The school board has decided to put all students under the same finals exemption rules for next year since Texas schools are transcending into the end-of-course exams that everyone will have to pass in order to graduate.
“The freshman and the sophomore students do not have the same attendance requirement that the juniors and seniors have now,” assistant principal Synthia Kirby said. “Pretty much it’s primarily based on their TAKS results, but that is about to change. Next year, the rules are going to be the same for everybody, and it’ll be the rules that the juniors and seniors this year had to follow.”
Since the board required the juniors and seniors this year to have no more than two absences, to pass all their TAKS tests, and to have an 80 or above average in their classes while the freshman only had to pass their TAKS tests, it caused a lot of confusion among the students and teachers.
“I think the rational behind it was the freshmen and sophomore students didn’t really have an incentive to pass the TAKS like the juniors and seniors, because obviously the juniors have to pass the TAKS in order to graduate,” Kirby said. “That’s my theory.”
Some freshmen and sophomores who were failing classes took advantage of the fact that they could still be exempt as long as they passed TAKS. The administrators and teachers tried to encourage them to take their finals, but some chose not to.
Another major problem that many sophomores and their teachers had to face was the science benchmark from their freshman year. Failing this disqualified students from exemption of finals at the end of first semester this year. However, the scoring process became more complicated than was expected.
“The test was only 25 questions long and the kids had to sit in a room for four hours taking the 25 question test,” sophomore chemistry teacher Stacie Martin said. “Rider asked downtown if we could add additional questions to the test so the students would have a more broad range of material to test on and to also have plenty of material to occupy their time.”
Rider was given permission, the students tested, and they were scored. Other campuses in the district voiced concern that Rider had a higher passing percentage, and they believed it was because Rider had more questions. Downtown then made a decision to remove the extra questions and the tests were regraded according to the original 25 question benchmark.
“It was a big miscommunication,” Martin said. “Unfortunately, there were some students who fell in that marginal area and passed the Rider test as it was presented but fell short either a question or two on the benchmark that the district presented. Because of the irregularity, there were some students who ended up having to take their science final and their elective classes, and they were not happy. But we just had to go with what we were told. Our hands were tied.”
All the confusion and frustration surrounding the exemption rules from this year is hoped to be removed by the change in the rules.
“I think the juniors and seniors felt like they were being mistreated,” Kirby said. “But next year it’ll be a whole lot better and a lot easier.”