<p>I’m curious as to what other high school policies are for exempting finals.</p>
<p>Our seniors can exempt up to 3 finals if they meet certain criteria. They have to have a minimum grade of an A in the class, can have no disciplinary issues and can only have 5 excused absences in the semester. Students cannot exempt an AP final.</p>
<p>With the flu now starting to spread quickly through the school, the school is encouraging parents to keep kids home who are sick. However, the kids don’t want to lose the privilege of exempting 3 finals, so they don’t want to stay home even though they are coughing like crazy, running fevers, etc… This exemption is only available to seniors and they have waited 4 years for the privilege.</p>
<p>Do your schools have similar policies? Are they being modified at all this year with the H1N1 flu which seems to spread much more quickly among the students?</p>
<p>At my kids’ high schools, the criteria for being exempt from finals had nothing to do with attendance.</p>
<p>It might be a good idea to bring the situation you’re talking about to the attention of the parent-teacher organization, which could then bring it to the attention of the school administration. Anything that motivates kids to go to school with the flu is counterproductive. Perhaps this year, and this year only, the criteria should be revised so that absences are not taken into account in determining eligibility to exempt finals.</p>
<p>This is a link to a recent thread on the subject. Our school senior exempt from exam trend does not involved excused absences. I agree that if you have a school that incorporates any absence for illness in this practice should be encouraged to evaluate that criteria. It is ridiculous for kids to come to school sick.</p>
<p>This policy is discriminatory against students with chronic illnesses, who have 504 plans that allow them to be in and out of school more than others. The Federal Dept. of Education’s Office for Civil Rights would actually investigate this, if someone asked them to. Seriously. Unless it could be written into someone’s 504 plan that they are exempt from the exams regardless of attendance.</p>
<p>Prizes for perfect attendance have always bothered me, and I have read that the swine flu panic is persuading many schools to eliminate this award.</p>
<p>Aside from all that, I have never heard of exam exemptions, and think it is a bad idea in terms of learning. Studying for finals is when a student kind of puts it all together.</p>
<p>Our HS has had an exam elimination policy off and on over the last 25 years. Always tied to attendance only. It didn’t matter what the grade in the class was. They were extra strict when S1 was a sr.–only two days were allowed to be missed, and that included misses for college visits, college scholarship interviews/competitions, and death of parents. I thought it was ridiculous.</p>
<p>In my d’s high school, there are no finals for seniors. They realize that, at that point, finals are pretty much meaningless. Seniors also graduate 2 weeks before school’s over.</p>
<p>My school exempts anyone (freshman to senior) who has an A average in a full-year course. Everyone takes the midterm. No relation whatsoever to attendance.</p>
<p>My kid’s school allows anyone who is taking an AP, IB or Regents exam in the class to substitute that test in lieu of a final. But everyone has to take something.</p>
<p>Only Juniors and Seniors are exempt and ONLY if they had an “A” in every quarter leading up to the final. This is of course to protect their GPA.
A average doesn’t count. If you get a 92 the first quarter and 96’s after that you must still take the final. (a pet peeve of mine - can you tell?)
Oh yeah - the grade in the final exam each class is worth the same as a quarter grade - one fifth of the course grade.
Thank goodness I am done with high school!</p>
<p>Although it seems nice at the time to be exempt those finals all of the preparation skills learned are useful for college. I still remember that eons ago we had year long courses with the final covering all of the material- made the time span for semester finals seem easier. Imagine seniors who take an AP exam one month before the end of the year and the teachers who have to teach that month and come up with a final (at least those are the best students). Son’s HS had senior finals the last week of classes, before the 3 days of finals (btw, they used to have 2 full days of finals but stretched them out), this meant juniors et al taking those classes (eg AP) either had the final then or with the others, I don’t remember. The finals days extended beyond some of the district’s HS graduations. </p>
<p>Perfect attendence is highly unlikely among the best students as they are most likely to have legitimate nonillness reasons to be gone from school. That is one award my son was never eligible for. It is good to encourage attendance but not good to attach finals to it. Our district has truancy laws and statistics- we were almost guilty of having a “habitual truant” when we took our gifted son out of elementary school for vacations (those were the days- when a kid could miss school days without it mattering and he wanted to be with his parents).</p>