Next year, starting in the 2025-2026 school year at South Windsor High School, a new retake policy for assessments will be implemented.
The policy consists of the following regulations: There will no longer be retakes for Advanced Placement (AP) and Early College Experience (ECE) courses. Honors courses are allowed one per semester, and College Prep (CP) courses are allowed 1 per quarter. To obtain a retake, students must submit a retake form specifically to their teacher 3 days after receiving a grade. Additionally, students may only retake an assessment if they scored an 84% or lower and may only receive up to an 85% on the retake.
In response to this new policy, many new opinions – both positive and negative – have emerged from staff and students.
Associate Principal Tara Harlow would like students to see this as more of a reflective process so they can improve.
“Students should have the opportunity to engage in this process to advance their learning, apply feedback and show growth,” Mrs. Harlow told The Prowl.
Similarly, AP Lang teacher Mrs. Amanda Flachsbart views the retake policy as a measure that encourages students to do their best on the first try on an assessment.
“It’s very common at the high school level to really have to plan ahead and think about studying time,” Mrs. Flachsbart said.
Teachers are aware, however, that students might not react well to these changes.
“I do know that some teachers, especially math, history, science get a lot of retakes, and I do think this will put a little more pressure on students to do more work in advance rather than after the fact,” Flachsbart said.
There are students who believe the policy to be unfair and disagree with it strongly.
“As an AP and honors student, it’s hard enough to get a B, without proper retakes it would be super hard to maintain my GPA,” sophomore Sanjana Atluri told The Prowl.
Similar opinions have been shared from other students, such as junior Liam Cayward who commented, “I feel that expecting students to only need 1 in Honors classes or 2 in CP classes is not realistic as I have experienced needing more than just one or two retakes per class.”
The part of the policy students seem to disagree with the most is the amount of retakes students are allowed and find it unrealistic to have limits like this based on their own experiences.
Once the policy is implemented next year we will see how it impacts learning and students’ performance in their classes.
