A new policy introduced this school year allows students the opportunity to retest up to a hundred. This presents negative and positive changes to students’ academic lives. 

“I think the positive is if the student had a bad day the day of the test, or they have a lot going on,” teacher Richard Sabatier said. “They have a chance to reevaluate where they’re at, seek help if they need it, and to remediate those skills, so it’s not everything all at once on that one day, which in the real world if I mess up at work, I get a second try.”

Although students who’ve shown mastery over the material, still choose to retest.  

“I think a big negative is that everyone wants to retest everything all the time,” Sabatier said. “So you get people who score a 97 or 98 like they’ve got it, they’re done, they’ve got the concept down and they’re still coming in to try to re-test and it kind of makes this endless cycle, where in students are focusing so much on something they already have down and they’re losing focus on what the new content is, so they fall behind there. ”

Even if students present mastery over a subject, sometimes they still need a higher grade to get the final grade they want. 

“So for students who want to retest, it’s nice that everyone has an equal shot retesting,” junior Ramyaa Kota said. “If you have a bad grade and you want to retest, as well as, something you did well in, you can still retest so that your scores are nice and at the end of the marking period you can just help increase your grade.”