At the end of Lambert’s school year, there are a flurry of tests students need to complete before heading off to summer vacation. End-of-Course Assessments (EOC) are specific state assessments for high school students that are designed to compare a student’s mastery of a subject compared to the rest of the state and are often administered right before Advanced Placement (AP) exams and final exams. EOCs should have a smaller impact on student’s final grades because they can make or break grades and because they add stress to the tests.
“The point of EOCs is to test you on your knowledge of the course,” explained sophomore Kai Holschuh. “That just isn’t as necessary when you have midterms and finals that test the same topics.”
EOCs act as standardized measures to determine student performance on a state level that make up 10%-20% of the final grade for the applicable class; they generally test content students learn during the school year in an applicable class. While they can be useful to gauge students on a state basis, EOCs can make or break grades.
“There are a lot of standardized tests at the end of the year that students stress out over,” said Holschuh. “More tests just put more pressure on students.”
According to Edutopia, the length of standardized tests coupled with the immense amount of time necessary to study for them can significantly increase stress for students. Giving students strategies to combat test anxiety could help: a study published in nature.com concludes that most students deal with test anxiety and that some form of coping is highly recommended. For EOCs students can lower stress by preparing a little bit all year, so by the time the test rolls around, the content is already there.
It is not necessary to plague students with more tests than they can handle, EOCs being major standardized tests should have reduced weightage. Students would be less stressed in the final part of the year, while the state would still adequately test students on their knowledge relative to the state. While reducing the impact of EOCs would be important to reducing student stress, giving students strategies to combat their stress could be just as beneficial.
