Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Students at Flathead and Glacier High Schools no longer can escape final exams by compiling goody-two-shoes attendance records, but, the InterLake reported Friday, there's still a way for students to escape what should be mandatory:
The new incentive comes after both high schools decided to discontinue the practice of allowing students to opt out of final exams based on attendance.
The reasoning behind the change is that students would be better served taking final exams in preparation for college.
Flathead seniors in their seventh or eighth semesters will still be able to opt out of finals if they earn a 90 percent, or above, semester average in classes.
There's been some backsliding by the people running the schools. At the end of May, the IL reported that all students would be required to take finals:
Both schools came to a consensus that all students, regardless of attendance, should take final tests. Fusaro said that removing the attendance incentive also may change perceptions that final exams are a punishment for missing school; instead they prepare students for college.
“I saw kids graduate with a 3.8 GPA from high school and never take a single exam, but when they get to college, what do you take — pretty much exams — and they were definitely not prepared for their first year so they definitely had to study and that’s part of the impetus looking at this,” Fusaro said.
Fusaro is right that final exams help prepare students for college — but not all students go to college, so his argument for final exams isn’t as strong as he thinks it is. He’s avoiding defending the fundamental purpose of administering final examination: to measure what a student knows about the subject at the end of the year. That’s why every student must take the exam: it’s the only fair and sure way to determine what students have learned, and to provide a basis for comparing the effectiveness of different teachers teaching the same subject.
As I wrote at the end of May:
I’m old fashioned. I believe grades should reflect a student’s mastery of the subject matter, and nothing else. No points added or deducted for attendance. No grades based on socialization, on working with others, on attitude, or on anything except the subject matter. And the evaluations of a student’s mastery of the subject matter must be rigorous standardized tests that allow valid comparisons across school, district, state, and national boundaries.
The new policy is better than the old policy, but the new policy still allows students to escape finals. That's bad policy. And that it's been adopted means the anti-testing caucus in School District 5 still retains considerable political clout.