Summer is coming. The seniors have graduated, teachers are desperately cramming grades into Aspen to make Quarter 4 look less empty, and the air conditioning in the Mods is broken again. With vacation on the horizon, the last thing anyone wants to do is be productive. Yet, Lexington High School students are still busy studying for the dreaded math final.

The math final embodies LHS’s notorious academic rigor. Throughout the year, students are not only expected to master what they learn in a unit, but they must also retain those skills until the end of the year, where they must apply their knowledge on a test. Occurring just a week before the end of the school year, the math final keeps students on their feet in math class. 

Although the math final may seem outdated, it is the best option that LHS has to evaluate every student fairly.

Behind every large project or test looms a lot of pressure, and the math final is no exception. Regardless of grade, the nerves and anxiety leading up to and during the final are quite high.

“Students do feel a lot more pressure behind it, even though it doesn’t carry that much significance in the actual grade,” Arsh Faisal, a sophomore at LHS, said.

The math final is weighted at around 10-12.5% of a student’s overall grade for the class, fluctuating depending on the course they are taking. However, the majority of a student’s grade still remains spread out through the year via tests and quizzes, helping reduce the amount of weight the final has. Thus, the math final does not have as large of an impact as perceived. 

Another flaw of the math final is its lack of flexibility. Other “finals” like the Freshman and Junior Research Projects for history and the Freshman Capstone Project for English allow students to demonstrate their skills over weeks of writing and revision. In contrast, the math final requires a student to memorize and apply a year’s worth of concepts in a single 90-minute sitting. As a result, some students don’t believe it is a fair testament to their abilities.

“[The math final] feels like a lot of memorization. If they added other aspects, it might be a better assessment,” Andrew Huang, a freshman, said.

Christopher Brunner, a Precalculus teacher at LHS, shares a different perspective. 

“I think it’s more difficult because of the volume of information. It’s not necessarily more difficult because of the content itself. And so because you have to remember more information or synthesize it in a way that you maybe haven’t before, that’s what makes it more difficult,” Brunner said.

It can be hard to mitigate the stress that students feel, despite efforts from the math department to create a relatively easygoing environment before and during the final. Students tend to overestimate the significance of the test, spending hours studying and attempting to cram information in overnight.

“I remember in our testing room, there were a few kids in the back who just fell asleep while taking the test because they had been studying all night. They weren’t rested, so they just crashed from exhaustion,” Faisal said.

However, the final has been put in place for specific purposes. 

“The final allows us to see how the entire school did in an easy, efficient way,” Brunner said. 

Finals and the preparation that comes with them are also meant to help students. As students learn new information over the year, it can be hard to remember everything, especially as they head into a long summer break. When students come back, teachers want them to be prepared to hit the ground running without needing to review copious amounts of information to understand the new course material.

“The number of students who don’t understand calculus because of calculus is very, very low in my personal teaching experience. In my personal teaching experience, most students who struggle with calculus do so because they struggle from previous knowledge,” Brunner said, reflecting on his time as a calculus teacher in other school districts.

Although preparation for finals can be stressful, it is also motivation for students to revisit the information they’ve learned over the year, allowing for a smoother transition to a harder course.

Finals in high school also ease the transition to college. As students begin to specialize in certain subjects in college, their coursework gets more complex. 

“End-of-course exams are really common for APs and in college. And so the math final does simulate that experience for students. It’s important to have that experience going in, so college is not the first time you’re taking a final exam. That could be pretty awful,” Brunner said.

Finals are often dreaded, but it’s important to understand that LHS’s math final is not an assessment that will decimate one’s grade, nor does it require hours of studying, as it is only a synthesis of what students have already learned. Most of the negative opinions on finals stem from the stress they create. With a math final, LHS’s students are granted an opportunity to prepare themselves for harder high school courses and college’s rigorous exams.