Thoughts on the merit of high school finals?

Parents Forum
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<p>I'd piggy-backed this question on another thread but, based upon another's suggestion, perhaps it would be better to have a separate thread.</p>

<p>I'm curious to know how many of your college students had comprehensive final exams in high school. If so, do you (or your kids) believe that h.s. finals prepare students for college finals? Not sure if finals are customary throughout the country. </p>

<p>Our h.s. is considering discontinuing the practice of giving comprehensive finals for a variety of reasons. I've heard various parents say finals shouldn't matter at the high school level while others believe it gives kids an idea of what to expect in college if their finals are comprehensive and have serious impact on course grades. Thoughts on the merit of high school finals?</p>

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<p>My daughters' school have finals from 7th grade on. It's not easy. The older one always started her studying from April on, but the younger one would start 2 weeks prior. The older one just had her first finals freshman year. She wasn't too stressed over the examins because she was accustomed to them.</p>

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<p>Our district has a comprehensive midterm, and a final that is essentially a comprehensive midterm. They report grades for each semester separately as well. There is no "final" grade. Every class has a grade on the report card/transcript that is A/A, A/B, B/B etc. Each term exam is weighted fairly heavily. As a senior, if you have an A/90+ average going into the midterm and final exam, you may be excused from the exam. However, we found out that not all teachers have to agree to do this. And most of the AP teachers do not excuse for midterm or final either. D had heard about no finals as a senior for years, only to find out its not exactly true.</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin&lt;/a>
The Dictatorship of Talent is a pretty eye opening and astounding article about the central role of exams in the largest nation on the planet.<br>
My son's HS transcript including "Good Guy" points..like getting grades for doing one's homework (!) and for showing up (! !) and for "participation." Since this fluffy stuff is dispensed with in college entirely, and you get no padding, I am OK with AP Exams replacing some cumulative spring tests but I think the study habits for cumulative testing is something we should not shelter our kids from developing. Interesting article today about the role of exams in China...and I sometimes think our kids are too naive to realize they really do have to master large amounts of data if they want to succeed in their chosen fields. Our kids face a global economy that will not resemble ours and they had better realize that education is a privilege, so yeah, some cumulative exams are good but I think they should be thought out in schedules in ways that do not duplicate APs</p>

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<p>My kids' school system has comprehensive semester finals, but they count for only 25% of the semester grade. Only the semester grade appears on the student's transcript. Marking period grades and final exam grades do not.</p>

<p>This means that for students who received identical grades for the two marking periods that make up the semester, the final exam is close to meaningless. Every kid in the school system knows this.</p>

<p>For example, if the student has an A for both marking periods, an A, B, or C on the final will yield an A in the course. Anybody who was able to get an A both marking periods can usually get a C on the final unless he or she happens to be unconscious at the time. (My son, who had As both marking periods in a computer science course, neglected to notice that the final exam was printed back-to-back and therefore left out an entire page of the three-page exam. He got a C on the final and an A in the course. Similarly, my daughter, who had As both marking periods in physics, accidentally put the multiple choice portion of her physics final in the "Form II" pile when she had actually taken "Form I" of the test. She turned in the essay portion of the test correctly. She also got a C on the final and an A in the course. It's really, really hard to get less than a C on a final.)</p>

<p>If the student has a B for both marking periods, an A, B, C, or D on the final will yield a B for the course. In this instance, it is absurd to study.</p>

<p>The only time kids care about finals is when their two marking period grades differ. Then, the final is the tie-breaker. Thus, kids are constantly pressuring teachers toward the end of the second marking period of a semester to tell them their marking period grade so that they will know whether they should study intensively or not at all.</p>

<p>At the school my daughter attended, the administration recently created a policy that says that if a student is taking an AP exam for a course, that student need not take the second-semester final unless he or she wants to. Of course, only the few students who need the final as a tie-breaker take it. This pleases both the students, most of whom get to stay home and sleep instead of taking a meaningless test, and the teachers, who have fewer papers to grade.</p>

<p>None of this prepares kids for college, in my opinion. In college, finals usually count for a much larger proportion of the grade and are always meaningful.</p>

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<p>At my daughter's school, fall semester ends with comprehensive finals and spring semester ends with interdisciplinary projects. Additionally, all individual grades are either "Support" "Participation" or "Mastery". Support includes things like reading logs and homework. Participation is in class group things, etc. Mastery is grades like exams, quizzes and projects -- any assignment meant to demonstrate mastery of the subject. For each year in school there is a set percentage that the groups count: so for example, for freshmen, mastery counts as 60%, but by senior year, it's more like 80%. This is done explicitly to prepare students for college, when exams are much more weighted than homework. </p>

