Mixed Opinions About Finals

With finals just passing 2 weeks ago, it has been noticed that Des Moines schools, Urbandale, and Johnston schools no longer do finals. With it being Urbandale’s first year with the new grading system, it has also come along with no finals. 

Urbandale high school senior, Matthew Giles, said “we used our finals week to retake tests and make up late work”. Another senior from Des Moines North, Nick Crispin, said that he’s never had finals while in high school. I asked him if he felt having no finals benefited him and his grades. He said “yes, I think it’s beneficial to not have the emotional stress of having to cram all my learning from 2 months into a test, and we get to use the days that would be used for testing for finals, to retake tests and have those days off of school. 

I feel there are mixed reviews on finals but in my opinion, I think no finals create an emotional benefit to students by not having the stress of having to relearn everything from 2 months ago. I think students should not be expected to remember things they learned months ago. It would be more beneficial to give students the time to retake tests and study for tests they actually did badly on, so they can improve their grades, instead of being expected to retake and remember every single unit they learned that term/semester. 

When interviewing our principal, Cary Justmann, he said some pros to finals are “over 50% of our courses have cumulative finals which show what you should have learned throughout the class, and I believe it’s a good reflection for both the student and the teacher as to the effectiveness of the learning going on in the classroom.  “final” is a good simulation to what students will encounter in post-secondary life. And allocated time for certain classes to do extensive presentations or produce portfolios, more time to show work” but Justmann also said a con was “a lot of finals at the same time could raise anxiety in students, especially with busy lives outside of the classroom (school activities, jobs, etc.)” 

Overall I think there are mixed reviews on both and there are pros and cons to both finals and no finals.