Calling Final Exams into Question

Oh. Snap.

A tweet from one of the people I've been following on Twitter since almost the beginning, Dan Meyer:

For real, tho: what are we gaining from final exams?

❌New insights into student learning.
✅Crazy amounts of student stress.

— Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) May 22, 2018

Calling the grand tradition of final exams into question seems...almost heretical.

But does he have a point?

I guess I'm now thinking about what the real point of final exams might actually be. Are they intended to provide new insights into student learning? Or are they a way to help students summarize and synthesize everything they had the opportunity to learn over the term? Or...maybe...they are a mechanism for compliance, a way to keep the kids (fearfully, stressfully) "engaged" (not sure that this is the right word for it...) until the end?

Is there value in in continuing the practice of final examinations?

Or is this an outdated vestige of educational practice from days of yore?

What do you think?

Image by Shannan Muskopf [CC BY-NC 2.0]