Changes in structure gives one an opportunity to step back and take a look at usual practices. Last year, almost all Grade 12, Provincial Final Exams were eliminated. These exams, which at one point were worth 50 per cent of students’ final marks, were offered in courses from Chemistry to Spanish to Geography. With changing requirements from universities, a government policy decision to make the exams optional (among other reasons) the exams were poorly attended, and then eliminated. At this point, most students will take five government program exams in their high school career: three in Grade 10 worth 20 per cent of their final grade (English, Science, Math); one in Grade 11 also worth 20 per cent of their final grade (Social Studies), and one in Grade 12 worth 40 per cent of their final grade (English). There are a few other options for students, but this is a fairly common pattern.
As a History 12 teacher, I regularly complained about the Grade 12, Provincial Final Exams. The History 12 exam was not a terrible exam. It had some opportunities for students to analyze documents, identify bias and think critically, but it was also quite focussed on content. With a final exam focussed on coverage and facts, my class was (at least, on some days) a bit of a race to get through all of the required content. I would have liked to go into deeper discussion in some areas and allowing students to explore more areas of interest. So, one day it was Korea, and the next day was Vietnam, and then it was Ping-Pong Diplomacy.
The elimination of these mandatory exams, which so many of us championed, has been met with a variety of responses. I regularly hear from teachers, who love the new-found “freedom”, who do not feel burdened by the final exam and are creating more inquiry projects, presentations, deep research opportunities they felt were limited with the content-based final exam. It is not that content is not important, it is just it is not the only thing that is important. In terms of transferable skills for other courses and other life experiences, the skills of being able to analyze a historical document seem to trump the date of the start of the Suez Crisis (before you Google it, it was October 1956).
This said, another reaction has been to replace the ministry exams with school-based exams to “fill the void.” And with all this as background, we get to the real topic of the post — are we moving to a post-standardized system in education that should lead to the elimination of the traditional “final exam” for most courses in secondary school?
While there are exceptions, in most schools and in most districts across the province, most academic courses have a summative final exam from grade 8 to 12.
The elimination of the Provincial Final Exam has also brought about some new interchanges – it has set a new model that final exams may not be the best way to assess performance at the end of the year, and has also led to the scaling back of “exam timetables” — the time required for doing exams is being recaptured by instructional time. With more days in class and fewer exams at the end of June this leads to a lot of questions about what to do.
Some reasons (I have heard) for the continuation of final exams:
- they are an important part of many college and university programs; so the practice of exams in high school is important
- they help to instill good work and study habits in students
- work authenticity — in an era when cheating (or at least the suspicion of cheating) is high — everyone in the room at one time makes cheating almost impossible
- exams are a common test that everyone in a class, school, district or province can take to ensure there is a common measure of comparison
- by having exams at the end of the school year, this ensures students will stay focussed until course end, and not fade out in June
- their elimination is another example of coddling students and the weakening of standards in our education system
- they keep teachers honest — ensuring they cover the entire curriculum so students are fully prepared to write their final exams
Some reasons (I have heard) for the elimination of final exams:
- they often test superficial content and the multiple choice formats lend themselves more to trivia than a reflection of learning
- there are a number of other more authentic ways to determine what students have learned — such as portfolios
- those who excel at them are those who are best at memorization and regurgitation — two skills not widely seen as part of 21st century learning
- if we are truly moving from a “sorting system” to a “learning system” do we need to continue with standardized final exams for students?
- there is no feedback mechanism for students to understand their mistakes and learn from them
- they create an amazing level of stress, anxiety, and create a high stakes experience for students not necessary or conducive to learning
- they are actually very difficult to properly construct; they often don’t allow high-end students to push their thinking and are more about “gotcha” not learning, and there are many examples of poorly-created final exams
- by removing them, it forces us to have new conversations about learning, about what students know, how we know it, and how to demonstrate it
Just because we “have always done it,” is not a good enough reason to continue. And when there are external changes that force a second look, it is a great opportunity to see if the reasons bear out.
My general view is there are far richer ways to have students demonstrate their learning than a two-hour, scantron-heavy test. My answer is also slightly nuanced, recognizing that math may lend itself more appropriately to a final exam than English or Social Studies. If the exam period was to disappear tomorrow, and we were forced to find other ways to account for student learning, we would likely come up with some very powerful and effective models. I agree with the current BC Teachers Federation advertisement that we should be working towards “more authentic means of assessment.”
I look forward to this discussion.
Chris, your last paragraph must be answered.
I am really excited to try a completely new summative assessment for my Biology 12. Since this course is human anatomy and physiology I’m going to use medical case studies instead of the scantron 100 question style of assessment. This should be rich!
Nice idea Gary. I was interested in hearing how the medical program at universities have evolved – now students complete much of their work as part of teams, and assessed through hands-on activities. It is great to use questions that don’t just ask students to recall information but to also apply what they know. Your approach also takes away the concerns that come up when students write exams at different times. Good Luck!
Gary, I’m really interested if you “changed up” your Bio 12 final assessment to case studies yet? How did it go? We are being forced away from final exams and I’m not sure what to do at the “end”.
Is this not a test?
