It's also final exam time, at the high school level, anyway.
I have been signing final exam exemption forms for about a week or so. Students in our district can earn these exemptions by doing well on their PSAE (the high-stakes test that Illinois juniors take), or for perfect attendance and not getting into trouble with the Dean or Assistant Principal too often.
So, what message are we sending students by letting them opt out of the exams? That the exams aren't important as long as you are a good, compliant student? That the state-mandated tests of mostly nonimportant, low-level skills are more important than the end-of-semester tests your teachers give you?
Granted, the quality of final exams could improve. I am more than guilty of generating a test of 100-150 multiple choice questions to give students at the end of each semester, because it's easier to score and grade by the deadlines given me. And because someone told me I had to give a test at the end of the semester. If we made final exams more meaningful, more of a test of higher-order thinking skills, more about student creation of knowledge and making connections, would they become more vaulable? More worthwhile?
I have tried this. I have given project finals for the last 5 years or so. Unfortunately, because we allow exam exemptions, most students opt to exempt my final exam. The most common reason they give me is, "Your finals are too much work." My reply is usually, "Real measures of learning usually are work."
I don't want my students to feel they have dumped all of their knowledge out of their brains at the end of a final exam (this is how I used to feel during high school and college); I want them to feel as if they have not only shown me what they know, but have learned something by doing the final exam itself. Crazy, I know.
What I believe it comes down to is this: If the exams aren't important enough to make everyone take them, why give them at all? And if they are important enough to give, why can't we make them a better measure of student understanding?
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
(For more information, here is an online debate about whether or not final exams help or hinder the education process.)