The time has come. High school students around Sioux Falls have just finished taking semester tests and are recovering from the past two days which have been filled with early mornings, late nights, and large amounts of procrastination, as students try to finish out the semester strong.

Unfortunately, not everyone can walk into semester tests with complete confidence in their test taking abilities and must deal with the realization that one single test may make or break all the hard work put in. This raises the question, why do we even take semester tests?

School districts often have semester tests in curriculums in order to gauge what students have learned over the past five months, but rarely do students have the ability to show what they truly know through a multiple choice test. Much like the ACT, these tests are administered in a way that add stress to the already high stakes -not to mention the early start time and an unusual schedule. Sometimes it seems like they are trying to set us up for failure.

When a grade on one test makes up at least 15 percent of the total class grades, it puts so much pressure on students to perform well that it becomes unhealthy. A bad score can not only kill our grade in that class, but also our GPA as a whole.
There are plenty of ways to solve this problem. Some experts claim that spread out tests throughout the semester will allow schools to better measure student success. Other options include not having a test at all for those with good attendance or even projects that avoid tests in its entirety.

So, if you are one of the students expecting to fail semester tests, at least you have the solace of knowing it is an unfair system to begin with.