Reply to APS Retake Policy change announced

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Reply to "APS Retake Policy change announced"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This policy is such a classic case of having a theoretical plan that goes wrong in the real world.

Of course the kids taking advantage will be the panicked A hunters.  I agree with what a PP said.  In this messed up environment, it is fully accurate that one B will blow your chances at a whole class of colleges.  And they know it.  These are very motivated kids and there are plenty of them.

The kids pulling Cs and Ds and failing and not getting the material who this policy was meant to capture and help.  Are they really more motivated by this policy?  Probably not much.

In my view this was all predictable, but hey they figured it out in the real world I guess.[/quote]

Yes- it was all very foreseeable. But it was a policy created by the admin with teacher input (see above comment). I am shocked that aps made a mid year change that is to the detriment of the students. This will negatively impact the students. I think the lesson that kids are learning here is “adults will leave you high and dry if they get to do less work.” I think there could have been some structural changes that aps could have made that would have reduced teacher workload without changing the policy at the expense of students.

A nearby school district implement a very similar policy a few years ago. It was a complete sh!tshow the first year with a ton of extra work. But teachers worked together in their course content areas. [b]All of the intensified chem teachers made one retake and then they took turns one day a week holding re-takes. [/b]So each teacher didn’t have to stay after every week. They only stayed after once or twice a month, and they didn’t have to make their own retakes they worked together. There are so many ways that aps could have made modifications. Of course, aps just listens to the loudest voices. The nearby school district did make changes in the summer for the next year. But no changes were allowed for the students. They had to keep whatever they said on the syllabus. The syllabus is a binding document that really cannot be changed, at least that’s how the nearby school district  views it. I wish aps had the same honor and integrity to their students. [/quote]

How many intensified chemistry teachers do they have? It does sound good and would work well for situations where a bunch of teachers teach the same class, but I know of many situations where there is only one teacher teaching a certain class. One teacher I know teaches three different classes and is the only one teaching them, and he has about 100 students. [/quote]

Sure- there are a lot of teachers that teach singletons. Maybe this is an opportunity to reach out to other schools for test creation. Unless it is an IB or career center class, you might have one or two other teachers in the county that teach that subject. Creating an email group that works to create tests might be helpful. Proctoring tests can be done at the department level not subject level. So the 5 members of the CTE department share proctoring duties once a week for example. Even people who teach single classes are in departments with probably at least 3 people. Or maybe to help with having fewer teachers and kids stay after school, allow for no movement Mondays and Fridays to be used for test re-takes. Obviously 45 minutes might not be long enough to take a full test, but often tests are essay and MC and tests can be broken into sections. Use resources to create a testing center that operates throughout the day for retakes. Even using AI can help with test re-take creation. You can ask chat gpt to creat 45 questions on (insert specific subject- give as specific instructions as you can). Then copy and paste that into a doc and start revising it into 25 quality questions. The initial version generated won’t be perfect, but after the teacher looks through it, revised it, throws out the dud questions, it’s like having a test prep partner who won’t complain when you cut their favorite question! I sympathize with teacher workload but there are ways to work smarter without the whiplash of changing policy for kids mid year. [/quote]

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