Excellent topic of conversation. As someone who works in an alternate high school, provincial exams are a period of high anxiety for our students. Kids with learning disabilities, mental health issues and add to it the many struggles for kids who live in poverty, one other argument you did not mention is standardized testing is biased. It certainly doesn’t make it easy for ESL students either-a population we see in increasing numbers in Vancouver. I could also argue it IS good practice for university as that most definitely is their model of testing, but not all students are destined for university. Do we coddle our students-in a system where students can take P.E. online, I can’t help but think we do. But university has a way of weeding out students who are not prepared or capable. Do exams get in the way in courses with heavy content loads-absolutely. Are there other ways, perhaps more effective ways to measure a student’s learning, I would say absolutely. My vote, if it counted, would be to eliminate them.
Thanks Sue – I agree it is important to note that exams do allow some students to “show what they know” but for others, they are not the best way for students to demonstrate learning. I also don’t believe that since universities regularly use exams, we need to prepare students for this, by examining them in the same way. University students are older students, and only a segment of those attending our high schools – it doesn’t seem to make sense we should assess the same way.
Thanks for the comment.
Clearly a topic of concern. My personal feelings around exam usage is what I identify as “false engagement”. Having students engaged in courses because of the fear/concern that they may miss an examinable concept rather than being driven by personalized interest and inquiry… I believe is counter to the direction of self regulation (Shanker). Again I hope we move towards engagement which involves students willingness to attend & participate based on a choice and their own personal interest. I think students are motivated by a fear of failure on exams, not on the excitement of discovery.
Thanks Tristan – I think the issue of false engagement is a good one. If we believe that we need to have exams at the end of June or students will tune out and not be engaged, I think we have larger problems that we need to be looking at around student engagement. The work of the CEA suggests that the issue of student engagement at secondary school is a major concern; finding new ways to assess and demonstrate learning may be part of the answer to the engagement gap.
I used to feel this way also. Then Provincial exams disappeared and Universities started accepting students at the end of term 2 and even term 1 in some cases. Being in the trenches I can tell you that although an extrinsic motivator, it had a desirable effect. In a Utopian society where everyone is mature enough (sorry – self regulated enough) to deal with this and has a lust for learning then I agree. And don’t get me wrong, many kids continue on. But the reality is, there is a percentage that are tired and mark driven. I don’t think Mr. Miyagi, Coach Carter or Yoda could motivate under the circumstances. I’m not afraid to admit that I now have to work harder than ever to engage the learner (especially grade 12 students) in the last 3 months of the year and am unsuccessful more now than before. I’m now questioning if I actually want those exams back!
How do they know that they are interested in something if the fundamental content is not taught? Very often when something gets hard, they all of a sudden bail and it is no longer their own personal interest. They are motivated by what is the easiest path not necessarily the most interesting. Some things like math or science are just hard. We can’t all be photographers and musicians.
My vote? Get rid of the tests and find other ways to assess learning. As a student, I dutifully studied for all tests. I never found memorization tests very difficult. However, I can’t claim to have any great recall of the facts after the test, not do I feel my learning or understanding was improved by taking them. As a parent, I have a Grade 10 child who has test anxiety and his whole year has been coloured by the fact that the tests are looming at the end. My guess? He won’t do well on them, nor will they be an accurate reflection of his learning. Surely as educators we can think of more creative and engaging ways to help our students understand what they’ve learned and what they still need to work on. The lack of exams will only encourage student laziness if we continue to teach in the same old way. If we engage our students in learning in a way that encourages exploration and deeper understanding, they will learn what they need to know because they will be interested – and in the long run, isn’t that what we want? Interested, engaged students who are curious about the world around them.
Nice Cari – we get into this “chicken or egg” discussion – we need to change curriculum but we can’t change curriculum and delivery if the exams stay the same. Of course, we can’t change exams if we are going to continue to teach the same way.
It’s a shame that in today’s educational system, one needs to wait until grad school before one can truly get into deep, meaningful engagement with issues.
That may be true for some – but I do see a lot of deep engagement on a regular basis in many places in our schools. Just this past Tuesday at our public Board Meeting we heard some wonderful stories of engagement from two Montessori students from one of our schools.
A timely post, Chris, and something that I was pondering a couple of weeks ago on my blog. The question I was considering was “Does the assessment occurring in classrooms at our schools truly reveal the learning that has occurred by our students?”
Like you, I stated that “portfolio assessment was an interesting alternative to this construct (of final exams). Any method of assessment in which students can be guided to collect and then determine which artifacts represent their learning and then present them in a method that they are comfortable with seems so much more authentic. And if the assessment by the teacher requires more time, then perhaps we need to find ways to make that time so that we can really dig in and discover what it is that kids know.”
In terms of some of the reasons to continue final exams that you (and all of us) have heard and considered, the pieces around accountability, authenticity, and work habits really need more examination. I know I am not alone in my belief that the presentation of an artifact or portfolio that reflects my learning (to my teacher, a parent, or some other evaluator) holds me to a much higher level of accountability than bubbling in multiple choice answers. A piece of paper cares little about how I perform that day, but were we to use some sort of student-led learning conference, my teacher would be keenly interested in my performance, and with parent involvement, so would my mother or father! My work habits would be much more apparent (rather than someone assuming that my poor performance on a test was due to poor work habits), and moreover, I would be there to be accountable to my level of preparedness for my evaluators. And with respect to authenticity, the more individual we make the assessment, the more difficult it becomes to ‘copy’.