<p>As someone else said, for AP courses, the AP exam is the final; if a student is not taking the AP exam, they have to do a project instead (because spring semester is project semester.) </p>

<p>The school is a public charter high that sends 100% of students to college, and expects all students to be in the same college prep curriculum. So the system is designed to prepare every student for what college is like, including exams being most of the grade for a course. Students also do a lot of papers, in pretty much every class, including science/math.</p>

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<p>My kids' high school did not have (what I consider) comprehensive finals, except for those students who missed more than 3 days of school. The AP exams did not count toward the class grade as those scores did not come back before the school year was out. Some other subjects had state mandated end of course tests, though the "grade" on those was often counted as a final--I don't really consider them as finals as the instructor does not make up the test. </p>

<p>To answer the OP's question--I do think finals in high school would help in college. My kids really didn't know how to prepare for comprehensive finals as the "state exams" were really very easy and the APs didn't count.</p>

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<p>Although my previous post was critical of the way final exams are handled in our school system, I don't think it's really practical for a high school to have comprehensive finals that are as high-stakes as college finals.</p>

<p>A few years ago, our school system considered substantially increasing the percentage of the student's final grade that is determined by the final exam so that students would not "blow off" finals the way so many do now.</p>

<p>The school authorities eventually decided not to do this. The reason: they were afraid that too many kids would blow off a marking period, thinking that they could make up the grade by doing well on the final. This is, of course, an immature way for students to look at the situation, but then, many high school students are at the level of maturity where they would do that. Having students blow off a marking period is far worse, in terms of educational outcome, than having them blow off a final. </p>

<p>It may not be possible to have high school finals that really prepare students for the importance of college finals because of differences in the maturity levels of the two groups of students.</p>

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<p>Marian: In my children's case, their school not only has finals worth close to 50% of the grade (at the higher grades), but grades are A-B-C-Fail, and failure to turn in any assignment is an automatic F for the entire course. All students must complete all assignments for every class. If you fail to turn in an assignment, you get immediately assigned to the afterschool study time to complete it -- that happens 3 days a week. If you don't show up, don't play by the rules, you get thrown out of the school. So, students can neither blow off assignments nor finals. As far as maturity, all students are made aware of this coming into the school. </p>

<p>I guess what I'm saying is that it's possible to have that level of maturity from students, but you have to make the expectations clear and provide a strong support system to help students live up to them.</p>

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<p>In our district, all kids in all classes from grades 6-8 in the middle school and for grades 9-12 in the High School have midterms and finals. They're not really comprehensive in the year long classes like maths or sciences. The mid-term covers the first half and the final covers the second half. Just a few years ago whether there was a midterm was up to the teachers and finals were not given to students who had an A for all semesters. After conducting two years worth of exit studies they found that those high achieving students that got all A's had no idea how to study for a final since they had only taken one or two in their high school career.</p>

<p>I think a good compromise is what someone said early in this thread - if seniors have all A's in their senior year then they don't have to take the final. It's a very nice reward for hard work and a good motivator for A's in the year of senioritis.</p>

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<p>Our daughter had semester finals from 6th grade on. If a senior had an A the entire 4 quarters they were exempt from the spring final for that class and it was a huge motivator. Classes that were only 1 semester long did not get that luxury.</p>

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<p>Im from canada, and every course has a common final for everyone in the province. I went to a hard high school with major mark deflation...so the common finals were often a godsend to improve our mark. Also, if you beat your term mark on your final, the final was worth 100% for the course. It ensured that you knew all the course material, and could save your transcript. Also, if a teacher was very slack, this would be corrected with poor finals marks. Its true that many people blow off the term thinking that they can save themselves on the final, but in reality, most people who do this end up failing. If you did ace the final with a poor term mark, it didn't matter, obviously you mastered the course material.</p>

<p>Oh and I went to a very mark-centric high school. My term marks were soely determined by 2-3 tests per quarter, or essays. No hand-holding marks, no attendance marks, no homework marks.</p>

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<p>Yup, in our province the same thing. The provincial exams for every course make or break you. </p>

<p>But as for university just being about exams, as an original poster indicated, is simply false. Probably varies greatly by degree and school but there are all kinds of things given for grades (and its not 'fluff' its usually a critical part of the course- for example, if you are in an MBA course, participation counts for a significant portion of your case based courses).</p>

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<p>^ Most people here are concerned with undergrad.
For most 1st or 2nd year classes, especially in Arts or Sciences, you have huge classes, so there is no personal interactions. You will definitely have a math class with a final worth 85%, or something similar. Good to get prepared at HS, when really, marks dont really matter in the grand scheme of things</p>