As the semester draws to a close, the craziness of midterms begins.

The exams that every junior and underclassman has to take is worth twenty percent of a student’s overall grade, which means that the exam can lower the semester average by an entire letter grade.

If a student has a B in a class, a bad midterm can drop it to a C.

Not only is this system unfair to the students who work hard all year and maintain good grades, but it does not accurately represent what the students are going to experience outside of high school.

I move to get rid of midterms and finals all together because there are so few benefits and too many drawbacks for students.

Even if the student has worked hard all semester, studied for tests, and has an A in the class, they still have to take the exam.

After a solid week of the stress of studying and of timed tests, students’ brains are not prepared to take that last test and therefore their grades suffer. This does not mean the student is lazy and didn’t study. Rather what it means is that their performance on the test is not an accurate representation of the work the student has done all year.

At least part of the reasoning behind requiring students to take midterms and finals is the belief that taking these two-hour tests will prepare them for college.

This, while it sounds nice, doesn’t really make sense.

The fact of the matter is high school is not college and high school exams are not college exams.  College exams are typically set up very differently than having 6-8 exams crammed into four days. And besides, not every college class requires you to take a final anyway.

And besides, college is not always the destination of students after high school, and taking a long exam is not necessarily going to prepare these students for life in the workforce.

Another reason to get rid of exams is simply because a full week is wasted during each semester for finals. During that week, students could be learning a lot more by being in their classes instead of being evaluated for what they already learned and leaving at 11:30.

This also means that teachers feel the need to pack in any content or projects or tests the week before finals, so students end up learning new content the week before finals.  And worse, students end up taking two full weeks of tests. Because of this rushed timeline, teachers are also not able to take time and fully explain many things, leading to students having a lesser understanding of the information that is going to be on the final exam, which is, again, is worth 20% of their semester grade.

Also if there are snow days, teachers who teach classes that only last a semester often don’t get to cover all the material they want. Or if they do add days to the semester because of snow days, then a new semester class could start on a Wednesday, which is difficult and stressful for both teachers and students.

Sure, exams can be a valuable tool for measuring how well a student has mastered a concept. However, teachers give exams all semester long, which are more accurate in reflecting a student’s knowledge than a final exam.

Grades accumulated throughout the semester are also more indicative of how well a student can study, organize time, persevere and complete a challenge.

I understand that sometimes grades are watered down by homework and participation and are sometimes not a true representation of how well a student knows the material. However, it is up to the teacher to make their grading system fair and accurate.

Students are already required to take competencies, which are supposed to prove that they have mastered the important skills in each class. Why are we testing them again?

An argument can be made that in core classes—where it is critical for a student to have mastered concepts before moving on—that perhaps midterms and finals have value. It might seem to make sense for classes like math, science, English or social studies to have a midterm and final.

However, in reality, to only have certain classes require a midterm and final would not work. It would mean that some teachers have to grade final exams and others would not.  Plus, what really is a core class?  A class like accounting or engineering would also require students to have mastered material before learning new concepts, but both are considered electives by the school.

Perhaps the solution to this problem is to extend the rule that an A in a class exempts all students from taking the exam, not just seniors. This plan—the same plan Pinkerton has in place—might encourage students to work hard all year so they would not have to take the exam. But this would not solve the problem of midterms being an interruption to classroom time and final exams still don’t accurately show what a student knows or is capable of.

The best solution then?  Get rid of midterms and finals all together.

I promise.  No one will miss them.