There is no doubt that moving to some sort of portfolio model or exit interview structure requires a change to the way that we do business: such a proposal would require professional development, resources, and time. However, if our goal is to be insatiably curious about what students know and getting them engaged in the assessment process, I think there are other models that would be more effective at achieving it.
I’m going back to a portfolio approach for a new course next year, but I wonder sometimes if the authenticity factor makes assessment (by a teacher) difficult. For example, Heritage projects we do in one form or another are essentially portfolios from which students present key evidence and build a narrative. I find it hard to be critical, because even the most “weany” of presentations with the thinnest evidence still represents a student trying to make personal connections with curriculum and get an idea of how historical and geographic processes have affected their selves, families, and communities. Some kind of exam is often needed that allow students to step out of the shadows of their own intimate understandings, or at least leverage the personal in a shared space (common curricular goals) and provide a more objective field of data that I can mine for the required evaluation of their overall performance. So long as teachers are tasked with assessing student achievement, I think we need accountability for both the authentic (internally relevant) and the communal (externally relevant).
Thielmann: “Some kind of exam is often needed that allow students to step out of the shadows of their own intimate understandings… and provide a more objective field of data that I can mine for the required evaluation of their overall performance.”
I’m not clear why an exam is needed. Can’t I look at the PLOs and use some other means to evaluate whether a student has not met, met or excelled at meeting them? It could be a conversation – questions asked along the way during the course. And wouldn’t a project that requires the building blocks of the course to complete, i.e. if the course basic/info hasn’t been learnt it will be pretty obvious/impossible to adequately complete the task/project/assignment (I’m thinking eg High Tech high here)?
Given the new reality of just-in-time learning, why are we ‘testing’ just-in-case learning? Given the traditional exam’s focus on the foundational info readily accessed 24/7, I’m not clear why the exams are still needed.
MrsB… I agree there are more elegant and personalized ways of assessing, but in the craziness of 4 classes x 25 students, it is not realistic that I can give every student a fair summative evaluation unless I use a common tool with something approaching an objective scale. See the comment under Cale Birk’s post for an example of an exam that tries to do this without sacrificing the intent of the rich learning along the way. I love the big projects, but they are often very successful and meaningful to students even when they don’t respect the building blocks of the course. That’s why I suggest we need both. I like the “just in case” vs “just in time” remark… I think it hits the mark for the most part when we look at how our final exams are used.
…MrsB… sorry I meant the comment under Chris Wejr’s post for an example of a “different” exam (not Cale Birk)… any SS teachers that wants to see this can DM me for a copy @gthielmann
Hey Chris – thank you for your leadership in bringing this discussion to the forefront. I am going to come at this from 2 perspectives: student and teacher.
When I think back to my time in high school… I had the game of testing all figured out. Work with the teacher to get hints on what would be on the test, study previous exams to find out what would be on the final, get the A and forget it… then, in 1st semester in university, (among other classes) I had to drop out of one class (math), scraped by in another (psych), and work my tail off just to get a B (from the C- I got on the first midterm in bio). The testing skills I learned in high school that some would say should have prepared me for university actually backfired as I was unable to cram and memorize like I could in high school. Once I learned to read and study on a more regular basis and actually try to UNDERSTAND the material – my learning improved and my grades followed. I did well in classes in which we were truly engaged in dialogue around the learning and we were able to immediate use and discuss the outcomes.
As a teacher, I had many philosophical battles around the use of final exams. Although I saw the benefits that you stated above, I still struggled whether this was good for kids. Most of the time, the A/B students did well on the exam and it went down from there. Then there were the students who came in with a 45 and got a 75 on the exam! I said to myself that they must have studied hard… when, in reality, my assessment system was slightly flawed: they had done well on tests and quizzes but rarely did the homework – thus the low marks. I was assessing their knowledge of outcomes but actually skewing their assessment with lates and zeros. I have seen all the cons that you mention as well and can provide examples for each.
So, for me… it is not a matter of final exams or not… but designing an assessment that would give us the most valid and relevant information regarding the learning of the prescribed outcomes. If we ask this question, this may look different in each subject and each level but I would doubt that if we had endless options, we would choose a 2-3 hour long test as the best way to assess the skills and outcomes. Portfolios of student learning, projects of inquiry, or a Capstone style project – including videos of students demonstrating and USING their learning – may be a great option for some. I always wonder too: if all the learning outcomes can be assessed in a 2 hour (mostly multiple choice) test… how relevant is the learning?
As the learning outcomes change and our knowledge of accurate and relevant assessment grows, we will see much more authentic and valid forms of assessment being done. I am not outright opposed to tests and quizzes but a 2-3 hour test to assess 10 months of learning is probably not the best way to do things.
