In this day and age it’s common—and in some schools and districts even mandated—to allow students to make up anything and everything they want.
Not happy with your test grade? No problem, just take it again. Forgot your homework? Turn it in whenever you wish. Missed the due date? As long as it’s in by the last day of the semester, you’re gold.
No lost credit. No penalty. No worries.
But allowing students to retake tests, make up assignments, and ignore deadlines is something you should never do.
Here’s why:
They fall behind.
Your students can’t stay up to date with your current lessons when they haven’t mastered the previous and prerequisite material. Good teaching requires building higher level skills and concepts upon their lower forms.
Allowing make ups and retakes guarantees that they’ll fall further and further behind. No teacher worth their salt can allow this to happen.
They cheat.
It’s reality. Students who take advantage of extensions and do-overs often wait until the last possible moment when the only choice is to cheat or copy.
Some teachers even legitimize it by letting them test with an open book or cell phone or allowing other ways of lowering the bar knee high to a grasshopper.
They learn laziness.
By giving chance after chance, you’re very effectively teaching students to be lazy, undisciplined, and unemployable. Discipline is learned through hard deadlines.
It’s learned from adults who hold students accountable to their responsibilities. Letting them off the hook is damaging to them. Good teaching requires you to care enough to make the tough decisions.
They become depressed.
Without goals, objectives, and due dates with real stakes, life very quickly loses meaning. It devolves into a constant chase for cheap dopamine hits.
It becomes social media scrolling, pornography, violent videos, and gaming. Meaningless vapor that in the end crushes self-worth. Discipline equals meaning and a chance at enduring happiness.
They become entitled.
Without standards to meet, students become entitled. They begin to believe that everything can be put off, ignored, or negotiated to their liking. Rent, car payments, jobs, relationships.
They feel as if they don’t have to be committed to anything. Hence, they’re shocked and outraged when the coach benches them for missing practice.
They make excuses.
Allowing chance after chance encourages students to justify for their failures, mistakes, and ill preparedness rather than taking responsibility and actually learning from them.
To this way of thinking, an F doesn’t mean they failed. It means that they don’t test well, they didn’t get enough help, or the type of exam doesn’t match their strengths.
A Gift
Taking a stand on deadlines and refusing to offer retakes and do-overs can make a big difference in your students’ future academic performance.
It can improve their sense of responsibility, discipline, and commitment. It can help prepare them to be a valuable contributor to their community and ready them for a career in which they’re needed and appreciated.
In other words, it’s healthy for them.
Although a gift your students may not understand or appreciate until years later, holding them to a standard required for success in school and beyond is nonetheless precious.
Showing a level of care and leadership rare in today’s world.
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Wise words but so hard to enforce when as you the said, our school board mandates that there are no deadlines and infinite time to make up any and all work. There is no other option. 😞 We live on strange times. Thanks for standing up for what is truly best for the kids.
I have exactly this struggle at the moment. I teach high school Spanish 1. This year, I have one senior student. She had her credits through computers courses, but because she wants to go to a big college to play a sport, her parents are making her take Spanish now. She came in from day one with a bad attitude and definite lack of work ethic. She’s enrolled in 1st period,and is very often late.
1) She didn’t do well on the mid term and it dropped her grade to an 88 (which in my opinion is not terrible, by the way). She’s very upset about this, but admits she didn’t study. I conferred with my department and we decided to let her re take the test when we return from fall break. That was this a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. All Spanish 1 teachers decided to work the same pre made lesson plan that culminates in watching a video story in Spanish, for this weird short week. Wednesday she was tardy. Thursday, she came in ten minutes before the end of the hour with a note from her coach (she’s a star player, by the way!) that simply said, “She was with me.”. -Coach’s last name.
Then Friday, she complained that she didn’t understand what we are doing. I am so frustrated with her. This an 18 year old senior, meaning she gets to make the decisions about her learning now, and her parents need to get her permission to see her records, etc.
I think my best ally needs to be that coach.
Students in Ontario schools can hand in assignments up to the last school day. Students who are failing can do an assignment given to student success department and they can pass! It doesn’t matter if they missed the majority of learning the curriculum during the semester, just do the assignment and pass! Failing a student is frowned on and is seen as damaging to them! A v-p told me to pass a student because it was too much paperwork for them!
I personally don’t allow a student to re-do assignments or tests, I’ve even taken marks off for late assignments. I have been told by admin I shouldn’t be doing that, students should be given every opportunity to complete assignments.
