Rethinking Exam Week

Lori Cullen is the principal of Erin Woods School in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She blogs here.

by Lori Cullen

One has to ponder the question “why,” on many occasions. A recent “why” has come to me this month as January is the mid-term point of the school year and most high schools are in the midst of exams that mark the end of term one. “Finals” as they are called run for three weeks. Three weeks of no classes, and no learning. When we know better, why do we do this? Why do we persist in this practice?

The ironic part is we know better. We know that high stakes, final exams that provide no opportunity for feedback or further learning are not representative of a student’s knowledge or understanding, and do nothing to further a student’s knowledge or understanding which is arguably the point of school.

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An argument that is often launched for those who believe in and rely on final exams often goes something like this… “How will I know what they have learned, if I don’t give them an exam? How will they prove that they have learned anything at all?” To those, I offer up the following response:

1. Formative Evaluation – In his book Visible Learning by John Hattie, the effects of formative Evaluation were found to have a d = .90 or standard deviation of .90. Hattie describes this effect size as, “…a 1.0 standard deviation increase is typically associated with advancing student children’s achievement by two to three years, improving the rate of learning by 50%…” (pp 7 of Visible Learning). Thus, formative evaluation strategies in the classroom would not only give teachers information about what a student knows, but work to increase a student’s rate of learning by almost 50%.
2. Self-reported Grades d=1.44 where Cohen argues, “…an effect size of d=1.0 should be regarded as a large, blatantly obvious, and grossly perceptible difference…” (pp 8 Visible Learning). Hattie found that even without tests, “…high school students have a reasonably accurate understanding of their level of achievement… This should questions the necessity of so many tests when students appear to already have much of the information the tests supposedly provide…” (pp 44 Visible Learning).
3. Feedback (d=.73). “When teachers seek, or at least are open to feedback from students as to what a student knows, what they understand….then teaching and learning can be synchronized and powerful.” (pp 173 Visible Learning)

When assuming the reason for a final exam is to find out what students know or best case what students have learned, my question back to a teacher would be “Why don’t you already know?” I believe that if effective teaching and learning practices such as formative evaluation, self-reported grades and feedback are consistently and appropriately utilized by teachers, a final exam would simply provide them with a weak, irrelevant example of what they already know.

Hattie, John, Visible Learning A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, Routledge, 2009.

Rethinking Exam Week

By Anonymous

During this time of the year high school classes are looking extremely different. Instead of teachers teaching, they will be watching students write exams. Instead of students sitting at tables talking, they will be silent in long rows in a gymnasium. Collaboration will be called cheating as it may inflate a grade. Schools will be calculating passing grades, money for credits and unfortunately….. any teaching that does occur will have the focus of "getting through the exam" and deep real learning will be the last priority of some schools.

I would like to take a deeper look at final exams. Most classes, other than diplomas, put a weighting of 30% on their exam, and thus makes the exam meaningless for some. WHY? Let’s dig deeper, on the exams for classes that are not a Grade 12 course, to understand why….

If we look strictly at this percentage, this means that any student over a mark of 71% cannot fail the class and students under a mark of 28% cannot pass the class. Therefore only students in the range of 28%-71% should be writing the exams. Now that we have eliminated many students from the final, we should dig even further.

Most students, even in the 28%-71%, don’t need to write. As most exams are multiple choice or at least heavy with multiple choice, with 4 choices on each question, then a student, by strictly guessing, should score a 25%. The interval now becomes 28%-61%, as, only students in this range, are dependent on a certain mark on the final to determine whether or not they pass the course. I would hope that few students fall in this range, but most classes would have a few in this range. 

Now let’s look at the students who have a mark between 28%-61%. For the most part, these students are weak, having troubles with an important concept, and most likely have gaps in their learning. We now come to crossroads as a teacher, as two options present themselves. Do we take these students, who are obviously struggling with the course, and test them again or….do we teach them?

Now we should only be talking about very few students in each course, and the exam usually takes 3 hours to write. Imagine the learning which could occur with 1-1 help in a 3 hour block with a weak student? Does this same learning occur by giving them a scantron sheet and ask them to sit in a row?

I suggest that school take a look at their exam week and ask “Is this week for learning or determining who passes and fails?” If the answer is the latter, then I suggest you be upfront with your stakeholders and put a sign outside your school saying “For an entire month, two weeks during each semester, your child will not learn at this school”. If the answer is the former then the school should be re-evaluating exam week.