Students at Lincoln High School have recently been challenged with the new change of the retake policy. LHS has updated the policy so that students are no longer allowed to retake quizzes, although it will be easier to score a 70 now that the assessment grades will no longer be averaged together.
LHS’s old retake policy allowed students to retake any failed assessment or quiz within two weeks of taking it. The two grades were then averaged with the grade capped at a 70.
“I like it better because I think it is more rigorous for students,” said English teacher Mrs. Pavao.
There have been questions, mainly from students, on why this new rule has been put into place. Removing quizzes as part of the retake policy is the result of a bad habit in which some students wouldn’t try on the first attempt because they knew they could do a retake.
“The other thing that was happening, talking to teachers, is that a lot of students would get the assessment and be like, no, I’m not taking that,” said Principal Hopkins. “So I think it’s a good compromise all around in order to benefit students, benefit teachers, and benefit the academic culture as a whole.”
One positive for students is that their retakes will no longer be averaged, something Principal Hopkins feels strongly about.
“There were some practices that were affecting kids,” said principal Kenneth Hopkins. “Namely that it used to be that the two assessments were, you do quizzes, but then the two assessments were averaged. So I always had a difficult time saying that if a student measured proficiency on a test, why would we average the first take of the test? Because that’s not what they now show that they know. So I think the kind of compromise with everything in order to decrease the frequency of the assessments was to reduce it to summative assessments only. But since those summative assessments affect the grades the most, that’s the best demonstration of student proficiency.”
The new retake rule was put into place to benefit students because of the behavior, however students wonder how this will help them, as it has just taken action this year,
“It will help students’ grades and show that they know and are able to do the majority of the curricular content because the tests pretty much end a unit. So it’s building up that development and I think that’s a better way for students to handle it,” said principal Hopkins.
Although the retake policy was implemented to benefit students, it has gained mixed opinions from the school body.
“The new retake policy doesn’t let students correct simple mistakes due to stress and anxiety, “which many students deal with and should be given the opportunity to change,” said sophomore Victoria Cifuentes.
“I think it makes sense that you can’t retake quizzes,” said sophomore Malavika Syam Jayan, “but I think that if the quiz is worth more than 50 points it should count as a test.”
The new retake policy seems like it will be in place for a long time, and whether the school body is happy with it or not, it’s something they’ll have to get used to.
