Every year the creep up on us. They make us scrutinize every moment we have, in hope of a good grade in return. Finals does this to everybody halfway through the year, and then again at the end. Their purpose is easy to understand: to assess what students ahve learend over the past semester in one cumulative test.

But the recent introduction of standards based grading begs the question: why do we need a final assessment when all throughout the year summative assessments are supposed to be testing over exactly what the finals do?

Homework was eliminated to force students to learn what exactly they need to learn rather than grade grub and get by with a decent grade solely due to homework. In its place, the district put in the system of grading by formative and summative assessments. The latter, of course, assesses everything you’ve learned from the former.

But still, the district keeps finals as part of its yearly routine. Finals have been part of the high school process for years, and it may seem almost radical to process their conviction. But there is no need for them if the information we were supposed to learn has already been tested.

Assessing finals from this point of view forces one to consider what the point of finals really is. Why force students to face all this unneeded stress? It is unlikely finals would make a big difference if they were to be eliminated, as many are tremendously curved and are only a repeat of what students have practiced in class.

Another point to consider: there are no retakes for finals. Granted, there would be no way to do it. But what are finals other than just another summative assessment? Offering retakes on the other summative assessments, but not on the biggest one of the year, completely contradicts what the district is trying to accomplish.

It is not necessary to make students rattle their brains to do well on summative assessments, then do it all over again at the end of each semester. As long as standards based grading is in place, perhaps it would be better practice to have students focus on summative assessments only.

Therefore, may we be the first to suggest the elimination of finals. If the district is going to keep standards based grading, then it should show students it stands only for their learning by getting rid of finals and focusing in on the formative/summative system.