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[quote=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.[/quote]

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