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Debates about exam grades and retaking tests tend to coalesce, eventually, around the same arguments. One faction prioritizes subject mastery, the idea that it鈥檚 more important to get students to take incremental steps towards proficiency聽than to punish them with bad grades. The other side emphasizes personal responsibility, insisting that there are very few second chances in life, and that regular opportunities to retake tests simply teach kids that consequences are negotiable.

But in a recent and Twitter poll聽about whether our teachers allow makeup tests, the discussion took a more practical turn. Most teachers agreed that retesting was sometimes appropriate, but expressed concerns聽about setting clear limits around the practice. A widespread problem: When given the option of makeup tests, students often gamed the system, failing the initial exam to see what it looked like鈥攁nd then simply聽regurgitating the correct answers later. Under those circumstances, it鈥檚 a net-zero game: Neither聽subject mastery nor personal responsibility is achieved.

鈥淭his has backfired on me so many times,鈥� lamented teacher Misty McClaskey in a comment that drew hundreds of sympathetic reactions from our audience. 鈥淪tudents don鈥檛 study more. They do just as bad or worse on the retake. That鈥檚 a waste of my time and theirs. And I have found if they know a retake is available, they actually study and prepare less.鈥�

Still, teachers weren鈥檛 giving up on mastery or on makeup tests, and clear solutions emerged in the course of the back-and-forth. A consensus emerged around some key guidelines for retesting:

• Consider partial credit:聽It remains controversial, but most teachers withheld full credit for retakes鈥攖hough a wide range of standards for partial credit emerged. Some averaged the two grades, while others established a maximum possible score. An interesting wrinkle: a聽few teachers replaced the initial grade with the newly earned grade, even if it went down.
• Make parents aware of the retake: Dozens of educators suggested looping in parents when retakes were requested by students. In some cases, teachers asked students and parents to cosign contracts setting out the terms of the retesting.
• Keep the rest of the class on track: Don鈥檛 slow the march of progress in your classroom to accommodate students who need to retest鈥攗nless the exam reveals a broad lack of mastery. Instead, most teachers conduct reteaching and retesting during study halls or before or after school.
• Don鈥檛 give the same test: Yes, it imposes more work on the teacher, but our educators agreed that if you鈥檙e going to allow retesting, the second test should be different from the original鈥攁nd just as challenging.
• Require students to relearn: Students often fail tests because they haven鈥檛 put in the work to master the material. Retakes should not be another spin of the roulette wheel鈥攕tudents who want another shot should demonstrate that they鈥檝e made a genuine effort to study.
• Don鈥檛 assume all subjects are the same: In subjects like foreign languages and math, which rely heavily on sequential skill building, the need for retakes is crucial. Prohibiting retesting can strand students at a critical juncture with no good way to recover. Allow retakes and use the guidelines above.

Finally, a few of our teachers suggested more comprehensive approaches to retesting that seemed to work鈥攁nd garnered lots of follow-up questions from experienced teachers looking for tried-and-true methods to use in their classrooms.

Mastery Quizzes

It takes some extra teacher time鈥攎ost of these retesting alternatives do鈥攂ut math teacher Laura Kirschenbaum offers what she calls 鈥渕astery quizzes,鈥澛爓hich are tailored specifically to 鈥渨hat the students failed to master on the original exam.鈥� These quizzes are short, often consisting of only two to four questions, and can help students earn back up to half聽the points they lost on the original test.

An advantage of this strategy? Students are retested only on what they didn鈥檛 know. As Kirschenbaum聽explains, 鈥淚t seems silly to retest them on topics they already understand.鈥�

Reflective Test Corrections

In Christina Gregory鈥檚 eighth-grade math class, students are required to reflect on, and write about, the questions they miss on tests. Marked exams are returned with the correct answers, and students then 鈥渆xplain the process they went through鈥� to arrive at their incorrect answers, identify their mistakes and show how they affected the outcome, and聽share how they intend to 鈥渃orrect this misconception or mistake on future questions.鈥�

According to Gregory鈥攚ho received dozens of enthusiastic responses and questions from interested 聽teachers鈥攖hese 鈥渞eflective responses鈥� are about one paragraph long and have several clear benefits: They show students that so-called bad answers are often just a simple, correctable glitch聽in their processing; they reduce math anxiety by demonstrating that even hard-to-master problems can be solved with more effort; and they get kids to verbalize聽their thinking and thereby scaffold tough mathematical concepts with language skills.

A Peer-to-Peer Approach

There鈥檚 a lot of research that suggests that teaching a topic to someone else is one of the best ways to learn it. Preparing to impart knowledge, it turns out, forces teachers to identify holes and weaknesses in their own knowledge, creating a mutually beneficial process of learning for both teachers and students.

Spanish teacher 聽Karen Vargo is on to something, then, when she asks students who did well on a test鈥攗sually it鈥檚 just for the larger, end-of-unit exams鈥攖o create a lesson and teach it to those who didn鈥檛 perform as well. If students who retake the test聽pass, both the peer student and the peer teacher receive extra points. Vargo credits Sal Khan of Khan Academy for the idea, and says that her students have embraced the approach, which she loves because she sees that 鈥渂oth students are improving.鈥�

Metacognition Has Me Thinking...

In Ohio, high school teacher Theresa Grossheim Mengerink allows retakes, but only after a student has submitted a form that asks them to reflect on the past, present, and future of their testing efforts. Kids are asked to reflect on 鈥渨hy they failed and what they are going to do to improve鈥� on the retake, and 鈥渉ow to prevent failure in the future.鈥� Questions might prompt students to look at how many hours they actually studied, what strategies they used to master the material, and where and under what conditions the studying occurred.

Research suggests that this kind of metacognition is important for high school students, who are still developing long-term planning skills and benefit from opportunities to practice. According to Laurence Steinberg, one of the world鈥檚 leading researchers on adolescence, one metacognitive strategy that鈥檚 remarkably similar to Mengerink鈥檚 shows great promise: High school鈥揳ged students who are taught to plan for a long-term goal, imagine obstacles, and consider strategies for overcoming them show improvements in grades, attendance, and conduct.

The author of this article is the chief content officer at 麻豆传媒入口. You can follow him on Twitter聽.