The topic of Midyear exams has been raised at our secondary school with a lot of opposition to the school not conducting them. There at least three views pitted against each other: teachers that want midyear exams, the board administration which doesn’t want to make accommodations for midyear exams, and teachers which don’t want midyear exams.

History

I can’t give a detailed history on midyear exams but I can give a brief overview. Not that long ago, schools in Vancouver would essentially shut down for a week in February while classes had midyear exams. They would be a common exam across classes, take place in a large gym setting, and would typically last for 2 hours. Some schools started phasing these out over the past few years. In my three years at Prince of Wales Secondary we did not have official midyear exams from 2011 to 2014. Labour work stoppages may have played a part in this. At Kitsilano Secondary in the 2015 we did not have midyear exams and this was not seen as being contentious, mostly because we missed 3 weeks of school at the beginning of the year.

The Vancouver School Board has explicitly come out and said that schools cannot shut down classes and have students miss instructional time for a midyear exam. As such, the typical method of giving a midyear exam is almost impossible. There was a lot of feedback from parents wondering why their child had most of a week off and writing 3 or 4 exams (or something like this). For a lot of the public, this exam period did not make sense.

What is its Purpose?

I’m not entirely clear on what the purpose of the Midyear exam is.  Is it for practicing writing exams? To check for knowledge retention? To stress students?

To better understand the pros and cons of having midyear exams, I think it is necessary to look at it from two different perspectives, separating junior years (8 to 10) and senior years (11 to 12).

Arguments for having a midyear exam, junior years

Below are five primary arguments I’ve heard in favour for having a large scale, 2 hour long midyear exam. Most of these arguments are based on the idea of preparing students for university.

Good practice for writing exams

Given that there are very few provincial exams in BC schools now, I don’t believe that junior students need to have general practice for writing an exam. There is a grade 10 math exam and a grade 10 science exam worth 20% of the student’s final grade. In terms of counting towards a grade, these exams are mostly inconsequential. If we can imagine a student typically scoring on their exam within 20% of their classroom grade, then the provincial exam can only affect the final grade by +/- 4%. I would argue that 4% of a mark in grade 10 is not very important.

Student’s need practice for writing exams for university

The most recent statistics I’ve found for post-secondary education rates in Vancouver is 66%. Even if a midyear exam was effective practice, there would still be a great many students for which a midyear exam would serve no purpose. I guess that at Kitsilano Secondary the post-secondary education rates are a bit higher than 66%.

Students need practice writing multiple choice exams

For most students in secondary school, the math 10, science 10 and socials 11 provincial exams will be the last multiple choice exam they write. Some post-secondary programs apparently use m/c exams a lot, such as biology. Perhaps there are some others but I’m not aware of them. I know that in 7 years of university programs I never wrote a single m/c exam. I don’t think they are used in physics, engineering, mathematics and I assume the same goes for most arts or business courses.

Students need to be exposed to stressful situations

There is research that supports the argument that children develop better when exposed to gradual increasing stresses, and this is a legitimate concern. I have no idea if a 2 hour midyear exam gives an appropriate amount of stress to a junior student.  Likewise, I have no idea if an appropriate amount of student stress can be done with a smaller one hour test, or some other higher stakes task or assessment.

The exam can be used to give feedback to the teacher

This sounds good but I think secondary school teachers should be fully aware of their students’ progress without the need of a midyear exam. For myself, with using standards based grading I have very clear feedback on which learning objectives my students are doing well in and which ones they are struggling with. The primary feedback I would get from a midyear exam is an indication on how well my students can write a midyear exam.

Arguments for having a midyear exam, senior years

The arguments for seniors  writing a 2 hour midyear exam are very similar to those for junior students…

Good practice for writing exams for university

Again, what percentage of the student population is the midyear serving by shutting down a school for a week? This gets into philosophical and ethical questions about public school. Even if 75% of the students are going on to post-secondary education, the next question is “how much practice do they need?” If the typical university-bound student takes 4+ “academic” courses in each of grade 11 and 12, would 8 final exams not be enough practice for writing exams? How much practice is enough?

Worse still is the fact that a midterm exam at university will cover material that is typically 6 weeks old, whereas a secondary school midyear exam may need to cover material that has not been looked at or discussed for 12 weeks. Furthermore, it should be noted that the purpose of a university midterm exam is entirely different from that of a secondary school midyear exam. A midterm exam is often the first (of only two) student assessment, whereas in secondary school the teacher already should have a large amount of assessment data for each student.

