Is Rumor True? No more HS finals ...
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Anonymous
| I heard a rumor that MCPS are dropping HS finals. Is this true? If so, are other DC area school systems considering this as well? My kids aren't in HS yet, but I'm interested in what the future is shaping up to be. Our local HS no longer seems to have class rankings. |
Anonymous
| Anne Arundel County announced that they are dropping HS finals at well. |
Anonymous
|
Interesting. I wonder how many other Maryland counties will follow them. I can only imagine the students are ecstatic and I can't really blame them. Quarterly exams sound much more manageable than than trying to study for 6 simultaneous exam at the end of the year. And does it really make much difference in the amount of material retained? I don't think so.
Now, this doesn't solve the problem of having too many standardized tests and I hope they board doesn't think it does. |
Anonymous
| The problem is that they won't ever have a cumulative final and will fall apart in college when that happens. |
Anonymous
| Will colleges eventually follow suit? |
Anonymous
No, the rumor is not true. What MCPS is dropping is finals written by the central office and given during separate exam periods. There will still be teacher-written finals given during class. |
Anonymous
| Middle class, helicopter parents were gaming the current exam system by 1) asking for exam exemptions for various reasons and/or 2) writing their HSers sick notes to excuse absences from 1-2 morning exams so they had more time to study. Lower-income and immigrant parents seemed unaware of these strategies or lacked the clout with admin to pull them off. During my years as a HS teacher, I watched the policy shift from a doctor's note to exempt or make up an exam to parent request. By the time my older DD was a 9th grader at a well regarded MCPS HS, she was reporting 4-5 students not taking each of her morning exams. Five students times three classes with AM exams --that's a lot of exemptions or illnesses that managed to resolve themselves by the second exam block of the day. |
Anonymous
no Teachers will give more assessments throughout the school year. No one's writing finals. We did - way back in the day before CLGs (the first set of standards) came into play - but not since then. no finals |
Anonymous
College final exams cover a semester of work, not an entire school year. So, if you count midterms as well, college students also have an exam every quarter. I think it's a great idea for the high schools to match that schedule. |
Anonymous
Churchill HS by chance? http://www.thechurchillobserver.com/news/2015/02/24/excuses-excuses-exam-exemptions/ |
Anonymous
I guess it depends on what you define as "finals". The BofE says: The updated policy clarifies that student performance measures may include teacher developed, as well as centrally developed, assessments. It also clarifies that the variety of assessments include, but are not limited to, marking period assessments, end-of-unit tests, final evaluations, projects, performance-based assessments, and other similar formative and summative demonstrations of a student’s mastery of grade-level course material. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/press/index.aspx?pagetype=showrelease&id=3836&type=&startYear=&pageNumber=1&mode= |
Anonymous
| I know a lot of parents in MCPS looking into private HS's now. It is just ridiculous to cancel finals. What will these kids do in college when they need to take a cumulative final exam that counts 50% or more of their grade? Will they even know how to study for this? It just seems like MCPS is setting them up to fail. |
Anonymous
The high school I went to had no cumulative semester finals. Somehow my friends and I managed to graduate from college just the same. Even Ivy League colleges! And some of us even went on to get advanced degrees! |
Anonymous
| Aren't AP exams a type of final? Why would these classes have finals and no other classes have finals? |