Are Final Exams a Waste of Time? One High School Thinks So

By Aaron Boyd

Danbury, CT – Final exams and midterms have been a part of U.S. high school education for decades, but one school district in Connecticut has decided the tests are a waste of time.

“I began to question the validity of all this testing,” said principal Gary Bodaccio. “Is it all worthwhile?”

The district has decided to scrap finals and midterms in favor of more instruction time in the classroom. While many students are overjoyed, critics say they’re missing out on valuable experience they’ll wish they had.

Danbury's decision comes at a time when students face a seemingly endless testing schedule meant to gauge how much they've learned: Advanced Placement tests, ACT, SAT and federal Common Core testing to name a few.

A backlash against Common Core testing in particular has been growing. In some instances, students have been suspended for opting out of Common Core tests. And in Long Island, New York, a protest movement against the Common Core testing led to as many as 20,000 students opting out in April.

Although Danbury is not rebelling against federal mandates, its decision does reflect the growing concern by some that schools need to do more teaching, and less testing.

Bocaccio said he saw valuable classroom time being eaten up preparing for and administering lengthy exams.

Between the four half-days set aside for testing at the end of each semester and the three to five days teachers often use to prepare pupils for the upcoming exams, students were losing as much as 18 days that would otherwise be used for instruction, Bocaccio said. 

That’s nearly 10 percent of the school year — and over the course of a four-year high school education, that adds up.

Besides the lost time, Bocaccio argued the exams don’t have a material effect on most students’ grades and have little to no educational value.

“What we found talking to teachers was that they have plenty of assessments — they didn’t need another grade,” he said, stressing that students will have quizzes and other tests throughout the year, just not “filling out bubbles on a sheet for hours.”

Board of Ed member Michael Ferguson, however, believes there is value in the midterm/finals assessment model and voted against the proposal.

“It’s not so much about the academic part of a test, it’s the emotional and mental preparation,” he said.

“It teaches time management, how to take two big tests back to back, how to manage stress,” all things students should know before they go to college, he said. “The stress is high school times 10 in college. This is not only a bad idea but truly detrimental to students.”

“The most important thing for learning is instructional time with teachers, face-time,” he said.

The principal acknowledged some concerns that students would not be prepared for college exams, though he reiterated there will still be testing going on at the high school.

“If sitting for a two-hour exam is preparation [for college], then we’re doing plenty of that with state testing,” he said.

What do you think? 

Have we gone test crazy at the expense of eduction? Do we, as a country, teach to test rather than educate?