There have been many rumors recently regarding Elder’s exam schedule and what’s going on.  Some people are saying we aren’t going to have them and some are saying that it’s the teachers decision to give them or not.

There are many different stories I have heard the past few weeks.  I’ve also had people say to me, “Well, Mr. Ruffing came and talked to us and he said we aren’t having them at all.”

Obviously it is not true that we wouldn’t have some type of midterm or end of the year exam because that is what makes up most of our grade for a specific class.

To end all the rumors and chatter, I went to the man himself, Mr. Ruffing, to get the truth about what’s going on with exams.

“It’s not a definite, but we are looking into doing away with at least midterm exams for two reasons. One, the state is requiring us to do end of course exams and those would take place in April and two is that we spend three plus days taking exams throughout the year and so those days can now be used for instruction to reach the minimum requirement of 1060 hours of instruction,” said Mr. Ruffing.

Now I don’t know about you but that sounds very good to me.  We get rid of 6-7 exams that we would have to take and instead just take on the whole year for a specific class.

There are obviously pros and cons to whatever side you favor.

A pro would be there are less exams we all have to worry about and we would not need to study over the Christmas break and spend it how we would normally spend it even if we did have midterms, by sleeping and watching Netflix.

Some cons would be because now that the state is requiring end of the course exams that we probably will not be able to exempt from those exams.  Also, cramming them all into one week when each test is so important to your grade and future can seem intimidating to lots of students.

But we don’t know for sure if this is going to happen or not or when it might happen.  Maybe next year or maybe this year, who knows?

What’s your opinion on what might happen with exams? Do you like the idea?

“I love the though of not having midterms at all because it puts so much stress on students over our Christmas break when we should just relax,” said Elder student Michael Onorato.

Everyone will have their own opinion about this proposition made by the academic counsel here at Elder.

Onorato also added that he would like it better if we had no exams at all, but as nice as that would be for all students, it’s not possible.

Exams are a part of school and hopefully this proposition is approved to take away much of the stress of a high school student.