By Elora Brow
Staff Writer
Mira Costa High School’s math and language departments all have the same final within each of their individual departments. Having standardized finals are not beneficial because each class is different and teachers should be able to create tests based off of their own teaching style.
Each department gives the same final accordingly for each level because it puts guidelines on what curriculum needs to be covered in each class for same-subject teachers. According to Math Department Co-Chair Linda Gesualdi, because these rules are mostly used nationally, it helps set a standard test for all the courses in these departments.
According to Sophomore Kyra Dates, having same department finals is unjust because some students do not get taught the same information as students in another class. Having different finals would help the students do better on their final test because they would be used to the teaching and testing style of their own teacher. As it is presented in many classes, all teachers teach differently and it is only fair if students get to take their own teachers tests agreed Gesualdi.
According to Gesualdi, having the same final can also lead to students cheating because students who take the exam first have an opportunity to tell other students exactly what is on it, resulting in them having an unfair advantage of information. This is inequitable to the students who took it first because they went into the final with less knowledge about what exactly will be on the test, than the others.
According to Dates, standardized finals are not good because some teachers’ teaching styles may result in them focusing more on different areas and material, which may lead to certain teachers not having enough time to teach all the material that will be covered on the test. They might not know what sections and chapters will be more focused on and this is unfair if their teachers didn’t have enough time to maybe thoroughly go through the last few sections of a chapter.
According to Gesualdi, having a core based final, in which there would be a standardized final, where teachers can add in more questions that they feel need to be covered if they emphasized it more in their teachings. This would be beneficial because then it allows teachers to give their students more questions that they may feel more confident with.
All students in every subject should have the same ability to get a good grade on every final because they should be taught all the information they need to. Unfortunately though some teachers may not teach the way that the department final may want.
Although not the most effective method, department finals can be argued to be more beneficial as they encourage all teachers to cover all the same curriculum, which may lower the likeliness of a large difference in difficulty-levels. This is helpful to the students because then it can give students more security that their education is fair within each class.
Overall, having a department final is helpful in the sense that it technically requires teachers to all teach the same information, but it is negative because students can cheat easier and all teachers have a different teaching style which might include them not emphasizing a certain topic as much as another teacher might.
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