As we approach the second semester of this turbulent school year, a question on the minds of many students and school administrators may be: should we have finals this year? 

My answer to this question is no. Final exams should not be conducted at the end of this school year. In fact, it would be unfair to do so.

During a normal, in-person school year, there are already multiple issues with final exams.

First, we have tests, quizzes, and homework throughout the school year to ensure that we know and understand the course material. So what’s the point of a final exam?

Second, finals will only tell us what we already know about the student. Students who perform well and maintain good grades throughout the school year will typically do well on exams as well. The trend is true in the opposite as well: a student who does not perform well throughout the school year will typically not do well on exams. Thus final exams will not unearth any new information about the students’ knowledge of the coursework.

Third, students taking AP courses already have to take their AP exam in May, just a month before school’s final exams. If they were just tested a matter of weeks before, what exactly do final exams accomplish?

We now know that final exams are redundant of everything else that occurs throughout the school year, but so what? In the end, they are really just an unnecessary source of stress, one that is completely unnecessary and avoidable. 

The negative effects of stress caused by finals extend into all aspects of a student’s life. During the weeks leading up to finals and finals week, students often abandon their normal life activities, instead allocating that time to studying. Regular meal times, breaks, and talking to friends, are some of the things that seem unnecessary during finals. Yet these aspects of life are essential to one’s mental and physical health.

The incentive to abandon the practice of final exams is ever greater in this year, 2021. Due to COVID, final exams become a logistical nightmare, and pose a threat to public health, as students would have to come into the school for the honest and fair administration of finals. At NPHS, these issues have already been recognized, the finals for the 2019-2020 school year were cancelled and our midterms for the 2020-2021 school year are cancelled.

Many states in the country still have school closure orders in place, and others have left it up to the schools’ discretion. Given this, many schools in our nation still remain closed, limited to online learning. To force students to come into school for final exams would combat the entire point of having closed schools this year.

Furthermore, in order to ensure the integrity of the exams, students will have to take the same exams at the same time, because if one class takes the exam before another class, avenues for cheating open up. To call all the students in at the same time will undoubtedly put sacrifice the maintenance of COVID guidelines. This move will surely jeopardize public health, as COVID cases in the US have reached 23 million, and show no signs of slowing down before the scheduled finals in June.

Sources:

https://statenews.com/article/2019/11/finals-can-have-negative-effects-on-students-mental-health?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_latest 

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-schools-reopening/ 

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days