I’ve seen a few of trends that result from the removal of most provincial exams… basically a parallel to what happens in courses that never had them:
1. No exams — other assessment deemed sufficient to guide and gauge learning
2. Selective exams — recommendations either based on marks or uncertain placement or last chance to improve (e.g. students in the 40-49 range write for a chance to pass, students above that can write to improve their grade)
3. Nasty exams — endless tricky MC questions that stumble through content and require students to guess what their teacher actually wants; often too hard or long to be fair (and yet students still walk away after an hour), or too easy or fill-in-the-blanks to explore the curriculum or outcomes. When I see these exams I think the provincials should come back because they at least set a decent example of what a test can look like.
4. Meaningful exams — students get a chance to demonstrate that they can take most of the skills they’ve acquired in the course and apply them to problems, questions, or sources from throughout the curriculum. This is a field-test for their competence… something as much celebratory and creative as it is a summative assessment. They feel that they’ve actually built something when they leave, instead of the feeling of resignation after right/wrong guesses on a bubble sheet.
I’ll admit I’ve done all 4 in the past, and although #1 is appealing, I’ve focused on #4 because I think we need better examples of tests. I have also attracted a small army of teachers who seem to think my Gigs of worksheets and tests constitute an acceptable way to deliver a Socials or Geography course, so I need to keep them guessing, keep one step ahead of them… so I can say “what, you’re using that crap for your class? I made that 4 years ago, I can’t believe you’re still handing that out!” That’s when I demand a cup of coffee or some of their lunch in exchange for the new stuff.
Seriously, it is possible to have a test that fulfills #4… working with other local SS teachers, we’ve built a SS10 exam that involves 4 sections:
A. Telling the Story of Canada through maps, images, statements, and unpacking/reorganizing the knowledge, connections, and understanding that students accumulate in the course
B. Interpreting Sources: applying decoding skills and critical thinking to primary sources (e.g. Last Best West Poster, Head Tax Form)
C. Ranking evidence and defending a position: I provide the facts (e.g. causes of confederation), they establish the importance and explain their choices
D. Synthesis: using a prompt (people, quotes) to explore competing visions of the development of Canada
I think it is possible to have “good” MC questions (I think the SS11 provincial usually has a number of them), but we’ve gone with a written/graphic SS10 exam, spread out over 6 pages on 11×17 paper. Each page is assessed with a rubric and class set of tests takes less than two hours to mark. After the first exam like this, I found myself using more primary sources in all my classes, more questions that were meant to stimulate critical thinking rather than get through content, more “why” and less “what,” or at least a better balance.
Coupled with the big Heritage projects we do (which provide context for students to personally connect with the curriculum and establish historical empathy), the exam is a key performance for the students, one that makes sense of the practice we do beforehand. The results continue to impress us — we are getting very clear reflections of what students have learned, and the scores often tell us what we suspected… the student that asks good questions in class, pursues insight and connections between course themes will score well even if he/she has missed assignments or is disorganized. Likewise, the student that has gone through the motions, copied work off others without dialoguing about it, or has skipped a lot of school can’t guess their way to a 50% on this exam… if they have not “dwelt in the learning” it also becomes clear.
I would assert that we shouldn’t use assessment at the end of the course that we aren’t willing to use (and be proud of) throughout the course, formatively or otherwise. I also don’t think that writing exams makes one better at writing exams, other than the basic notion of managing time and calming down which can be learned elsewhere.
Dang… got sucked in again… meant to leave a comment but it turned into an essay.
It’s a complex topic. Is there a validity in writing a cumulative exam? I think so, especially in the courses that have interconnections and themes. Senior science classes have these already built in, but what about courses like Science 10? And what if a kid does markedly better on their final exam than their course work? Do you as a teacher say, “I weight that exam more for this child than another?”
These are really tough questions that have no simple answers. I believe most of the complaints about final exams aren’t about the exams themselves, but about the way they are created and delivered. Low level questioning, unrelated questions and a lack to good overall assessment practices have given final exams a bad name.
Things I would like to see are:
1) Final exams done before the final week of classes so kids can see what they did wrong and still learn from them (Do your projects in the final week).
2) Have the people who made exams for the government continue to create questions and assessment tools for teachers and make them readily accessible.
3) Better curriculum from the ground up. More connected course with themes woven through them.
Thanks Jeremy – I really like your three concluding ideas and they help address some of the challenges around final exams that have been highlighted . . . a “final” exam held prior to the end of the year allows the assessment to be a more clear part of the learning process; the “bank” of potential questions helps ensure rich assessment practices (and deals with the challenge that exam questions are actually very hard to do right; and your thoughts around curriculum get at the issue of engagement and relevance which seem so crucial to this discussion.
And I would agree – the more we discuss it, the more complex and “grey” the topic becomes.
As with many that have commented, I don’t see one right answer here. I do however think we are doing a disservice to students so long as they are forced to write provincial exams in grade 10 (SS 11 & Comm 12) but have not been prepared to write cummulative exams. If we don’t give finals, we should probably run exam prep courses.
Then there are the AP and IB Exams which are 3 hour “doozies”. A cummulative exam in nature that often will encompass several units from throughout the course in a single question. These exams are tough and if the first cummulative exam you ever write is that one….’nuff said.
Portfolios, interviews, hmmmmm….. really? I think it would work for a few courses but not the majority, not to mention the logistics of assessing 200 portfolios or conducting 200 interviews.
