Failed a Test? Repeat it Until You Pass.
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 1/12/2015 1:00:00 AM
What good is a test if we can't learn from our mistakes?
You're sitting in class as the results from yesterday's test are handed out. It's an important test, and this material is a critical to understanding the rest of the course. You just got a 55. What's next?
If you're like most students, nothing. Although you clearly didn't understand the earlier material, the class must move on. Without fully understanding the earlier material, things are going to get worse. Fast.
This scenario plays out every day in our schools and it's one of the reasons why some students struggle with new material. When a student fails a test, students and teachers rarely go back and cover the failed material. When that happens, all you've done is keep score. When a student didn't understand the material, why move forward?
Let's say you're a parent teaching your child to read. So, you start with the alphabet, and after a series of drills, you give your child a test, he repeats "A.. B.. C.. D.. F.. H.. J.. ELEMNO.. V" Clearly, he left out some letters. Based on getting only the first four letters right, let's give him a grade of 30. He failed. Do you move on to spelling or do you keep working on the alphabet until he can go from A-Z before moving on?
School systems do this every day, and after more than a decade of teaching this way, you end up with a student with an education not only full of holes, but they are compounded when new material relies on understanding older material.
While it's obvious to most people that you can't move ahead and teach a child to write, until the child can master the alphabet, why can't people think that way about every test? Or every class. For example, if a student reaches the third grade, but still can't read, isn't that going to make the fourth grade a challenge? If a student fails to do addition, why move on to multiplication and division?
We've all heard stories of people who made it to high school, and even graduated without knowing how to read. How can this happen? It's called Social Promotion, and it's based on the idea that it would be better to move a child forward to share classes with students the same age, rather than repeat a class with younger students.
In my opinion, a student that fails a test should repeat the test again and again until they pass. Otherwise the test is worthless.
The purpose of a test is supposed to be to understand a student's progress, then focus on the weak areas until they understand the material. Although taking the same tests over and over may seem very time consuming, and a potential drain on our school systems, the payoff would be huge, and the snowball effect of students truly understanding the fundamental building blocks of their earlier school years will translate into absorbing the more advanced material with ease.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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