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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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[b] not helping with long term mastery of the content.[/b][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.  [/quote]

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

I’ve experienced that a lot.  We always review and have them correct mistakes because mastery of the content is vital.  That’s different than offering retakes and changing grades.   I’ve experienced that relearning to achieve mastery can absolutely be done without these open ended retake policies.  You are partly hearing my frustration as a parent since my children attend an FCPS school with mandatory “retakes for mastery.”  They accomplish this with old SOL questions and ecart.  This is simply checking off boxes. No one is checking for deep understanding of content, application and mastery through multiple choice questions. [/quote]

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