Students at Bonny Eagle High School will no longer be taking final exams at the end of each trimester.
Instead, as part of the district’s plan to roll out a proficiency-based education system this school year, teachers are giving more end-of-unit tests, known as summative assessments, to students throughout a course. In other words, teachers will no longer be cramming 12 weeks’ worth of information into one cumulative final exam.
According to the high school’s principal, Paul Penna, the assessments, which would come in the form of oral presentations, essays and other hands-on projects, are designed for students to demonstrate they mastered a subject, and for teachers to measure a student’s progress in grasping a particular standard, or content areas.
“The bottom line is, the teacher has to set the pace for the course,” Penna said. “The students are (now) clearer on what they are expected to do, and teachers are clearer on what they are teaching.”
Eliminating final exams is part of the SAD 6’s plan for implementing a proficiency-based education system mandated by the state. In 2012, the Maine Legislature passed a law, LD 1422, that requires Maine schools to award diplomas to students based on proficiency of the Maine Learning Results, which were most recently updated in 2011 to include Common Core as the standards for English language arts and math.
Several Maine school districts, including School Administrative District 6, are working to develop their own specific standards that are aligned with the state’s requirements for proficiency-based education, including how to assess student learning.
Windham High School Principal Chris Howell said school administrators and educators have discussed requiring this year’s freshmen, the class of 2019, to complete senior capstone projects in place of final exams. Students would be required to choose an area of interest to study, find a mentor in the community to work with, and complete some form of community service related to the topic, Howell said.
“At this point, I don’t see a reason why we would (get rid of finals), and I would say it’s not the ultimate goal,” Howell said, “but three years down the road in our journey we may see that that’s a need.”
Though not yet finalized, capstone projects would replace the school’s 40-hour community service requirement for graduating seniors.
“We’re treating it as the culminating activity or project for students here at Windham High School,” he said. “It will reflect all that they’ve learned (during) their time here. I think, at that point in their career, a set of final exams isn’t as relevant as a final project where students get to demonstrate their learning.”
Proficiency-based diplomas will be awarded to students in Windham beginning with the graduating class of 2021.
In Westbrook, this year’s freshman class, the class of 2019, will be the first to graduate with proficiency-based diplomas. Westbrook is in its third year of developing a proficiency-based system, and now uses the 4-point scale of proficiency for freshmen. For now, grades 10-12 still use the letter grade scale.
According to Westbrook High School Principal Jon Ross, the district plans to continue holding mid-terms and finals tailored to the students as part of its plan to implement a proficiency-based learning system.
“The idea is to have the exams serve as a summative assessment,” Ross said. “Students lower than proficiency (3) would have an exam geared toward proficiency and students at or above proficiency would have an exam geared toward exceeding (4).”
“I need to ensure as the principal when they get a diploma that they have the skills and knowledge presented in our standards, and that they got Proficient or better,” said Ross, a Standish resident.
Ross, whose son attends Bonny Eagle as a freshman, said issuing mid-terms and final exams, however, are not critical to implementing a standards-based education model because students achieve proficiency at different times.
“I am not that concerned about whether he can do a really good college assessment when he’s 14 years old,” said Ross. “He has a long way ahead of him. If he does take finals, that’s fine with me, and if he doesn’t take finals, that’s fine with me, too. Either way, I just want him to have a solid education.”
In Gorham, Superintendent of Schools Heather Perry has said the school department still has a long way to go toward fully implementing their proficiency-based system. She said they have not yet made concrete plans on how they will report grades, but Gorham’s elementary schools have already been using the 1-4 scale. They are also still giving final exams.
The state law was initially designed to be enacted for the class of 2018, but the Maine Department of Education in 2014 gave school districts the option to request an extension through 2020 to award proficiency-based diplomas. Bonny Eagle is one of those districts, and, according to Penna, the school’s educators are making “excellent progress” toward implementing the proficiency-based education model.