Students do need chance to show learning from earlier in the year (we all grow and learn at different rates so give I’s not F’s). The end of the year is that last chance to show learning. Tough to have it both ways, we give an “I” and more time but you don’t have to be assessed.
Having said that, I do believe we need to move to other options. For Sciences for example, I would like to see an almost “performance” based assessment. Students would need to come in and say “calculate the density of a unknown substance”. This would be a lab they may have done already. It allows them to go through the scientific process, collect data, apply, synthesize, etc. This is not so much short term memorization but really showing what you have learned in a science class and about the scientific process and reporting out.
If we are going to get rid of finals, we still need to prep students for those who won’t get rid of finals: Universities, AP & IB courses and the Government.
Final Exams are an excellent topic for discussion as they are interconnected to what I see as more important ideas in education – identifying what the (smaller list) of essential learning outcomes and core competencies are and how to assess learning (and later, report out) in an authentic way that actively involves and includes students. To drop final exams for portfolios is not necessarily more authentic unless a learner can describe why the work they have collected in their portfolio connects to and demonstrates how he/she has fully met the learning outcomes and can describe how they have grown and developed as a learner. As the Ministry of Education no longer mandates “final exams” in most courses, thoughtful teachers are free to design better summative learning challenges if they believe these are helpful in preparing students for success in the future. These too, must be very thoughtfully designed. From a provincial perspective, there is something to be said for requiring all graduating students to write a similar summative challenge as well. Call it accountability or just evidence on how all kids are learning, this will continue, regardless of who forms the government.
We must also work together with post-secondary schools to align what we want our students to know and be able to do and how to more fully and accurately report this (beyond a % mark). Kids, like most people, quickly learn to concentrate their energies and shift their priorities to what they need to do to achieve their goals. That is, if a comprehensive and thoughtful portfolio of work will not be reviewed by UBC, why would a university-bound Grade 12 student invest their time? Students who can use their portfolio (e.g. for Emily Carr), will spend time and energy in this work and it becomes authentic and important. Similarly, the stories I continue to hear from students in university and college are related to long and challenging (and seemingly poorly designed) “mid-term” and “final” exams that contain hundreds of multiple choice questions and invariably include a few difficult or obscure problems.
We can all share stories about how we were in high school, university or graduate school but these anecdotes are hardly evidence. What I do know is that I engaged differently in my classes, depending on how I was going to be evaluated. I learned to study, review and prepare regularly for courses with exams and prepared differently if there were presentations or essays. How much I learned depended on how engaging I found the curriculum, not whether I had a test or wrote a research paper.
I think that a final exam is generally punitive for students. I imagine that it’s very rare that a student significantly improves their grade with a final. I like the idea of an exam being able to test student accountability, but who are we kidding – I would wager that almost every HS student crams for finals. That’s not what we should be aiming for. The question is whether the final exam can be designed such that it provides feedback for teachers. Can teachers learn something about their practice from analyzing student results? There’s no reason we can’t make final exams low-stakes and use them to inform teacher practice. To do this, the assessment needs to be designed with this purpose in mind. I think this is a worthwhile goal to aim for.
A quick personal story on finals. When I was in Grade 6, the gr12 students had to write final exams. Of course the 11’s did as well. To get the 10’s ready, they wrote them too. Naturally this meant that 8’s and 9’s would write finals. to get the Grade 7’s read for secondary school, they had to write a final exam. And guess what Grade 6’s did, to get ready for Grade 7?
Doug – I think you personal story is still often replicated and I often hear from parents who recall their experiences of exams in school starting from a young age, and want their children to have the same experience.
I think your point around using assessment to help inform practice is an important addition to the conversation. While we can question the value of the current government program exams at grades 10 – 12, I know a number of teachers who take the item analysis of their students results to help inform their practice moving forward – giving them insight on topics that may require a new approach to ensure understanding.
I also like an earlier comment from Jeremy Brown – suggesting that the “final exam” should really be a couple weeks before the end of the year, so that it could be used as a teaching tool with students – and not just a mark that gets posted on the wall and appears on a report card.
I wonder what the students would say? We hear a great deal the argument that we in elementary school have to get them ready for secondary and then secondary for post secondary. This is a systemic issue. The changes in elementary are gradually creeping into secondary in pockets but unless teachers make the shift the curriculum and assessment methods are still traditional. My son wrote a biology exam last year with 100 multiple choice questions. We engaged in the assessment dialogue and even he knew the reason for the exam format was ease of marking for the teacher. Let’s ask the students…they hold the key to their own learning. The quickest and perhaps easiest way to impart change in practice is to empor students to advocate for themselves.
Yes – this is a really important addition to the conversation, and it is really part of the larger goal of having students take greater ownership of their learning and assessment. One of the keys is making sure we find the right questions to engage students on and not just the superficial ones like “do you like tests”.
Hi Chris. Since final exams are mandated by some departments, I think I will try individual interviews with students determining their strengths and weaknesses based on class work and final exam results. WE would work together to plan how the student and I can improve the following year. Never tried it, but I think it is worth investing time to see if it is productive.
Interesting Mike – nice way to engage students with their own learning and as part of the assessment process. I am curious to hear how it goes . . . I know finding the time to do interviews is often a challenge – how are you going to set up that organization?
