By Lauren Wasserman ’19

“Test corrections will be offered this year.” This is a policy that every student hopes to hear on the first day of school. Test correction policies give students the opportunity to redo the problems they got wrong on a test, and write an explanation for why it was wrong. If the student accurately identifies and describes the problem, they can gain up to  50 percent of what they have lost, depending on the policy’s guidelines outlined by the teacher. For example if a student receives an 80, and they successfully do test corrections, they can gain 10 points back (as they lost 20, and 10 is half of 20) and receive a 90 in their grade book instead.

Test corrections have been found to be extremely helpful when it comes to learning for the sake of learning, rather than memorizing content for a grade. “I thought that test corrections were extremely helpful and beneficial to helping me understand what I did wrong on tests and quizzes because I was able to correct my mistakes and boost my grade simultaneously” Alex Berman ’19 said. “I got to focus more on learning the concept than keeping up the actual grade.”  

By focusing on learning for the sake of learning, students are more likely to carry the knowledge with them later in life. This is because once the test is handed back it is more likely the student will sit down and go through why answers are incorrect, rather than just crying over the grade, never learning the content, and moving on.

Jen Winthrop ’19 who received test corrections in her Geometry course last year found the corrections to be extremely beneficial not only within the class but when it came to standardized tests. “Doing the test corrections helped me remember how to do problems on the PSAT that I would normally forget how to do,” Winthrop said.

Test corrections are beneficial in not only relieving stress, but for promoting learning. Learning is a school’s responsibility, and test corrections can take schools one step closer.