As the end of the year approaches and the academic stakes rise, WHS students prepare for final exams with pressure on their shoulders. I believe it’s important that we ask the question: Is all the stress worth it? Personally, I think that final exams should be abolished in high school and be replaced with other methods of assessing learning, such as projects that create more variety and consistency for every student. Exams can cause increased stress, short-term retention versus in-depth understanding, and an inaccurate reflection of at least some students’ true comprehension.
Over 20 years ago, final exams were not a part of the curriculum at WHS, and the school only decided to implement them because of graduates who provided feedback about their transitions to college.
“[Finals] grew directly out of feedback received from recent Weston High School graduates who reported, for several years in a row, that they felt that their WHS education had prepared them well for college in most areas, but that they were ‘totally unprepared’ – their words – for the experience of final exams at the college level,” said health and wellness department director Mitch Finnegan, who was part of the leadership team at the time.
Based on this feedback, the principal and curriculum leaders decided to add final exams to the WHS curriculum. These tests used to be worth up to 20% of students’ final grade, and while that has been reduced to 10% maximum now, these tests still add an unnecessary amount of stress to the end of the year. I believe final exams should come in the form of alternate methods of evaluation with lower stakes, while creating options for a wide range of learning preferences. These changes would avoid the repetition of a stressful exam period at the end of each year of high school.
Some teachers are already moving away from final exams as the final assessment of the year.
“This year in my chemistry class we are doing a project instead of an exam, which I like because I prefer project-based learning,” junior Gracyn Summersgill said.
I agree with Summersgill, and I also think that a well-planned project can still offer the chance to demonstrate what students have learned during the year. Some students have ideas of what this option might look like that I find intriguing.
“I would suggest a project that can only be completed by applying methods that have been learned throughout the entire year,” freshman Noah DeBouter said. “Teachers could gather up all the main topics from the year and create a complex project that students will have as much time as they need to work on.”
Finals can be tough because they require memorizing and understanding every topic from throughout the year, which can lead to outcomes that don’t truly demonstrate how much a student has learned.
“I think with any sort of testing in general, it is hard to evaluate how much people know,” freshman Isaiah Mwebeiha said. “A final contains every topic you’ve done all throughout the year, and that means you have to memorize and understand every single thing, which I believe is an issue.”
Kimo Carter, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, recognizes that creating an exam that achieves the goals of accurate assessment of students’ understanding is challenging.
“Some exams could restrict the students’ ability to show what they’ve learned throughout the year,” Carter said. “If they are too narrow and count for too much, then there’s a problem because there might be other ways that a student could demonstrate their understanding that the teacher doesn’t get.”
Another very important part of final exams is for the school as a whole to maintain some consistency. While most teachers grade the final exam as a separate 10% of the yearlong grade, some teachers incorporate the final exam into the fourth quarter grade. While I understand that teachers should be able to assess their students the way that they see fit, this varied practice creates an inconsistency in the grading system. Creating final exams that fairly assess students is not simple, I realize, but when the tests themselves and how they are counted toward a grade vary a lot, the outcomes can be less reliable. Removing the exam aspect as a whole would remove all of the created confusion, and it seems that at least some educators agree.
“I believe that most high school teachers don’t see these as essential assessment tools for their curriculum or instruction at this level, but that we do feel we have to make every effort to prepare our students fully for the college experience,” said Finnegan.
I agree that preparing students for college expectations is important, but changing this evaluation system to be more varied and lower-stakes would help prepare the students while reducing overall stress.
Ultimately, exams as part of finals should be completely removed, and an obvious solution would be to create more options of how students are evaluated instead of a final exam, as the cons of exams overweigh the pros. This approaches the issues of inconsistency, narrow evaluation, and stress, which all affect students very negatively.
