I stopped by a high school classroom today and in the middle of our conversation a student stopped into his room.

"Hey, Mr. Smith!  I want to retake the test we went over today.  When can I do it?"
As the central office guy that's excited about our standards-based grading journey, I started to wonder if this was setup.

The teacher thought for a moment and then replied:
"Tell me what you've done to study those areas."
The student replied what she planned to do tonight and the teacher then asked her to bring it in to him tomorrow so that he could look at it.

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Many of the questions I hear from teachers about standards-based grading implementation focus on reassessments.

  • "Won't students reassess every day until they get it right?"
  • "What is stopping a student from not doing his/her homework and waiting until the last day to demonstrate understanding?"
  • "This will create an impossible workload!"
I was reminded today that we should never work harder than our students and that may include asking students to demonstrate evidence their learning has improved before they're given an opportunity to reassess.  (Another option is to build in reassessment opportunities to all students classroom learning)

As I used to frame it with my high school math students..."It is going to take a little bit of extra time for me to create a new reassessment and I'm happy to do that.  In turn, I would like you to demonstrate to me that you have put in some extra time on this standard."

Comments are open - what are your reassessment go-to strategies with students?