“All of the departments have selected standards that will define courses and (are) in the process of developing assessments that will measure students’ progress toward meeting standards,” Penna said. “We are continuing to refine the system through open, honest dialogue with stakeholders.”
Some parents, teachers and students, however, have questioned whether students will remain prepared to take exams in college if they are no longer required to take final exams in high school.
“I’m a little torn,” said Ronahn Clarke, a junior at Bonny Eagle High School. “Most of our graduates will be going to college, and in college (we) are probably going to face final exams and other stressful tasks. There is really no way to avoid these things. If we are canning final exams here in high school, is that going to make us less prepared for those tests (in college)?”
Teachers will now have more time to implement their entire curriculum, Penna said, whereas before teachers typically spent at least a week prior to exams helping students make study guides so they could review what they learned during the 12-week trimester.
“Teachers would stop teaching around Week 11, and spend the rest of the time reviewing (material),” Penna said. “Now they don’t have to do that. Now they are working on whatever they are working on until the end of the trimester.”
According to Penna, teachers plan to use “more specialized instruction to help more students be successful.” He said research suggests that final exams aren’t necessarily the best approach to measuring a student’s knowledge or abilities.
“It might be a good measure of their ability to recall information, but we’re moving to a generation where students don’t only have to recall (information), but they have to apply (the information),” Penna said.
Clarke said he likes the fact that teachers would also now have more opportunities to provide feedback to students on their work.
“It’s helpful, because the teacher can adjust their teaching style or focus on one issue with the student,” Clarke said.
While “some classes got a little bit more time to prepare” for final exams, he added, “some classes got virtually no time to prepare.”
Nevertheless, “a lot of the students, obviously, were stressed out about taking the final exams,” which counted for 20 percent of the overall trimester grade, Clarke said. “Some students were on the line and it was very important for them to do well on the exam.”
Under a proficiency-based education system, students must demonstrate their understanding before progressing to the next lesson, moving on to the next grade level or receiving a diploma. According to the Maine Department of Education website, the proficiency-based education system is intended to ensure that students attain the knowledge and skills that are necessary to succeed in school, college and their careers.
Anita Bernhardt, acting chief academic officer for the Maine Department of Education, said the department met with officials from a few school districts a couple weeks ago and some of them said that finals seem less critical as schools begin to assess student learning according to the proficiency-based standards and performance indicators.
Bonny Eagle High School English teacher Dan Murphy said finals didn’t allow teachers to comment on a student’s performance, which meant students didn’t have a chance to improve.
“As we move toward a proficiency-based education system, there was some concern that final exams did not allow teachers to provide feedback to students or to offer any type of remediation,” Murphy said.
“In English, many of these summative assessments are informational and argumentative essays,” he said. “Because such assessments do not take place only at the end of a marking period, students will receive feedback from teachers and understand what they’ve done well, and where they require more instruction.”
Earlier this week students in one of Murphy’s English classes were completing essays on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”
Students who do not meet the standard on the essay “will have the opportunity to revise it with additional support,” he said, while “students who have met the standard have the opportunity to revise essays from earlier in the semester or complete enrichment work.”
While some districts plan to maintain a traditional letter grade scale, others are planning to implement a 1-to-4 grading scale – 4 for “advanced,” 3 for “proficient,” 2 for “partially proficient” and 1 for “needs improvement.” Next school year, the freshman class of 2020 at Bonny Eagle will be transitioning to the 1-4 scale.
“The law says when kids graduate, schools will need to report on their proficiency in the standards in the Maine Learning Results and the Guiding Principles,” Bernhardt said. “There are some students that really panic when they have to take the large exam, and they perform poorly because of their anxiety,” whereas a “proficiency-based system allows us to look at the learning along the way.”
“This is the biggest movement that education has had in at least 50 years,” Penna said, referring to proficiency-based education, “and I think we are moving in the right direction.”
Staff reporter Andrew Rice also contributed to this story.
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