MILWAUKEE - Final exams happen once each semester, but students prepare for them all year long. Exemptions are often a way for students to reduce the stress of taking test.

“I love them,” freshman Cecilia Figueroa said when asked how she felt about exemptions. Many students at Rufus King IB High School feel the same. Students crowd the hall in front of the attendance office the day before exams to turn in exemption cards.

 “I’m trying harder in Spanish because I know I don’t want to take [the exam]. If you’re doing good enough in the class, why take the exam?” she added.

While Figueroa’s attitude towards exemptions is similar to other Rufus King students, teachers have differing opinions about exemptions.

Spanish teacher Michelle Cascarano has her doubts about the exemption policy. Cascarano believes final exams and tests alone cannot show a student’s knowledge accurately.

 “The whole purpose of exams is to demonstrate what students know. If they already have that A or B average in the class, why do we have to see it again? But for students who have received a C, D or U, it should be an opportunity for them to prove they have learned the material,” she said.

One reason students are given final exams is to help them prepare for college. Cascarano would like to see that change.

“They believe they’re getting students prepared for college because college gives final exams,” Cascarano said.  “I attended colleges were there were no exams, where you had to demonstrate your knowledge at higher levels than just taking final exams. You had to do presentations; you had to write papers. That was the outcome of showing what you knew,” she said.

As exams get closer, students look forward to receiving the A or B necessary to exempt classes, but as tempting as exemptions are, some teachers and college professors believe they do not prepare students for the rigor of college courses.

Tyrone Dumas, MPS Community Engagement project coordinator, believes exemptions are not what they seem.

“If you’re deciding to go to college, you shouldn’t exempt,” he said.

In a society where people are often judged and graded on their performance, Dumas believes high school should be treated as preparation for future evaluations.

“Who wouldn’t want to do so well that you get exempted from the final exam? Will those awards be at the next level though? An exemption is shorting you for what the real world will ask of you,” he said.

Many colleges and universities use exams to determine the majority of students’ grades.

“The final exam is that one time where students are examined on the sum total of the course, not individual pieces,” Eric Key, a UW-Milwaukee math professor, said.

English teacher Kelly O’Keefe-Boettcher agrees with Dumas and Key.

 “You have to be a good test taker to do well in college. Our university structure is very much exam driven. So if we are saying we are preparing people for college or university, and we’re not requiring semester exams, there’s an inconsistency there,” she said.

O’Keefe-Boettcher believes that a teacher should have the autonomy to say whether she thinks students deserve exemptions or not.

“Our goal should be to learn and to get good grades. Not to win a prize. I am sympathetic. I would have loved exemptions as a student, but do I think that exemptions are helpful? Absolutely not,” she said.

 O’Keefe-Boettcher and Cascarano believe that there are better ways to help prepare students for college and shift the focus off grades and onto learning the material.

“I’m investing in a foundation right now, the David Lynch Foundation, to bring in meditation to schools,” Cascarano said. “That would really help with stress reduction. The David Lynch Foundation is new and provides yoga and meditation. Those kinds of things would be really good for students,” Cascarano said.

Both teachers believe the stress of final exams can make students nervous and often affects the way they take tests. O’Keefe-Boettcher thinks that preparing students for tests and grading more on the skills they are accomplishing would be an improvement.

“I’d love an ability based model. Instead of having grades maybe we could look at a model of pass or fail. I would love to see us do a course on how to do research and write the extended essay,” O’Keefe Boettcher said.

Whether or not students and teachers agree with the exemption policy, there are no plans to eliminate the 31-year-old policy.