Reply to Return of Final Exams?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Back when final exams were instilled in mcps curriculum the teachers actually made an effort and taught class, nowadays that is sorely lacking and to have final exams would be disastrous.[/quote]

Back then, the world and MCPS were different in many fundamental ways that have shaped what and how teachers teach.

For my subject area, the curriculum has shifted away from direct instruction entirely. It’s all inquiry-based learning. A teacher who stands at the front of the room to lecture or demonstrate would certainly be chastised by their department head. If they persisted, they would be placed on review. Students don’t practice with multiple choice anymore, unless they are enrolled in test prep.

The assessments in our curriculum are all writing. Adding a final wouldn’t be as simple as plopping in a 50 item multiple choice exam at the end of semesters. Students would likely be asked to write written responses to multiple prompts. In all fairness, students would need more than one hour to complete this. And teachers would need more than the current one day at the end of the marking period to grade. When my curriculum had finals before there were 30 multiple choice questions on a bubble sheet and one twenty point, single paragraph “BCR”. [/quote]

If we go back 20 years or more, final exams were created by the teacher and differed widely from school to school. That was unfair. Then the county created final exams that were the same across the county. Part of the problem was that the BCR questions would spread from school to school as day 1 students would tell others what was on the exam. That was also not good. Eventually the county began publishing the BCRs in advance so that students could practice before the exam. Students with tutors would work out the perfect answer while students without tutors would suffer. Again, not equitable.

I would prefer multiple choice created by the county and then BCRs created by the individual teacher to focus more precisely on the items they emphasized the most. I don't think we should do this across the board. It might not be a positive, fair, appropriate experience in some subjects. I do think it is important in math where students need to focus on long term learning rather than the cram a few minutes before the test followed by a frenzy to answer questions before they forget how to do that kind of problem. As it is, many of our students are struggling in math because they do not have a solid foundation on the earlier concepts. Letting them move on without support to improve is setting them up for failure. [/quote]

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