What you’ve heard is true: midterms are back and they don’t seem to be going away. As of the 2023-2024 school year, Southern Lehigh High School is reincorporating midterm exams into every year-long course. For the past few years, students’ final grades have been comprised of four quarter grades and one final exam or project. With the current school year, the final grade for each course will include both a midterm and final grade derived from either a cumulative exam or project.
Midterms will take place during the first week of January following the winter break. The schedule for testing has not been finalized, but administration said it will be released closer to November. The schedule will run similar to finals week in that students will have no more than two exams in one day; however, the testing schedule will be a combination of full and half days, and attendance on these days is mandatory for all students.
With student stress levels on the rise, cumulative exams are not the best way to measure student accomplishment.
When evaluating the benefit of cumulative exams, student mental health must be taken into consideration. After an extended period of social isolation and online learning, this generation of high school students is still reeling from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the study “Kids Under Pressure” from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and NBC News, stress related to school has increased by 56.4% for high students across the country since the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to be sufficiently prepared to take midterm exams, students will be required to review old material on top of learning new content. Adding more to the workload of already overwhelmed students will inevitably lead to academic burnout.
Not only is preparation for these rigorous exams debilitating, the test-taking process is a major stressor for many. Requiring students to sit for another exam the same length of their final will only add to these anxious feelings. Excess stress can also inhibit performance and the test’s ability to gauge a student’s comprehension.
The study “Testing, Stress, and Performance: How Students Respond Physiologically to High-Stakes Testing,” found that high-stakes test taking can increase cortisol, a stress hormone, and is more severe for students already dealing with chronic stress outside of school. The study found that students who experience excessive stress perform worse than expected.
Midterms can also be inaccurate due to the high-stress they place on students who are not confident in their test-taking skills.
“There are people with disabilities like ADHD and all these different things that play into those types of [cumulative testing],” senior Brianna Wasem said. “They make kids feel insecure about themselves because you sit there for hours on one test and get results that do not accurately measure your worth.”
Long exams such as midterms and finals require skills other than knowledge of content. The time management and focus that these tests require can be difficult for students with ADHD. Additionally, not all students succeed on tests and feel that their achievement is better measured with the grades they hold throughout the year.
“I get good grades throughout the marking periods, but then taking that final and bombing it can cause my grade to go down a whole letter,” senior Shea Lieberman said.
The intensive nature of cumulative exams leave unprepared students stressing about their final grades and sacrificing sleep to prepare. In this way, cumulative exams pose major health risks in the form of anxiety and sleep deprivation.
According to the observational study “Test Anxiety and Poor Sleep: A Vicious Cycle, from the National Library of Medicine,” students often find that their anxiousness and lack of sleep build on each other in the wake of a large exam. The study reported that this “cycle” causes “direct effects on academic permanence, but with implications for overall student health.”
Some teachers are in favor of midterms because of the benefits of college preparation.
“These little tiny small assessments that they’re used to taking in most of their high school classes will be nothing like the actual exam situations…in college,” math teacher Mr. Ryan Haupt said. “So by not having something that is cumulative in nature, we will be doing a disservice to students.”
Although college preparation is crucial, high school students do not have the time for midterm review. Students attend classes from 7:35 in the morning to 2:21 in the afternoon. Many students also take part in extracurricular activities such as sports teams, band, or academic teams like Speech and Debate, or Robotics. These can take anywhere from one to three hours for students after school. Compared to a college student who will have two or three classes a day, high school students have significantly less free time.
Southern Lehigh High School should eliminate final and midterm exams from the curriculum to better represent students’ success. This will curb stress levels while preserving self-confidence.
