UPrep lacks a school-wide retake policy. As a result, retake policies often vary by subject, leading to mixed reactions from students and faculty.
Despite a lack of general guidance, science teacher Moses Rifkin understands the ambiguity.
“It’s really a good thing that teachers can decide [retakes] for themselves because teaching and assessment is so complicated that there’s no one right way to do it,” Rifkin said.
However, the freedom that teachers have with their retake accessibility can cause discrepancies between classes. Sophomore Clara MacBeth believes a clear retake policy would make the assessment process more transparent for students.
“Sometimes it’s just kind of confusing what classes it is and what classes it’s not,” Macbeth said. “I just feel like maybe it’s in the syllabus, but sometimes you can’t tell, and they [teachers] don’t want to advertise it.”
Although different courses have different retake policies, teachers in the same department will continue to communicate about their policies in order to make grading as fair as possible, according to Rifkin.
“The physics class that I teach is a collaborative team, and so we’re always trying to figure out what works best for all three of us,” Rifkin said.
Some departments remain opposed to the idea of retakes. Math teacher Dan Chestnut believes that offering retakes in his classes would be difficult to pull off.
“You’re also now requiring students to give up their free time for your course, which seems tricky,” Chestnut said. “I would say the idea of allowing students to struggle and then recover from that is a really good thing for a growth mindset.”
According to Macbeth, retakes can take away from the learning process of students.
“It’s just kind of weird to me that you would have a retake because if you were just redoing the whole test, it defeats the purpose of the original test,” Macbeth said.
Rifkin believes the presence of retakes at Uprep is not only a step in the right direction, but will also teach students lifelong lessons.
“It just feels right to me to tell students if you don’t get something, you should try again,” Rifkin said.
