I hate final exams

Blog 18 of 30, 3/5 of the way there!  #MTBoS30

Why do we give finals?

I go through this every year.  I get that we want to see what our students have learned over the course of a semester. I get that we are making one last ditch effort to move learning into long term memory--to create neural pathways that lead back to that information. I get that we are somehow holding them accountable, one last time, for actually doing the work we expect them to do.  Still...

None of this is how our students see them. Our students see the final as something that will AFFECT THEIR GRADE. So how much does the final affect a grade? If we make the final worth 10% of a student's grade, the most it will do (unless the student simply doesn't do it at all) is drop a borderline student down to the next grade or raise a borderline student up.  If a student has a comfortable 85%, they can't drop to a C.  Of course, they have no hope of getting an A either.  Mathematically...

There is so much wrong here. What if we have a student with a B- who tries really hard on the final but has test anxiety and gets a low enough score to drop to a C. Is that right? Does that C reflect that student's mastery of the standards? What about that student with the 85% who works really hard and scores a 95% on the final? Didn't that student just demonstrate mastery? Shouldn't they receive an A?

And what if we make the final worth 20% of the grade? What are the implications there?

I realize that I am a rabble rouser because I abhor the whole "testing is king" culture anyway, but what can we do to change the system?

This blog https://drpolak.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/i-hate-tests/comment-page-1/#comment-15 really resonated with me. In my mind, we ought to be able to determine whether or not a student has mastered a standard without specifically administering a high stakes test.  Dr. Polak says "Assessment, in my perfect world, would be conversations and feedback of what is working, what isn't working."

How do we translate that thought to a final exam?

What it all really comes down to is what we value? Do we value students who have the ability to learn? Or students who have the ability to regurgitate, from memory, a set of knowledge acquired in the previous six months (in a set block of time)?