Final grades should reflect the work a student has put in over the course of a year. Making them dependent on a single day, on a single test, undermines the goal of learning itself. Having final exams worth up to 20 percent, exams that can turn an A into a B with one bad day, is detrimental to students, their learning and their mental health.
Consider a student who’s barely holding on to their A in math. Taking careful time to complete the homework, study for the quizzes and perform well on their unit tests. And then the final rolls around. To keep his grade, he needs to get a mid-to-high B.
The day of the final rolls around. If he’s a junior, he’s already had to take three weeks of finals and AP classes. He’s forgotten all those subjects by now. Short-term cramming was a good enough strategy.
Thankfully, his dog didn’t die the day before. No arguments with his parents. He got some good rest because the road outside his house wasn’t as loud as usual, and he had a good breakfast to eat. There are no outside stressors that could affect his testing.
When he comes out of the test two hours later, he feels fine about it. When he gets home, he collapses on his couch and passes out. The exhaustion of the two weeks has gotten to him. But at least he’s done with it.
When he gets his grade back a week later, it turns out he got two points lower than he needed to keep an A. Now, all the work he put in over the year to get his grade up and the time he spent studying for the final have been in vain.
They wouldn’t be if he had steadily reviewed for the final over the past month. If he had done that, then at least he would be able to retain the information, which is the ultimate goal that final exams are trying to achieve. But now, he doesn’t retain the information, and he doesn’t get the grade that the past two semesters have shown him he deserves.
The issue lies in the reality of studying. At the end of the year, students are too swamped to have time to steadily review every day for every single subject for the month leading up to a final. In an ideal world, students would have the executive function to manage their time well.
But because the motivation to review comes from a fear of failure, not from a desire to solidify what they’ve learned, students will inevitably try to take shortcuts. Ergo, the problem.
The solution to this? There are a few, some on the student side and some on the administration side.
First, there’s the option of making finals optional if students reach a certain threshold. Students who are well into the A range can’t improve their grade with a final, and worrying about it can impact their scores on other assessments like AP tests.
Second, classes with AP tests can forego having finals at all. The AP test and a class’s final test the exact same material; there’s no need to repeat. To ensure that students stay engaged throughout the course’s end, teachers can assign a major project for students to complete once they’re done with AP tests. That way, students can show their understanding of the year’s work without the threat of losing their grade looming over them.
Third, if classes need to keep their finals, their weight should be lowered. Finals, if deemed necessary, should be opportunities to students to show their growth in areas they’ve struggled with. By making finals worth up to 20 percent in some classes, students’ anxiety shoots through the roof, and, suddenly, the final is transformed into a potentially grade-altering test where students have everything to lose and, unless they’re on the border of two grades, nothing to gain.
The process of finals also contributes to an unhealthy culture on campus. Students are encouraged to simply put their heads down and deal with the workload. If a student misses an extended period of school because of a physical sickness, they’re simply out of luck. If a student is struggling with extreme levels of stress that are leading to poor mental health, they have no option but to just ride it out.
This stress is unnecessary. Some college classes do have finals that are sometimes worth even more than 20 percent, but others have a project in place of a final. Basing the school’s finals on what’s done in college is unreasonable, as in both situations, there is little translation to real-world careers. A long-term project is much more applicable to the real world than a three-hour chemistry test that tests students’ ability to cram and take monotonous tests for extended amounts of time.
The question is not whether or not students should be challenged. It’s whether finals are actually a good indicator of students’ aptitude, and if there are better alternatives.
