In the spirit of promoting equity and reducing student stress, Fairfield Public Schools has instituted a new reassessment policy for the 2023-2024 school year. The policy differs for each department, but it allows “second chances” on major summative assessments, providing an opportunity for students to demonstrate additional learning after a poor score.
Like any new policy, this policy is not without its concerns. These “second chances” have the potential to greatly improve student experiences, but they also have the potential to reduce student motivation and cause overwhelming teacher workloads.
However, much of the staff are optimistic that the implications for student learning and experiences are outweighing the negatives of the new policy.
Fairfield Ludlowe High School (FLHS) Principal Greg Hatzis explained that the goal of the new policy is to “make things more equitable for students across the board no matter what background they came from or what resources they had.”
“When there are no second chances, [low scores] can really hurt a student and what their overall score would be,” so the policy allows more forgiveness for a bad test day or an extenuating circumstance, Hatzis stated.
FLHS math teacher Lauren Mason stated that she had always considered specific extenuating circumstances of her students and seeks to communicate with them following unusually low performance. “Just because you learn something later on, because it took you a little bit longer, I think that’s perfectly okay.”
A major concern raised by the policy is students not being motivated or feeling comfortable not putting in sufficient effort for the first assessment with the knowledge that they can retake it. Hatzis addresses this, explaining that “knowing there’s a chance that they can retake it shouldn’t be an excuse not to study,” but if students “actually try on a test and it doesn’t go well, then you have another chance”, which he hopes will relieve stress.
The policy for the English department differs from other departments that offer traditional “retakes”, because it is not about improving test scores.
FLHS English teacher Jenny Ingram explains “[students] have to engage in an actual process of revision that includes a writing conference, during which the student will have to process [their] thinking and writing skills.”
According to Ingram, “in order to qualify for the revision, students have to hit all of the deadlines for the writing process. If a student hands in shoddy work, they’re not eligible to revise.”
This section of the policy prevents students from disregarding their first attempt on an assessment in English class, but this is not widespread in all departments. However, teachers are still optimistic that retakes done for the right reasons are worth the time and effort.
Many teachers at FLHS spoke about the most notable benefit of the policy being an improved level of student learning in the long run. Much of the learning done in high school classes is cumulative, meaning knowledge from the past is useful in the future and the topics may build on each other.
“Students have always reflected in English classes on their summative assessments because the portfolio is an exercise in metacognitive awareness” explained Ingram. “Metacognition means that a student is showing his or her understanding of their own knowledge and learning.”
“I have always allowed for students to revise, in some form or another, processed summative writing. When people look at what they’ve done, get feedback on it, and then rework their writing, it’s inevitable that they’ll grow, on [both] that assignment and like assignments in the future.”
Critics of the policy are concerned about retakes lowering the level of rigor in honors and AP courses, but FLHS AP chemistry teacher Erin Golrick believes that it is vital to complete test corrections so students reflect on their knowledge in preparation for the AP exam.
With test corrections, she “really saw it was so beneficial for the student, not only to help them improve their grade, but it really forced them to look at their test afterwards. It’s always beneficial to keep learning what you didn’t know.”
“Some teachers just give curves, but if the whole point of the course is to be learning chemistry, you want to be doing something that’s going to help improve their learning.”
Offering retakes can cause an additional burden upon teachers that need to create new assessments and grade them, in addition to already difficult workloads. “It takes a lot of time for teachers to write quality assessments,” explains Mason, stating it often takes her over an hour, in addition to hours of grading.
When teachers go to make a different version for a reassessment, they are often left with less quality content for a fair reassessment. Upholding the same standards and level of difficulty without allowing students to simply memorize the questions on the test can be much more difficult.
“I typically start with a bank of questions or ideas of how I want to write the test, and then going from there I’ll disregard questions that are too easy or too hard. Then, when I go to do the retake, I have really easy questions left and really hard questions left,” Mason stated.
In addition, concerns have been raised about students that earn high grades taking advantage of the policy in an attempt to get perfect scores, amplifying the burden on teachers. This issue has been addressed through imposing a requirement of a score of less than 90% to be eligible for a retake in an attempt to reduce grade inflation and teacher workloads.
“Kids who don’t really need it, they’re the ones taking advantage of it, whereas the students who probably need it the most, aren’t necessarily the ones taking advantage of it,” explains Hatzis.
Hatzis also acknowledges this extra difficulty on teachers, but hopes that teachers “also value the students actually learning the material” and that the extra chance will allow students to take more time to ensure actual understanding and improve on future assessments. In the long run, he hopes “[the policy] should be better for everybody.”
2023 is only the first year that the policy has been in place, and it is still being modified to make it the most effective. Hatzis explained that every time a large change in policy is made, it needs to be revised and reflected on.
“Every policy is a work in progress to try to make it better, so that’s what we’re going to do.”