End of course exams, bad or really bad (rough draft)

End of course exams, bad or really bad

In college I rarely had a cumulative final. Now I usually had a final but most of them covered just the last part of the course. Say I did have a cumulative final in the class, none of the classes I was in was ever longer than four months, a long time to remember all that material but since I was generally studying subjects I was interested in, that made it more manageable. Finally if I failed one of the few cumulative finals I had it didn’t hurt me if I had done well enough throughout the term. My grade might drop but I would still pass the class.

Florida is constantly talking about making kids college ready, preparing them for a global economy and S.T.E.M. science, technology, engineering and math careers, that generally require college to get. In short they want kids in college. That’s the set up. Here is the rub

Florida has started to phase in end of the course exams (EOC), which isn’t just a bad idea, it is a really bad idea and here is why.

Next year if you fail your EOC it doesn’t matter how well you did in the class because you have just failed the class. Since most high school classes are on an A/B block, classes last the whole year, which means you are expected to remember everything you learned over the course of ten months. Raise your hand if you ever just studied for the test and then as soon as it was over a fair amount went the way of the carrier pigeon. Furthermore do you know how many kids are all that in to biology and chemistry or algebra and geometry? You might be surprised to learn but not a whole lot. So many kids today are taking classes that they aren’t all that interested in, expected to remember everything they learned from day one to day 180 and then if they fail a test they fail the class. And friends that’s the message here; end of course exams are nothing like what kids will find in college, what the state says it is preparing them for.

Then just as a bonus, this year many end of the course exams were given six weeks before the end of the year just after the kids had taken the FCAT. Please direct your questions about that to somebody way above my pay grade.

This year EOCs count for thirty percent of the final grade and where I think that is way to high of a percentage that makes a whole lot more sense than the high stakes, winner take all monstrosity that EOCs will become next year.

If we want our kids to do better, the answer is not to ratchet up the stakes, it is to put them in situations where success is possible. You know realistic situations like say college, the place where our leaders say they want them to be.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher