High School Exam Exemptions - pros/cons

[Chedva]

fendrock, I'm from MA as well and we have exactly the same exam situation. Second-semester seniors do not take finals; they do take midterms and finals for first-semester courses. Make up exams are given at the beginning of the next school year. The only other "exemptions" are teacher-specific for courses that do not lend themselves to exams - usually art or theater electives.

[abasket]

Fendrock, GREAT point re: attendance!

[sharonohio]

We used to have exam exemptions but they were done away about 6 years ago. However, if the student is taking an AP class, there is no end of year exam in that class. They still have a semester exam in the subject and an AP exam which stands in for the final (but the grade in the class is not based on the AP exam because its too early). Somewhat strange system.

The main result is that nothing substantive happens in these classes after the AP test which I don't think is necessarily a very good thing.

Our seniors have finals in the non-AP classes but they are given a week earlier than regular finals in case there is a diploma issue.

[mathmom]

Here's another reason not to give them out - it may cause teachers to give a higher grade than deserved so they don't have to write an exam. I went to a high school where a final grade of B+ or better exempted you from the final. That B+ my AP French teacher gave me was a total gift. I was by far the worst student in the course. (And I did not take the AP unlike all my other fellow students.) The only reason I don't feel guilty about it is that I went on to spend a year in France and learned French fluently the next year.

[pointegirl]

"Only needing to have an A in the class is a much more lax rule".

It depends on school. Besides, it applies only to 2-semester classes. There will be 4 marking periods before the final exam, if your average in any of the marking periods falls below 93, you are not exempt. Also, this is a school which produces around 16 National Merit Finalists each year with a class of 230. There are teachers who would give only 2 A's in a class of ~30. There is a chem class where at least 90% of students failed the first test, every year.

One drawback for those schools using attendance rule only, like in Cono's post, is that students will apply the exemptions to the more difficult classes.

[kathiep]

My kids HS didn't used to give mid-terms and exempted all students from finals if they had A's in all quarters.

What they found from surveying the hs grads attending college was that many of them did not feel prepared for college because those high achieving kids had taken maybe one or two finals in their whole school career. Of course, our HS didn't reverse course slowly, they did a complete u-turn and now there are mid-terms and finals in every single class, no exemptions, and this includes gym, heatlh, etc.

I like the idea of seniors being exempt from finals if they maintain A's in the other semesters.

[bomgeedad]

Let us consider a math class. Each chapter teaches a certain technique for solving a particular class of problems. When you take the chapter quiz/test, you automatically know what technique you need to use, you are just tested whether you have master that technique. In the final exam, when you are given a problem, you have to recognize what kind of problem it is, what technique you should choose. You are tested for the gestalt. This is different from your chapter test. That is why final exam should not be exempted.

[mollietee]

Hello I am a senior in high school in Connecticut currently. For an AP English assignment, my classmates and myself have been given the task to write up a proposal to administer a change in a policy inside or around our community. For my proposal, I have decided to try and change a policy regarding junior students' excemption from final exams on the basis that they maintain an A average (a 93% or above) through the duration of the course. I was wondering if your school offered any such options to junior students, and what your exam policies were. If you could please write me back with any useful information regarding this subject, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!

[bluebayou]

mollie:

our HS does not offer such an exam plan; instead, they use the instructional days after AP tests for research projects which count for 10-15% of the semester grade (so kids can't slack). Since we don't start until after Labor Day, classes run thru late June so there are 4-5 weeks left of school.

[JHS]

Wow! I learn something new every day. I have never heard of an exam exemption before in my life.

The closest I came was my introductory accounting course in college, where the deal was that if you handed in 90% of the problem sets (one per class session) on time and complete, you were guaranteed a C even if you didn't take the exam (or if you took it and failed it). An A was hard to get -- you had to ace the exam, which wasn't easy.

This course was enormously popular with the football team. It was a great course, too -- one of the best I ever took.

[MidwestMom2Kids_]

"I'm responding from Massachusetts, and I've never heard of exam exemptions. At my daughters' high school, exams count for 20% of the final grade, for all courses. They are scheduled for the last week of each semester. If a student wants to leave early for the summer, makeups must be rescheduled AFTER the school year, which furthers discourages anyone from missing them. Seniors here finish about three weeks earlier than the rest of the school, and do not take exams."

I'm responding from Ohio. I also have never heard of exam exemptions. At most of the Ohio schools around here, only seniors who have a senior project (usually an internship or a community service project) are done before finals and don't have to take them - they work on senior project for the last three weeks of the school year and do a science fair like presentation of the senior project around finals week. (They need to start the process of approval for the senior project six months early - it is not easy to have the project approved - they have to have a sponsor and be "meaningful")

Other seniors take finals just days before graduation.

[DCforMe]

going along with other arguments about attendance, you could also argue it discourages kids from missing school for class field trips (needed to enrich the academic experience, seeing Shakespeare performed for instance), or extracurricular field trips (football games, debate tournaments, etc. necessary for becoming a well-rounded individual.)