Why Finals Do Not Work

Does the end of the semester usually bring a lot of stress or anxiety into your life? Do you find yourself worrying about grades and GPA more than usual this time of year? Well rest assured that you do not need a psychiatrist for a diagnosis, as the cause is almost certainly and undeniably obvious to anyone who has ever gone to high school: final exams. For decades the testing system in secondary schooling around the world has had the same pattern in which students must complete, and also do well, on tests during the last days of the semester. Usually these tests are cumulative and are an attempt to give the teachers a summary of how much we remember throughout the entire semester. But we already know this, and so do millions of other students who have to unfortunately endure the fatuous redundancy that final exams represent. But what exactly makes this system of testing obsolete? To answer this question, we have to understand what the point of testing even is. In essence, a test is an easy way to gather data about how much a person knows. It is a LOT easier to say that a person understands 82% of the material because they scored an 82% on a test than to try and actually find out how each student problem-solves and whether they actually fully comprehend the material over the course of the year. Notwithstanding, tests in general do not favor certain people who mostly learn from their mistakes and need more practice to perfect their mastery/understanding of a subject. However, finals are a very specific type of test that falls short of its overall goal in more ways than one.

Firstly, the impact that finals have on student grades and GPA is almost always negative. If a student perfectly aced their final exams, it is usually only rewarded with an overall grade boost of 1 or maybe even 2 percent, if one is lucky. However, if a student fails or does poorly on their final exam, then they find themselves fearing that their grade will tank 7 or more percent. In essence, finals do not help any student in actually trying to raise their grade. It is less of an opportunity for students and more of an obstacle to try and keep the grade they have. If a student has a 88% as their overall grade and their final is 15% of their overall grade, a 100% will only raise their grade 1.8%, which doesn’t even bring the student out of the letter grade they were in before the test! However, if the student were to get a 60% on the same test, their grade would drop 4.2%, a far steeper loss than any gain possible. Essentially, final exams do not help the students who take them.

Another problem with final exams is the fact that teachers use them as a cumulative summary of the year and an evaluation of whether the student knows the material. However, this is completely unnecessary if the rest of the grade is a literal summary of our understanding throughout the year. Diversification in how teachers determine whether we understand the course material is a lot more accurate. The combination of homework, classwork, and tests throughout the year is a LOT more data about a person’s comprehension rather than just one test. In the end, the fundamental goal of finals finds itself in a paradox of being overly redundant while trying to see if students actually know and understand the material.

Lastly, the main reason finals are ineffective in their goal is that they do nothing to actually help students learn. The days (and usually hours) before finals is a time where students try to look back and cram everything from the entire semester in their heads in order to achieve one goal: do well on the final exam. Students don’t spend this time actually trying to apply this knowledge in everyday life or even try to keep this knowledge for them after high school. Cramming and simple memorization is proven to be a less effective way of remembering and retaining information compared to continual practice and application. Another feature that makes finals completely futile is the fact that students never actually see how they did! When students take tests throughout the year, at least they can see what they needed more practice with and what they could do better in. With finals, students usually see nothing more than a number in the grade book along with either a feeling of relief or complete disappointment. Overall, the actual usefulness of final exams, in the greater context of the goal of education, is lacking.

In summary, the goals that finals are apparently designed to achieve are not only easily achievable using other methods, but also more accurate using other methods. Besides the fact that it is near impossible to actually help students improve their grades, the actual practicality of the exams themselves is not effective nor sufficient in any way. Simply having the argument that “this is the way it’s been, so this is the way it should be” is completely fallacious. In a school system desperate for reform and progressive improvement, the elimination of final exams would be an easy and simultaneously very beneficial start.