Last year, the English Department worked to standardize its retake policy, Department Head Ariel Duddy said. If teachers provide feedback during multi-day writing assignments, the department does not offer rewrites. If feedback is only provided once the work is submitted, rewrites are allowed.

    “This policy pushes me to offer meaningful, actionable feedback during the writing process, and I hope it encourages students to slow down their writing to consider my feedback before they submit the paper,” Ms. Duddy said.

    Currently, the Upper School (US) retake policies are not consistent across departments and levels. Students are frustration at the lack of a single policy. Teachers differ on whether retake policies should vary by department and level: Some support variation, while others favor a standardized system.

    In certain situations, the English Department is willing to adjust the new policy. If a student has extenuating circumstances, they will be taken into account.

    “The biggest challenge for a no rewrite policy would be if a student faced particular obstacles in the writing process that prevented them from doing their best work,” she said. “Since my colleagues and I do our best to support students when they face challenges that are outside of their control, extensions and conversations remove the potential issue of a student feeling as though not having an opportunity to do a rewrite harms their grade or learning.”

    Math Department Head Meena Kaur said the department leaves some choice on retakes up to the teachers. The overall goal is for students to use retakes as an opportunity to improve their learning.

    “If they want to do it because they want to learn and review the material so they understand it for the exam or future subjects, then we’re all on board,” she said. “But it’s hard for us to make that determination with every student. Each student has a different motivation. We’re making a choice about kids who are motivated in improving and learning from their mistakes versus the kid doing it for the sake of a grade.”

    When designing retake policies, time constraints are another challenge.

    “A teacher doesn’t have an infinite amount of time to be doing retakes and corrections,” she said.

    Retakes can also take a toll on students, Ms. Kaur said.

    “We’re not doing this to be mean or to hurt the student. We’re doing this because we’ve seen kids go down a deep rabbit hole with retakes. It’s dangerous, and it’s exhausting. They’re spending so much time preparing for the retake that they lose out on the current material, then they have to retake the next test. It’s a cycle,” she said.

    A girl in the senior class said as her math classes went up in level, there were fewer retakes offered, or the retakes did not raise her grade significantly. She asked to remain anonymous to protect her relationship with faculty.

    “The retake policy should be the same across levels in a given subject because as we are getting older and better, the material is also getting a lot harder,” she said. “When I was taking geometry, I never needed to retake, but once I got up to BC Calculus, the need for me to retake is more imminent, not necessarily because I do worse in those classes, but because they are generally harder topics, and it might take more tries to understand everything.”

    Despite spending hours studying for assessments in her AP math class, she said she received a lower grade than expected and opted to retake the assessment. After scoring close to a 100 on the retake, she only increased her grade by a few points, she said.

    “Last year, I don’t think I ever truly benefited from a retake. I spent a lot of time and maybe gained one or two points back. I found in the harder classes, when you actually need a retake, it’s so strict it doesn’t really help that much,” she said.

    Regardless of the retake policy, the senior girl said she always puts her effort into doing well on the initial test.

    “When I walk into every test, I have studied as much as I can out of that unit, and if I do poorly, that is because I just didn’t get it, not because I didn’t prepare as thoroughly, knowing I could retake,” she said.

    Her decision to do a retake is more focused on the grades, which she said are crucial for college applications.

    “When I retake, it is mostly to improve the final grade, but part of it is trying to master a skill more as well,” she said.

    US Physics teacher Jay Shah said in AP Physics 1, students are not eligible to retake tests.

    “This relates to the fast pace required to get through the AP curriculum as well as the fact that the AP exam itself is not something that you can retake,” he said. “A cycle of reassessments can limit the capacity a student has to engage with the other components of the class.”

    History Department Head Stacey Spring said policies are consistent across the same classes. Electives for seniors are determined by class. Part of the history department’s retake policy is to ensure grading is equitable.

    “Rewriting policies need to provide a chance to show learning while also not putting students who ‘got it right’ the first time at a disadvantage, meaning it does not seem fair for grades to be equal in the end when some people did the learning and work when asked to show mastery on the test as opposed to later on retake,” Dr. Spring said.

    Language Department Head James Sennette said each language has a retake policy based on course level. Each level has an identical policy. However, a common policy might not work for different departments, he said.

    “Each department is different, and each course in each department is different, so standardizing differences seems next to impossible,” he said.

    Jone Abadie ’28 would like a standard policy across classes.

    “It would be better if there was a clear policy across the board, especially if you have two blocks of the same class,” she said. “It’s different teachers that should reflect each other in grading and retake policy. At the end of the day, on the transcript, it’ll look like those two students took the same class, but if one had more opportunities than the other one, then it isn’t fair.”

    According to History and Macroeconomics teacher Jennifer Wallace, a standard policy might not be as good as it seems.

    “I don’t think students would actually like a school-wide retake policy. Standardization sounds good in theory, but in practice students would realize that forced compliance hurts them by taking away a teacher’s ability to empathize and adapt. Tailoring a policy to a subject or course is actually the fairest, most equitable approach.”