Changes to the exam schedule
- merionite
- Feb 7, 2015
- 3 min read
By Dora Nathans
As of finals week, this spring, for the first time since 2009, LM will order exams by set, rather than by sub- ject. After careful consideration, the administration at LM chose to test out the old format. The upcoming final exams will be scheduled so that there are two sets per day, and students will take their assessments in their regular classrooms with their regular teachers. The ad- ministration will schedule the midterms and finals for the 2015-16 school year based on the feedback and re- sults of June’s final exams.
Harriton made this change three years ago. Adminis- trators at both schools believe that ordering the sched- ule by set has significant benefits for students. When asked why Harriton returned to testing by set, Principal Scott Eveslage explained, “We felt that students would feel most comfortable sitting for exams in their regular classroom with their regular teacher present and proc- toring.” LM principal, Sean Hughes noted an additional advantage: a schedule ordered by set “also allows for projects, presentations, and other forms of assessment to occur.” Because the teacher is in the room, the ex- ams can come in forms other than paper and pencil. Other benefits include logistical ease, lack of confu- sion, and maintaining a regular schedule.
Despite the advantages of ordering the schedule by set, there may be some downsides. The most obvi- ous one is that it enables students to convey the con- tents of the test to their peers who are taking it later in the week. When asked about this, Eveslage, however, pointed out that properly designed tests are “not a surprise to students” and therefore are not affected by advance information about their content.” In Har- riton’s analysis of results, students’ scores did not go up as the week progressed. An additional disadvantage to set-ordered exams is that students could very likely have two major exams on the same day and then none on the next. Harriton Junior Tate Serletti said of this issue that “I was extremely nervous about having two exams on the same day, not only for the exhaustion on the test day itself, but also for the preparation.” Serletti, who attended LM for two years before transferring to Harriton for the IB program, went on to say that “Hav- ing experienced both systems, Harriton’s scheduling is, in the end, less stressful.” She attributed this mainly to the fact that because exams are taken in the normal classroom for a subject, “the environment made it feel no different from any other test that I had taken in the class.”
According to the principals of both LM and Har- riton, there is a larger picture to be considered. Both principals mentioned that the District is actively re- thinking the definition of student success beyond just letter grades. The future of exams may not only consist of different schedules but also of new and nontradi- tional ways of evaluating student progress. Eveslage expressed how “This is admittedly an enormous chal- lenge but an exciting one nonetheless.”
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