Kace Schermerhorn
Semester exams start on January 14 and they run through January 17. The exams, which are district enforced, are unnecessary. Why do we need to take an exam that has to go toward our final averages to prove what we learned? Why can’t students just take the class, pass all 6 six-weeks, and be done with the year? Why do we have to make it so complicated? According to ABC, a national survey of 1000 young people aged between
14 and 25 experienced an increase in stress from 51.2 percent in 2017 to 65.1 percent in 2018 from exams. Students have to complete these unnecessarily large packets, which are given in several classes, and are expected to finish them before the exam day. It’s also terrible timing taking second semester exams are on the last week of school. Who wants to have to worry about exams during the week before summer vacation? No one.
The big problem with midterms is we are expected to take a STAAR exam as well. While STAAR exams are state-based and would be difficult to remove, they cover the necessary information to pass the class as opposed to what the teachers put on their own final exams. Grandview University History Professor Kevin Gannon stated that he sees students who can do A work all semester and then their
grade perishes from the exam. He later asks why semester exams are ever necessary. To answer his own ques- tion, he says that while the exams show what students learn, one exam cannot truly show a students learning capability, as some students may be having a bad day or cannot function as normal. He uses the Indianapolis 500 as an example, and says that the winner can win the cup just by doing better than the other racers on the final lap, even though one racer may have done fantastic on the previous laps.
Students can fail one of the three tests that they take a six weeks and still manage to pass the class. But, if you fail the final exam, you most likely won’t pass the course, as it’s 20% of your grade. And this goes especially with those people taking a class that is considered to be “difficult.”
The thing with STAAR exams is that they don’t go toward your final average; they’re just an exam, that you still need to pass that you take to see if you understood the course. Students don’t have to study as hard for the STAAR exam as they do for final exams. In my opinion, I hate both. But that’s just me saying that, and I know a lot of people feel the same way. But it does make sense to have an exam
to determine how much you actually obtained from the course. Gannon also stresses that in his experience he has seen that final exams show which students are tired, stressed, sick, or overwhelmed and which students are good at taking tests. His claim completely aligned with mine in the sense that we both agree that semester/final exams are a waste of time, paper, and student stress/anxiety. If that wasn’t enough proof, according to a Mental Help study, students were asked how often they were stressed throughout the semester. 89 percent of students said they were stressed at least two to four times per semester, and
thirty percent said they were stressed for almost the entire semester. Thirty-one percent of students surveyed said that finals were the biggest source of their stress. Research shows that semester exams only cause stress and anxiety for students, and are an overall waste of time.