It’s interesting to read your blog post on final exams. I teach in an elementary school, so I don’t administer exams, but I often find myself thinking about many of these same issues when it comes to quizzes and tests versus projects. I definitely lean more towards the latter, but I teach Grade 6 in Ontario, and with the big focus on EQAO, I feel the need to give some regular quizzes and tests as well. The argument is that students need to learn how to take them, and I can understand that. I don’t test everything though. My teaching partner and I probably give one test or quiz a month (usually on a topic in math), and we also constantly have students working individually and in groups on numerous open-ended assignments. The students LOVE the projects! We try to work in lots of student choice, allowing for all students to be successful regardless of needs.
I think I find myself more in favour of projects because the differentiation happens so much more naturally than it does with quizzes or tests. The assignments are meaningful too, and I love that! I work with many teachers that are highly in favour of regular quizzes and tests though. How would you respond to those that feel the same way? People often seem on one side or the other side of this issue. I wonder if there’s any way to meet in the middle. Thoughts?
Thanks for getting me thinking!
Aviva
http://www.weinspirefutures.com
Hi Aviva – I think there is a lot of grey with this issue.
I do think there is absolutely a place for using tests / quizzes as a form of assessment and it lends itself more appropriately in some subjects than others. Math, for example seems to often make sense to use a quiz or test to check understanding, while English or Art – likely not.
I think the second piece is that if we are using tests – we are constructing good tests – ones that move beyond simple recall and encourage students to access prior learning and make connections.
I have always been a sceptic of the notion that since kids are getting tested later in the year or later in life – we need to practice this by testing them now . . . kind of like the argument that since universities do something, high schools need to do it, and since high schools need to do it, elementary schools need to do it . . . I do think there is value in helping students understand how to approach a test (or other kind of assessment) but I don’t think that regularly being assessed in the same format in necessary.
I agree that I don’t think this is a yes or no issue – like a lot of education -a lot of grey in the middle.
Thanks for the comment.
My first post was lost in cyberspace….
I’ve spent a week dragging students over the 50% line, I question why 50% is considered a pass – why not 70%? Maybe a topic of a future post for you?
As for final exams, there are means to justify them and means to question them. Many students do not invest enough in their learning- too many blank projects and worksheets and “googled” answers. A final exam holds a level of accountability that hasn’t been there for the past four months.
For others, who have writing difficulties or anxieties, final exams do not show the learning of the student. Far too often, I see students get marks that do not reflect their understanding.
However, the experience of writing a final cumulative exam is one that everyone needs. Last week, I wrote the commutative test for my Serving It Right certificate after studying 20 plus pages of theories and ideas. I drew on that experience of writing finals to guide me through the test.
I believe that it is important for the test creator to consider the purpose of the exam. What they want the writer to achieve by writing the final cumulative exam is what should be valued.
Thanks Rob. As I have been thinking about this topic, and reading all the comments – I think it is not “final exams” that are the problem – it is “bad final exams” that are the problem . . . similar to lecturing . . . which has got a really bad reputation in recent years – it is really “bad lecturing” that is the problem.
As you point out – purpose is very important . . . and as the comments have shown – there are so many possible ways to construct a summative assessment. I think we absolutely want students to be able to connect knowledge over a period of time and make connections.
And thanks for the future blog post topic 🙂
Our HS does not have final or semester exams. But, this makes college even more difficult, where they experience many classes that have 1 research paper and two tests…and that is all. Students need the experience of high stakes testing. Our state only requires 3 EOC tests and only one is required for graduation, currently.
Hi Suzanne – this is something that we regularly debate in BC . . . do students need to experience high stakes testing in high school in order to be prepared for it at university? Our common assessments (the five we offer in senior grades) are quite low-stakes – they are worth from 20-40 % of a student mark, and don’t tend to have a great influence on post-secondary (our BC universities look at a number of grade 12 courses without exams), and we don’t have funding or teacher evaluation connected to student test scores in BC.
We also often wonder if it is secondary schools that need to conform to university or if university should look more like secondary schools.
Thanks for sharing your thinking!
Researching “the flip” led me to mastery = students don’t proceed to concept B until they can demonstrate they have mastered concept A. It resonated with me, and I decided to give it a shot last Sept. (mastery in my classes is 80%; students can choose how to demonstrate their learning of a concept; occasional quizzes are also be mastered – students can re-quiz on a subsequent day).
This has revolutionized my classroom – individualization, differentiation, personalization, independence & ultimately, responsibility for their own education. It moved me to a formative assessment focus with comparatively little summative. I am a “very experienced” teacher and the change in engagement, and learning, has blown me away.
But I hear Rob, as before this were decades of “dragging kids” along – i.e., ME being responsible for their education, not them. And that has been both the good and challenging thing: letting go and letting them really be responsible for their own education.
It’s not very far from mastery, choosing how to demonstrate your learning and being passionate about your learning to re-thinking the role of final exams (as historically known). BC’s move away from finals is, imho, positive. However, our current miles-wide-and-inch-deep curriculum, and the entrance requirements of our universities will keep things status quo. I have high hopes for the new curric. and how the uni’s will evolve over the next decade, and the resultant changes that will flourish in our classrooms.
