'll do better on the retake. By the time the retake rolls around, they're behind and now have to master old material while trying to keep up with new material that they don't understand because they never mastered previous topics we're building on.
Others may study somewhat, but treat the first pass as an opportunity to see what's on the test and then try it again since they can retake to 100%.

At my HS, it's abundantly clear that [b]our middle school and some other high schools are wildly inflating grades because students come to us or transfer with extraordinary gaps in knowledge and high grades that make absolutely no sense given how little (or nothing) they know.[/b] I presume retakes are partly to blame for this.

We also hear from time to time about students in college being shell shocked by the policies they have to adapt to (no late work, no make-up, no retake, no curve, long and difficult assignments).
Just because you graduated from college doesn't mean you accomplished your goal if you had to drop the major you intended due to lack of preparation. Remember that 40% of college grads are either underemployed (meaning doing jobs that don't require a college degree) or unemployed.

[/quote]

I think things like the push to have everyone take Algebra by 8th grade also comes into play. [/quote]

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