Final Exams

It takes more than a pencil and a blue book to take final exams this month at River Hill High School.Students at the new Columbia high school are being asked to build rockets, fight speeding tickets and diagnose psychological problems -- work that is counting for as much as half of their final exam grades."

A plan to standardize grades in Anne Arundel County's 117 public schools - to ensure that an A in one classroom means an A in another - has drawn fire from students, parents and teachers for its heavy emphasis on final exams. The plan would require high school teachers to count final exams as 30 percent of a student's overall grade, up from 20 percent. Some students and parents say the change would put too much weight on a two-hour exam. "It takes a lot of emphasis off of time in the classroom, and that's where the majority of learning goes on," said Lauren Hall, a junior at Broadneck High School in Annapolis.

Final exams rescheduled because of snow closings Because of the snow-related closing of Anne Arundel's public schools yesterday and today, final exams for high school students have been rescheduled for Monday, the school system announced. County schools will be closed again -- but only for students -- on Tuesday and Wednesday, when teachers have staff development programs scheduled, said public schools spokeswoman Jane Doyle. Speed is apparent cause of crash in Davidsonville Excessive speed appeared to be the cause of a one-car accident Wednesday afternoon that killed a 16-year-old Davidsonville youth, county police reported.

After more than a year of haggling over a plan to overhaul the grading system used in Anne Arundel County schools, the school board tripped over technicalities yesterday and failed to approve the new grading proposal. The plan spelled out how much homework teachers are to assign, how valedictorians are determined and how much weight to give final exams. On that last point - the most controversial - the board had agreed that final exams should count for 20 percent of the overall course grade in high school.

Tricia Johnson knows how pricey it gets when four of your five children are in high school at the same time, preparing to take two or three Advanced Placement exams each, at $76 apiece. That was about eight years ago, and the Anne Arundel County school board president remembers that she couldn't afford to let her children take every AP test they were eligible for, so they chose the tests that could get them the most college credit. "It adds up and becomes a hardship," Johnson said. Now, she and her colleagues on the board are weighing a proposal that would offer financial aid to families struggling to pay for college preparatory exams.

Julien and Sophie, the central characters of Yann Samuell's wince-inducing Love Me If You Dare, are two of the most insistently unlikable movie creations to afflict audiences in some time, a pair of self-obsessed anti-romanticists who spend some two decades doing stupid things at each other's behest. They also whine a lot. Of such things are destructive relationships made, and Love Me If You Dare, I'm sure, sees itself as an extended metaphor for obsessive love, for how engulfing and overwhelming and gosh-darn pure it can be. Love is a force, the movie argues, that recognizes no bounds, not even those of common sense, certainly not those of common decency.

In an effort to help more students graduate, Baltimore school officials for the first time this year allowed high school seniors who had technically failed a class to re-take their final exams and earn their diplomas. The practice, which affected dozens of seniors this spring, has angered some teachers, who say that students are being let off too easily and pushed through the system to inflate graduation rates. But top-level school officials and some principals defend the practice, saying the system is adopting a new philosophy regarding high standards.

The Howard County Public School System is the very last in the state to finish the school year, dragging it out until June 22. Yes, while Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll county children that my children know are laughing at us, my kids are taking final exams. Why? The short answer is that they didn't plan for any/enough "snow" days. That is nothing short of ridiculous! The school system that closes or delays school when there is so much as one snowflake didn't plan on having to close school?

For the second time in less than a year, Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County has received poor marks from education experts who visited the campus to evaluate student achievement and quality of instruction. Teachers at Woodlawn often lacked creativity, rarely challenged students' thinking and sometimes used homework as "filler" in class, according to the report. The conclusion: Students may be ill-prepared for high school assessment exams that will be required for graduation beginning in 2005.