Thanks – like you I have high hopes for the new curriculum that should better allow us to go deeper with learning in our classes. Thanks for sharing your story on your “flipped classroom” experience – very interesting and exciting!
Single performances have never been the best (or even a good) way to assess student achievement. Test anxiety, health issues, social issues – there is no shortage of reason why a student might not do well on a 2-hour test.
There’s nothing wrong with testing students’ knowledge and ability to think and solve problems. This should be done frequently so feedback can be given to the student with improvement being the goal.
Placing huge emphasis on a Final Exam – which has been standard practice for decades in many courses in the US as well – doesn’t accomplish what we wish it did: provide a snapshot of student learning. For that, we need to rely on long-term measures and observations, something teachers can do quite well.
Thanks Jeff. There is definitely something reassuring about final exams, particularly since so many of us still can remember them well from our high school days (and we turned out fine). I have really appreciated some of the comments that others have made – including Gary (his comment was right at the start) where he is looking at case studies and more “real” year-end assessments and Jeremy who is giving final assessment prior to the end of the class so it can be part of the feedback process. It really gets to the larger (and more important) question around the purpose of assessment. Testing can be one valuable tool, but perhaps not part of all students experiences in all courses each year as part of an annual ritual.
Thanks for the feedback!
Out in the world today, it is not the learning process that makes a mark, it is what has been learned. You can’t have a driver’s license until you can prove you are competent; you can’t have a steam engineer ticket until you can show you are competent; you can’t be a lawyer unless you can pass the bar exam. Life is full of examples where cumulative understanding and knowledge must be proven.
A final exam, if it is a fair, comprehensive assessment of competence, is good training for further training experiences where one must prove their wares.
It is one thing to show you can perform a skill on the day you learn it. It is quite another to show you can perform all of the skills you have learned in a course of study. The latter would show that upon leaving the course of study, the student is competent in all areas of that course. The former could very well end with competency in only the most recent area of the course.
Students are often found asking teachers on the last day of a course what they can “do” to pass. I find this ridiculous for a couple of reasons. One – why is 50% good enough? Two – if a couple of 30 minute assignments on the last day of class can change the whole course mark by 10%, then the whole course, surely, should only take 10 hours to complete. Three – if we are training students for a future with integrity, good work ethic, and perseverance, we should surely train them to recognize honest failure to perform the job at hand. The punitive nature of a final exam is far less significant than the punitive nature of the consequences of failure to perform in the job market. More weight and less coddling is a good target for exams in later grades of the public education system.
Thanks Russ for adding this to the conversation. I think in reading the comments, it is not the “exam” itself that some are taking issue with, it is the quality and relevance of the assessment. I am very impressed by what I see described by some as to how they run their final assessments. And like you example of the driver’s license, I think there would be general agreement that there should be a test before a license in granted – but that test should be a road test where the driving students gets to show what they know in real situations – if the final exam to get a driver’s license was just a 50 question test of road theory – many would be concerned . . . I think this holds true for school – make the assessments connected to the work – and clearly that is what many are doing.
Thanks for the comment.
This is a great post (and a great collection of comments). Last year I wrote a paper on whether we should give final exams in high school for a course in my MEd program, evaluating and comparing the various arguments that have been presented, so it is a topic that is on my mind a lot. There is so much there to unpack, so I’ll just share a few of my thoughts.
Teaching high school science, I generally work with people who believe that the final exam is a very important and incredibly impartial way to determine that all students in all courses have learned the same things and are being held to the same standards – something that I don’t believe is truly possible (or, dare I say, important). I came to the conclusion that final exams are not necessarily “bad”, but in many (and sometimes most) cases they are not genuine, authentic or effective forms of assessment. They almost always involve retesting outcomes that have already been assessed. They take large amounts of time away from new or enriched forms of learning or discovery. They reinforce the fact that learning is about the numbers, which is unfortunate. In the last couple years I have explored this issue in a variety of ways. I don’t give final exams in Science 8, Science 9, Physics 11 or Physics 12. Some students love this. Many feel uncomfortable by this. So I tell them all, “if, at the end of the year, you feel that your learning and understanding in this course exceeds, I have a final exam available for you. Come on in and demonstrate to me your learning.” After all, some students take longer to get to an idea, right? Every semester approximately 25% of my students take me up on this. To this day, not one of them has done “better” on the final. The final has not been set up for them to succeed. Learning is much more fluid and dynamic than can be measured in one snapshot of time. In addition, the time that use to be dedicated to reviewing for the big test, is now reallocated to more meaningful learning opportunities. Physics students get to work through an inquiry project that involves observation and designing of investigations into physics (“doing” science, if you will) and Science 8 and 9 students have that time spread out through the semester to create more discovery learning opportunities in the 4 disciplines of study.
This doesn’t mean that final exams don’t have merit. There are many examples in life where fully retaining what you have learned and demonstrating cumulative knowledge are important. If someone remembers how to give CPR the week it was taught, but forgets the principles by the end of the semester, can we say that they understand CPR? And, on the other hand, a professional writer has their work edited before going to print, or goes through a series of drafts, just like a doctor often consults colleagues before making a diagnosis (collaboration) and scientists rarely work alone. Knowledge has a collective component that makes each of us stronger and better. There is no one perfect answer when it comes to how we assess a students abilities to meet the outcomes set before them. We just do the best we can to provide the most meaningful assessment we can.
