Skip-a-Final should be based on grades
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written by Emily Busch
October 25, 2009
We all know that skip-a-final has been canceled because of the flu. Rather than letting the skip-a-final policy dissapear into oblivion, this is the perfect opportunity for the administrators to edit and revise the skip-a-final policy. A new skip-a-final should be based on grades not on perfect attendance.
If a I have an “A” in a class, obviously I understand the material. I should not be retested on material that I clearly know and understand. I should not be required to take finals in classes that I have a good grade in.
There are many advantages to having a skip-a-final based on grades. The first is that students would be more motivated to get good grades so they would work harder throughout the school year to learn the materials right away rather than cramming at the end of a semester and hoping to boost their grades.
Many juniors and seniors are aware of the stress of AP US History, they spend hours defining terms, answering questions, and studying for tests. By the end of the semester they have learned mass amounts of information, and the last thing they need to do is spend hours studying for a final in a class when they have already proven that they understand the material.
With a skip-a-final based on grades, students’ stress levels would be lowered because they would be able to focus on one thing at a time throughout the semester, rather than so many topics in so many classes right before finals.
When the semester ends, I won’t need to spend time studying information that I already understand because I will skip those finals. Instead I will be able to work on understanding subjects that I struggle with and do not have an “A” in.
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3 Responses to “Skip-a-Final should be based on grades”
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Having an A in a class doesn’t actually say anything about how well you understand the material. Grades have absolutely nothing to do with knowledge, and anyone who thinks they do obviously lacks both an ability to observe their own life and an ability to think independently from what they’ve been told their entire life.
Also, if I’m not mistaken, APUSH doesn’t even have a final. If it does it was so insignificant that I have no memory of it; that class is largely about busy work.
In any given high school class there are about 20 ways to get an A, (in college there’s only one way, and that’s to understand the material which is why college is considered harder) therefore I do agree with Drew that getting an A by no means constitutes a knowledge of the concepts. One could then say since the grade doesn’t mean anything then no the point made in taking a final at all, but it’s the only way to assess a general understanding of the courses, even if they’re usually easy.
I think that skip-a-final should have been based on assignment completion in highschool rather than attendance. If you get sick, but still do the assignment on time, you obviously care about doing well in the class. That kind of behavior should be rewarded by being able to skip a final, not coming to school when you are sick and getting other people sick, or the people who never missed a class, but also have little to no participation, and don’t do their work.