Technology is disclosed herein for managing parity data in non-volatile memory. As user data is programming into respective groups of non-volatile memory cells, the system accumulates parity data. The system may accumulate XOR parity based on successive bitwise XOR operations of user data. After programming is complete, the system performs a post-program read test of the data stored into each respective group of memory cells. The system re-calculates the parity data such that the parity data is no longer based on the user data that was stored in any group of memory cells for which the post-program read test failed. For example, the system will perform an additional bitwise XOR between the accumulated XOR parity data with the user data that was stored in the group of memory cells for which the post-program read test failed. The parity data is programmed to a group of memory cells.