One interesting fact, though it has been argued that Universities use exams as a major form of assessment (students therefore should learn to endure high stakes testing in high school), this may not always be so. In 2010, Harvard University only gave 259 finals out of 1137 undergrad classes, and only 14 finals in more than 500 graduate level courses. Whether this is a trend that will continue to spread within the post-secondary world, only time will tell. But I think it’s fair to assume that this conversation is happening across the board.
Thanks Alyssa – the stat about Harvard is very interesting, and I believe it is a similar trend in Canadian universities. I wonder if those of us in K-12 are using our biases of what our experience in universities was like to define what it still is like – but likely, just as our system has evolved, the same changes are happening in the post-secondary world. I appreciate you sharing the process that you have gone through with your own year-end assessments, I think it is reassuring to know that there seem to be similar conversations in so many schools across our province right now.
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Time is a valuable commodity and so much of it is spent on ‘teaching to the final exam’ (insert FSA’s here if you would rather), time that is better spent doing relevant, timely learning (inquiry, collaboration, community connections). Thank you for addressing this issue!
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Although I have been out of the teaching business for over a decade, I taught high school Biology 30 (equivalent Bio 12 in BC) in Alberta for 30 years. I live in BC now, so I take interest in the discussion on grade 12 standardized testing here as a former teacher. For the first 10 years of my teaching career there was no standardized testing. The problem with that was that we assumed that ‘standardized teaching’ was occurring. It wasn’t. By this I don’t mean that we should all be teaching the same stuff in the same way. I mean that we as teachers should, by the end of the course, in whatever way we teach, be consistent with the curriculum in terms of what kids know at the end of the course so that post secondary entities can be somewhat confident that all kids coming out of public secondary school have the basic tools to deal with the courses offered at the post-secondary level. Without standardized testing, marks given by teachers were all over the map. A kid could graduate from one teacher’s class with an 85 and know nothing. Another kid could graduate from another teacher’s class with a 65, but the teacher was much more rigorous in his/her approach to the curriculum, and the kid actually actually knew something about the material offered in the curriculum. Post secondary schools look at both kids and take the one with 85. He/she flunks out by Christmas, and the kid with 65 who actually knew something doesn’t even get the chance. Enter standardized testing. It may have it’s flaws, but it is at least an acceptable litmus test for what was learned, and will place all teachers on the same playing field for teaching what’s in the curriculum. I don’t buy for a second the cry from teachers that standardized testing stifles creativity and leads to specifically teaching to the exam to the exclusion of all else. If the standardized test is well crafted it will mirror the curriculum. If the teacher is ‘teaching’ curriculum in whatever fashion he or she chooses then the test simply becomes an evaluation of what the kid has learned.
When the province of Alberta returned to standarized testing, initially the final Bio 30 exam was heavy on cognitive learning. As it evolved, it became a much better evaluating tool for critical thinking skills – giving the student case studies which were not specifically covered in the curriculum and having them analyze using related information that they had learned. I also don’t think that memorization of course content is an ‘evil’ propagated by standardized testing, or any testing for that matter. When I go to my family doc, I hope he/she was/is really good at memorizing – memorizing causes and symptoms of a plethora of diseases, memorizes potential treatments, and on it goes. We all use information we have committed to memory every day. Learn it, then apply it.
Both teachers and students need to be evaluated in some way. I don’t know why teachers fight this process so hard.
Well said. I would hope that the doctor would not have to look say, “Gee, is that a thumb or a big toe? Let me look it up, I’ll be right back!”.
Your point about teach how you want to but the exam is a reflection on the learning of the curriculum is bang on.
I really liked the arguments supporting both sides of the exam dichotomy. Should we test or not? The problem is that when a person reads the comments about the continuation or elimination of exam it’s so easy to justify either side as being correct. I can think of reasons to support or reject each statement. As a teacher of 30 years, I have learned at least one important lesson. If your “good” students don’t like what you are doing, then you have a problem as a teacher. For some students who don’t like school whether you do exams or just projects, nothing is going to change their mind. The best barometer for learning is the enjoyment of the students. Of course 30 years of teaching dismisses me in your mind as I am just another loser old school teacher. Testing is an assessment tool, not a learning experience. University students or trades students or cashiers all are faced with testing in their life. Schools are also about getting ready for real-life not just learning. Not every thing has a redo. Once or twice sometimes then you’re looking for a redo in employment. Our content (bad word) in class is not cutting edge. It’s just fundamental high school info that allows you to make connections to areas you might find interesting, but of course how would you know you’re interested in something if you’ve never been exposed to the fundamental content (bad word) pertaining to your chosen topic.
I have a student who wants to make liposomes so he can put oxidizing medication in them to destroy caner tumors. This is awesome. At this point, he doesn’t even know what a phospholipid is. To his credit, he is asking the right questions, and he is focused and motivated. One in a hundred students are into this kind of thing. The reality of the scenario is that learning in this fashion requires one on one with him. I have over 100 students this semester. A big, big limitation.