Students need practice writing multiple choice exams

Same answers as for junior students. If a given objective for a course like biology is to prepare students for university biology programs, then it’s up to the biology course to explicitly teach and practice the skill of taking biology exams. This applies to any course that requires the skill of doing multiple choice. The counter example would be a prospective math or engineering student who will never need to do a multiple choice exam outside of secondary school.

Students need to be exposed to stressful situations

As for junior students, I think there is justification for exposing senior students to academically stressful situations. I have spent a lot of time trying to find research that indicates what an appropriate amount is but I can’t find anything that approaches this subject. There are alternative methods for exposing students to stress, such as conducting lab practicums or other performance tasks. In fact, for my physics students I wish that I could have 2 hours for a lab practicum.

It’s Good Practice for the SAT

Not only do very few students write the SAT, but the SAT itself is a dubious standardized exam and has several ethical questions around it. More and more US universities every year are saying they no longer consider SAT scores in their admissions. SAT prep is not the business of BC public schools.

A general positive reason for doing a midyear exam

There is one argument in favour of a midyear exam that I can rationalize but I have not heard discussed a lot at school. Research has shown that students learn better by using information retrieval as opposed to studying. “Retrieval” refers to when students generate some output using their knowledge. In other words, if they try to do something with what they’re learning. “Studying” refers to typical reading and memorizing tasks. What this tells us is that by doing an exam (any exam), the student will be learning more than if they just study the material. This hinges on two factors. First, the retrieval material must be within the student’s Zone of Proximal Development. It has to be challenging to the student but within their grasp of understanding. Secondly, the student needs to see the retrieval as a learning step and not as an end product. In real terms this means that if students write a midyear exam and then use this experience to continue with their learning, they can improve with their knowledge and understanding. However, if topics covered on the midyear exam are not touched again for several months (ie for a final exam), this retrieval process may not have much affect.

What about a 1 hour midyear exam?

If we’re not able to have 2 hour common setting exams, what about having 1 hour midyear exams? I think this idea has an even weaker pedagogical justification. To begin with, it is very difficult to create a valid one hour midyear exam that covers 14 weeks of curriculum. I have some experience in writing different types of test validations in my previous career. You have to ensure to show that your test is sensitive, robust and achieves its intended goals. I can’t stress this enough: assigning a mark to something that isn’t or can’t be validated makes little sense. Secondly, a 1 hour midyear exam would play no role in practicing for final exams in university. University final exams are 2 to 3 hours in length, typically consisting of challenging and higher order thinking type questions, with very high stakes (40% or more for grade). They also refer to material that was covered within the past 12 weeks or less (a far cry from secondary school final exams).

Exams in general

Despite what I’ve written above, I am not totally against having exams. In fact, I have written before that I could support final exams as entrance tests to university. In this scenario, schools would only give formative feedback to students along with pass/fail grades. There would be several benefits to this. 1. all students in BC are tested on an equal basis 2. throughout the school year, students’ primary goal will be to learn as much as possible rather than to score points 3. the universities take full responsibility for assigning marks to students, since they’re the ones that care the most 4. I don’t ever have to hear the ridiculous statement “grade inflation” ever again

Of course, as with all systems there are some problems with this idea. 1. the system is not equal - students with more money can afford more test prep 2. results in extreme anxiety and stress 3. may promote “teaching to the test” 4. it would really suck if your teacher was bad

Yay or Nay?

Given the above arguments, my opinion is that a midyear exam for both juniors and seniors is unnecessary and difficult to justify. For juniors, there is simply no point. There’s no legitimate reason to practice for university in younger grades, and even if there was, there’s no indication that a midyear exam accomplishes that goal. There are many other activities which juniors can do which test their ability to deal with stress. It could be a math challenge, a lab practicum, an essay, or any number of one hour tasks. The same can be said for seniors. I have no reason to believe that a midyear exam has any positive effects on university performance, and I have no particular reason to think that a midyear exam gives useful feedback to the students or teachers. This is not to say that students should not be given challenging performance assessments, it just means that it doesn’t have to be some type of survey test that looks back at the previous 4 months of school. Surely we can aspire to more interesting and authentic methods of assessment.

Your Say

So what about you? Does your school have midyear exams? Do you wish you had midyear exams? Have I missed out on any other pros or cons?