Typical sounds in the Northwood hallways include the ruckus of students talking and shouting, laughter of students and the sniffling and coughing from infectious peers. During the school year, many students attend class, not necessarily for their love of learning, but in order to gain the golden ticket: an exam exemption. Students will come to school sick so that later in the semester they will not have to take teacher-made final exams. Currently, Northwood is facing the threat of the spread of whooping cough. Is it safe for students to be coming to school while they are ill?
We recognize that the exam exemption policy helps to ensure that students attend class to learn essential concepts and gives students time off at the end of the semester, but do these positive effects of the current policy truly outweigh the negative?
The health of the students and faculty is at risk when sick children attend school due to the exam exemption policy. During the recent pertussis outbreak, students who may have been sick and infectious came to school while waiting for test results to come back, while healthy students who were tested by the school were not permitted to come to school until their negative results were confirmed. Exceptions are being made for students who were sent home by the school, but only because it is a situation out of their control. However, since all illness is out of a student’s control, and most students would prefer to be well, the pertussis out- break should not be different.
For students to receive exemption they must achieve one of the three desirable balances between the grade received in the class and the number of absences: three absences with an A, two absences with a B, and one absence with a C. With the new Common Core curriculum, core classes, English, History, Science, and Math all have state-mandated finals that students cannot earn exemption from. Elective classes still offer exemption. The combination of the exam exemption policy and Common Core decreases the incentive to go to core classes. From both personal and observational experiences, we have noticed that students are more willing to leave early or entirely miss core classes rather than electives for doctor and dentist appointments. This is problem- atic because we are supposedly learning the most important material in core classes, and therefore should have the highest atten- dance, but this is not the case because of the exam exemption policy.
Even though our complaints may be overwhelming, we do appreciate the ability to be exempt from exams. However, chang- es need to be made. Our solution is to make excused absences due to health, court dates or death of an immediate family member actually count as excused absences. While we do note that it would take a tremendous amount of paperwork to keep track of all the exemptions, we know that PowerSchool automatically keeps track of the types of absences.
While no one knows what will happen as the Common Core educational system changes, all we can do is lobby for a policy that accommodates the students and faculty better.