Math Semester Exam Work Group
Meeting Summaries
Meeting # 7―November 11, 2013
Participants began the meeting by reviewing the results of the math teacher survey. Surveys were
completed for over 300 classess (middle school teachers general teach 1 course and high school
teachers teach 1 or 2 courses). When looking at the top reasons for exam failures, teachers indicated
that
1) Students don’t put much effort into studying. and 2) Students don’t know how to study for
cumulative exams. Eighty-two percent of middle school teachers saw a strong relationship between
course performance and exam performance in Algebra and 65% of high school teachers thought that
course performance reflected exam performance. In an attempt to narrow their work, participants
were asked to review key findings from past data sets to glean summary findings to inform the final
report. The last activity of the meeting was to review state and local policy and regulations regarding
the purpose of final exams and to review data on final exam weights from similarly situated benchmark
districts in Maryland and across the country.