One would be hard-pressed to find many students at the end of the school year who have summer assignments on their mind, much less next year’s final exams. However, there are big changes coming next year to the way De Soto High School does finals, and it is important for students to be aware of these changes that will likely have a direct effect on not only their grades but also their stress levels next year.

According to new principal Sam Ruff, every class, including Advanced Placement and design classes, will be required to take a comprehensive final exam. Although the exact specifications, format and grade weight of the test would still be left to teachers’ discretion, the final cannot be worth more than 20 percent of the final grade for the class.

“It’s just an opportunity for students to demonstrate that they have the essential understanding of the content of the course … and then it’s also great feedback for teachers,” Ruff added.

Yet, I believe this one-size-fits-all model will be ineffective to these ends, either providing insufficient or insignificant feedback to teachers while also straining students further to cram for a comprehensive final instead of simply preparing for a final unit test or developing a capstone design project.

In talking to various faculty members who preferred to remain anonymous, while some did not feel as if the change would affect their classes, mostly because they give cumulative finals anyway, others felt that some of their classes would be best served by retaining an evaluative capstone project at the end of the year instead. Still others argued for the importance of breadth over depth in test content, asserting that far more curriculum feedback is garnered from unit tests rather than a broad, cumulative final.

One of Ruff’s biggest concerns is that teachers are typically unable to receive effective feedback from AP exam reports which, granted, tend to not encompass much more than a single-digit score. He also emphasized that any final exam should be focused on essential concepts, which is certainly reasonable, but if a teacher were to give a final that only covers essential concepts, it may actually hinder the teacher’s ability to receive accurate feedback from their exams. Teachers get much more detailed feedback of what their students have learned from unit tests and perhaps even from capstone projects in design classes than from rote memorization of basic concepts for a cumulative final.

This is not to say Ruff opposes final design projects: he actually encourages teachers to find creative ways for students to express their learning. He just wants there to be an additional examination given during the actual scheduled final time. However, according to the some of the  faculty, this add-on test is somewhat unnecessary and not very pragmatic.

This initiative also has a deleterious effect on students who seek to expand their learning beyond typical core classes. Next year, junior Cody Murphy is planning to take six AP classes and three or four of the corresponding exams for those classes. While the new finals policy will not likely impact students who take few AP or design classes, it will have a disproportionately negative effect on students like Murphy, who not only extend themselves in the classroom, but also participate in multiple activities as well.

“It is one of those things where the end of the year is very busy anyway, especially if you’re in a lot of activities … I just went to Rocket Club Nationals which is three or four days off of school at the end [of the year] and then that plus taking AP tests … [and] finals, it really adds up where everything at the end of the year just gets very busy,” Murphy said.

Additionally, the initiative for students to demonstrate their knowledge through a written test does not reflect the changing job market or the district’s increasing commitment to Career and Technical Education, evidenced by the funding of a new CTE center in this month’s bond issue. As a school district that prides itself on preparing students by teaching them real-world skills in a variety of classes, an all-encompassing testing policy is simply out of place.

Further, if a student decides to attend college, depending on what they decide to major in, their final assessments may more closely resemble the capstone projects currently seen in many DHS design classes. One past DHS student who is now in college said they had five projects and/or essays and only one true final this semester. Though one case certainly can’t be representative of the final system of all colleges and universities, it is true that application of knowledge is key to the professional development that is central to a college education.

So what’s my solution? Keep the finals policy the way it is. Emphasize capstone projects and require point-earning assignments in the final days of school to curb skipping if necessary, but certainly don’t misconstrue lack of bubble-sheet exams in design classes with lack of learning and don’t punish AP students by levying extra tests on them at the end of the year, potentially discouraging students from taking the AP exam in the first place. Quite simply, the way to accomplish the important goals that Ruff set out in his finals policy, that is, student accomplishment and teacher feedback, will not be through increasing broad-based end-of-the-year testing. Instead, perhaps counter-intuitively, it will be through the encouragement of students to apply what they have learned and have already been tested on throughout the year.