As a general rule, I wholeheartedly agree. Please remember that there are always exceptions to the rule of no late work and no do-overs. Sometimes newer teachers will take advice too literally. There are always kids who need to have the rules bent in order for them to succeed. It’s up to the teacher to learn what each student needs.
I totally agree, but when it’s district policy, then what?
It’s not all black or white in terms of retakes. My take:
Allowing unlimited and unstructured makeups can make students fall behind.
But allowing purposeful and scaffolded retakes is a mark of strong, student-centered teaching — not weakness.
The best teachers don’t eliminate retakes; they engineer them to promote responsibility and growth.
I like your post, Michael, over the years, certain phrases stick with you, and sometimes the locus of these longtime remembered tidbits form a collective of knowledge that cause me to pause and reflect upon my next move.
From Lee Canter, Harvey Wong, Fred Jones, to Rick Morris, and Michael Linsin, those remembered phrases come to mind when encountering class situations; you witness an event, then breathe, relax your jaw, and there it is, I paused, remained calm, and responded.
For the past several years I have dealt with students who are 2,3,4 or more grade levels below grade level, and formatively tested at grade level for more or less half of the 180 days in the year, leaving 90 or less days to teach my content , and at least twice or more each there is a school, or district activity, or holiday that interrupts the regular schedule, wow, I’m using accelerating math software and still trying to get some students to complete the first remedial fraction assignment that targets 4th grade standards w.r.t. fractions.
I often think about the larger group of students turning in their weekly work, on time and we are in week 10, next week is red ribbon week, when everything gets a little crazy starting with uniformed students in crazy hair.
I can think of one way to resolve my allowing students with little developed number sense skills to continue to work towards completing assignment number one. That is a differentiated assignment since they are in the blue group, with a dozen others. Fair does not mean equal, and it starts in tk, 1, where 86% have mastered 90% of the letter sounds, the teacher has the entire class quiet while one student is forming the first part of a multi syllable word. Eventually, the class must progress forward, and students are tutored and even retained a grade if necessary.
In middle school they are moved forward from 6th to 9th grade independent of their performance level. I promise my middle school students that for the here and now they can blame me for their short comings, yet if they find themselves not graduating HS, they can always come back to me as Adult students, and I will be there for them ready to assist them obtaining their HS equivalency certification when they are old enough to know better.
I agree 100%. Unfortunately, many teachers have no choice. District leaders or principals dictate late work policies. We have to be creative in order to find a way around the craziness. I am so tired of accepting late assignments.
I love your work and have recommended your practices to countless colleagues. On this matter, I’m going to push back a bit. The article linked below better aligns with my philosophy on redos and retakes. It offers teachers other approaches while working to build a sense of responsibility in students. Check it out. Thanks for all you do to promote classroom success!
Redos and Retakes Done Right https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/redos-and-retakes-done-right via @ASCD
I’m retired now, but I still like to read your posts.
Here’s the problem at the school where I worked: parents take their children out for extended vacations. The teachers are expected to provide the work they will miss ahead of time (sometimes with short notice). Sometimes the work gets done while they are gone, and sometimes it doesn’t. The student misses teaching and it is added work for the teacher. What would you do in this situation?
There is one instance in which i allow make-ups and extensions, and thst is legitimate illness. If a kid is out with mono for a month, or has surgery, or undergoes cancer treatment, or is hospitalized for an injury, that merits a mulligan. Otherwise, i agree completely.
I absolutely agree that students learn through failure and deadlines. However, I do have students retake tests they fail. They must come in to correct problems they miss and then are given a different test. This way they are learning from their mistakes and can master the concepts.
I am 100% in agreeance with this. What this means for me with today’s high school kids is that 50% of my students are failing by week 6 and 70% by week 10. Without letting them make up work they just “decided not to do” (work we do in class by the way – I design things with very little homework if they are on task) – they tap out for the rest of the semester, stop showing up and I’m eventually called into the Principal’s office in week 11 where I am read the riot act and told I am “not a good fit” for this school and put on an improvement plan and assigned equity for grading or some other nonsense PD. Why? Because they don’t actually care about rigor or preparing students for career readiness (the platitude of all PD’s). They care about Superintendent walkthroughs, standards on whiteboards, attendance$$$, positivity feels, equity, state testing scores, PBIS nonsense, and graduation rates. Grades are an afterthought – the cherry on top. The tail wags the dog my friend. The tail wags the dog. We have lost the path in education. Getting students to do well on state tests = great teacher in today’s classroom. That’s it.