In John Champe High School and all across Loudoun County Public Schools, there has been a drastic brash change in the new retake policy affecting students, teachers, and their schools’ systems.
Governor Glenn Youngkin did not sign the policy, but instead it was a school board decision to implement the policy into effect in the 2025-26 school year. This decision didn’t let the students being affected by it have any say at all on the matter.
“My grades are going to drop because the maximum you could get on a retake is a C- when in previous years it was a B-,” sophomore Ashlyn Cook said.
Cook also talked about the potential other effects it could have on students inside the school system. “There aren’t any real benefits of bringing this into the school system; it’s just setting a higher expectation on students who are stressed and worried.”
Cook explained more about the overall school wide effects and ramifications.“Overall I feel like this is a negative change piling upon all the stress current students have ”.
This policy isn’t just affecting the underclassmen; upperclassmen are affected the same. Senior Will Contostavlos touched upon the topic. “I think the current one is a lot less forgiving for students that are struggling, for better or for worse, this punishes people that coast along the system. But it heavily affects the students genuinely struggling and might need extra assistance.”
Contostavlos continued by talking about how his personal grades are affected. “But to be honest I haven’t done that many retakes, but I’m aware of all of the people who need the time, people struggle for all sorts of reasons and the retakes policy helped these people, so I can see the effects of it.”
While Contostavlos thought there might be some positive effects, he was concerned about the overall effects. “ I think as a whole it will be better for the LCPS but it isn’t a net positive; there are definitely some bad that might outweigh the good”.
AP World History teacher, Ashley Allen, had somewhat different opinions on the matter. “I think it’s good coming as a sense of looking forward to the fact that it prepares people for college and it’s more limited if not at all.”
Allen proceeded with further possible effects of this change. “I think it’s a big change for students to adjust to and I’m interested to see how it affects AP classes so it’s interesting to see how it will impact our students statistically.”
She is a teacher of multiple courses and is able to see what most students cannot see about the grading policy.
Allen explained how this connects back to John Champe High School is that the grading policy leads to overall better grades for most students because they feel the pressure to get it right the first time. Contostavlos added to that by stating that no one is going to be relying on the retake system for good grades anymore now that your first take matters.
“I think in the long term, it’s a good impact because most students aren’t taking advantage of the retake policies, making students [try harder] on the first attempt than the second attempt, alleviating struggles on the students,” Allen said.
