Mastery learning

4 years ago, my cooperating teacher planted a seed in my head about mastery learning. My first three years I experimented a little with it in regard to just a few very important concepts each level. I created competency tests (idea stolen from my CT) on some of the concepts I felt were very critical (present tense verbs, subject pronouns, and preterit verbs) and expected students to show their mastery by achieving a certain score. Students could retake these tests as many times as they needed but had to reach the target score to get any credit for the assessment. So students couldn't be satisfied with a C or a D on those critical concepts like I see way too often.

So this year, in a new school I decided to take the idea beyond just a few competency tests. I have developed a series of competency assessments (including oral assessments) and I have decided to allow students to retake vocabulary quizzes (with a one week deadline). What I have found so far is that students are now taking the time to go back and learn what they missed knowing that they can get credit for it. This should then help them be more successful in the future as they are expected to be able to use the vocabulary.

If you had asked me 4 years ago about whether I would allow retakes, I would have told you "No way!" but I am really seeing some positives come from allowing them.

Dallas School District has just created a new grading policy that requires teachers to allow retakes (I linked the article above). Someone posted it on Livejournal which really sparked this post. I really believe in their reasons behind it but I really don't believe we do any good by forcing when philosophy of grading (or whatever) on a whole district with teachers who have different teaching styles, different beliefs, and different grading systems. Retakes so far is working really well for me and my students but that does not mean it is best for all classrooms and all teachers and students.