Imagine you are a freshman in the last week of May; all of your classes are coming to an end. Across Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, you have 3 tests, an Integrated Biology, English, Statistics and Design and Technology (IBEST) practice symposium and a project that is due. You have no time to prepare in the short amount of time between them. On top of this, you have a final exam for another class, which is a very large part of your grade. Shouldn’t that be during your final exam period? This is a problem that many Jefferson freshmen have to deal with. Too many teachers schedule final exams to be in the last week of May, even though there is an entire final exam schedule for the week after.
Final exams are very important for the grades of all students. Some of them count as up to 20% of a student’s grade; many count as both a final exam and a retake, further raising the stakes. However, final exams, especially ones that are answered in written response form or ones that are on paper, can take a long period of time to grade. Teachers have a due date to put in final grades, typically soon after they give their last final exams. In order to get grades in quickly, finals are sometimes issued the week before the actual exam period for that class.
However, this can end up being a problem for many students, especially freshmen, due to the IBEST research project that wraps up with a symposium at the end of the year. The week before final exam week tends to be the final opportunity for students to retake tests or make them up, and it is also the final opportunity for teachers to finish off the final unit of the class with unit tests and projects. If students have a relatively small unit test to take for one class and an almost grade-defining final exam to take for another, they could be overwhelmed and have a very disorganized schedule. I have first hand experience with this, as I recently experienced the stress of having the graded IBEST practice symposium, which goes in the gradebook as a final exam grade for three different classes, and a Foundations of Computer Science exam, which also counts as a final, back to back, not to mention I also had to prepare for three other unit tests that took place on both of those days.
To combat this problem, teachers should administer final exams exclusively during finals week if possible. Final exams exclusively taking place during their allotted time would certainly give students more structure and allow them to focus on smaller unit tests the week before, which are often overlooked because finals tend to overshadow them. Students would also have ample studying time the weekend before exam week, giving them higher grades overall, if they put in the effort to study.
Simply changing the schedule of these exams seems like an easy fix on the surface, but there are different sides of the story that can be easily overlooked. The workload of teachers during the end of school is immense, as they must grade tests, give out retakes and makeups, respond to students who have questions about their grades, deal with concerned parents, all while having a set due date for final grades to be put in. This can understandably cause a rush to finish administering all graded activities and push teachers to give final exams before the designated final exam period.
However, there are a multitude of ways teachers can make this frantic period lighter on themselves. Tests that require students to give out long answers and tests that are administered on paper can take substantially longer to grade than tests that are given online and tests that have students select multiple choice answers. Teachers could reduce the amount of paper and free response tests their students are assigned to do for their final exam, and instead use online tests and a multiple choice format. Another solution could be assigning final projects rather than giving a final test, giving students more flexibility and letting them choose how to manage their time. This could decrease the stress in many majority-freshman classes such as Foundations of Computer Science, Ancient Civilizations and language classes, where teachers could have a choice between giving a final test or a final project. However, this solution is not as applicable to all classes, as it does not make much sense to give a final project in a math class or biology.
In short, teachers should consider only giving final exams during the actual final exams period, as this would greatly decrease the stress that students have and it could potentially raise grades. There still remains the issue of getting grades in the gradebook in time, which, although it can be somewhat negated by certain solutions, is still a large factor in the decisions that teachers make when formulating their plan for final exams. Students and teachers would both benefit by sharing their own opinions and experiences when it comes to final exams, allowing both parties to find a solution that supports their best interests.