Over the summer, the Marist High School administration decided to change the weight of final exams, from 10 percent to 20. This change is effective starting this semester of 2024-25 school year.
Previously the weight distribution for class grades were: 40 percent for formative, 50 percent for summative, and 10 percent for the final exam. The new distribution will be: 30 percent for formative, 50 percent for summative, and 20 percent for the final exam.
The Marist administration has been discussing this switch for more than a year, and enacted it for a variety of reasons.
“The ten department chairs, myself, Mrs. Dunneback, and of course the faculty, have shared feedback throughout the last year and a half… about the purpose of exams,” said Elaine Gaffney, Director of Teaching and Learning. “[If your next step is college] exams are meant to prepare students for final assessments. What we don’t want is for students to be shocked when they realize exams count towards a large portion of your grade in college.”
This change was also made because final exams were seen as an insignificant part of a student’s grade, and Marist wanted to reward students for achieving good scores on exams.
“What we learned [is that] the final exam being worth only ten percent, one, didn’t really have an impact on grades, and two, it didn’t have an impact on grades that we thought would be motivating towards students,” said Gaffney. “Students spend a lot of time and effort studying for these exams, and we want their grades to reflect that.”
Despite being well-intentioned by the administration, many students are upset over this change and worry how it will affect their GPA.
“I don’t like this change at all,” said junior Sean Prendergast. “I think that this will negatively impact my and other students’ grades, and we will become more stressed during the exam times.”
“I think this will hurt my GPA because some people, like me, don’t do as well on exams compared to regular tests,” said junior Kevin Maher.
The administration has taken students’ concerns seriously and has weighed them against the benefits of this change.
“I can definitely understand why some students are upset. We don’t want any increased stress on our students so we can see it from that perspective,” said Gaffney. “But [the change] was all about finding balance between the students’ perspective and what we thought would be beneficial for them.”
Marist’s next final exam week is scheduled to start on Tuesday, December 17th.
