Proposal To Eliminate FHS Mid-Term Exams Approved By School Board

Interim schools Superintendent Lee Seitz asked that a vote on a proposal to eliminate mid-term exams at the high school be postponed until the Dec. 11 Board of Education meeting.

UPDATE: The proposal to eliminate mid-term exams was approved by the Board of Education at its Dec. 11 meeting.

The measure was to have been voted on at the board’s November meeting, but interim schools Superintendent Lee Seitz asked that it be pulled pending further study of grade calculations.

At the Dec. 11 meeting, Seitz said that study had been done and resulted in his office proposing the original plan.

“After listening to a limited number of students and faculty, we decided to go with the original plan,” he said.

Under that plan, each marking period’s grade will comprise 22 percent of a student’s final grade. The course’s final exam will comprise the final 12 percent of that final grade.

“A number of districts in our county have done this and a number of others are considering it,” Seitz said.

Original Story: The Board of Education on Nov. 20 postponed a vote on a proposal to eliminate mid-term exams at Franklin High School after the move was requested by the interim schools Superintendent.

Interim schools Superintendent Lee Seitz said the administration wanted to more fully study a suggestion on final grade calculations made by some high school faculty.

“Some teachers at the high school suggested we look at different formulas for calculating final grades,” Seitz said. “We will be back on Dec. 11 with one of two formulas.”

Seitz at the Nov. 13 board meeting suggested eliminating the exams, saying the proliferation of state-mandated tests facing high school students caused concern among some district officials that too much instructional time was being lost to tests.

“We think it would be better to use the time for instruction to meet our students’ needs,” he said then.

More weight would be given to grades students achieve during the course of the school year, Seitz said.

Seitz said that a number of school districts in the state have done away with mid-terms, and that more state-mandated tests on the horizon will make the impact “more dramatic on the students.”

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