In less than two months, students will take their final exams for the fall semester.

These exams are required — in some cases by the state — and count 20% of students’ final grades.

Even though exams are required, I don’t believe they’re worth the problems they cause for students. 

Expecting students to memorize and retain an entire semester’s worth of information for one test is incredibly unreasonable. 

In a math class, for example, most units contain lots of varying content.

When you put all that information together on one final test, it’s very easy for students to confuse the material, which is likely to affect their exam grades even if they took the time to study.

Even honors and AP-level students struggle to meet this expectation. 

Honors and AP classes cover much more material than regular classes, and the questions students face are much harder.  

This creates an additional burden for high-level students. 

Another problem caused by exams is that their difficulty greatly depends on the teacher and class you have. 

Some teachers only give vocabulary questions on their exams, while others add detailed questions from each unit. 

With such a variety of different subjects and classes, it’s almost impossible to make every exam uniform in its difficulty, so why do we require them if we know they are flawed in this way?

Exams are also confined to a single class period, which causes problems for students who struggle to work quickly. 

Some Spanish exams, for example, include a 100-question multiple-choice portion that can be challenging because of the sheer number of questions. 

Having time limits might seem like a good way to prepare students for college and help them learn time management, but the way exams are currently structured isn’t actually benefiting anyone. 

As a school, we need to steer away from required exams and let students’ grades speak for themselves.