Tests/projects should be the only decisive factors in determining a high school student's grade

First, a couple questions. 1. What age we talking about? K-12? 6-college? Pls specify 2. When will these "almighty tests" that determine someone grade and ultiminently future be administered? And how frequently? I did clearly state high school students and usually high school students are between 9th-12grade These tests will be administered when a teacher chooses to pass them out. Answers to contention 1 How are tests inaccurate? Tests are designed to sum up the lesson that a student has been taught and to evaluate how much the student has learned from the lesson. If a student goes to class participates, does classwork and then fails the test it just means that the student did not understand the material and means they should not pass. This does reflect real life ideas because it lets children know that they need to prove that they know what they are talking about and show they need to have an understanding of what they are doing. A test does that it evaluates and shows people just how much a student knows. A student is supposed to show what is in their brains for a teacher to decide what their grade is. A teacher does decide the grade but he/she should only be deciding on how much he feels the students has learned from his lesson plan. A student teacher relationship should not reflect the grade given out to a student, a teacher and student can be best friends but if the student fails every single tests about geometry it is obvious he/she does not know geometry and should not pass the class. Students are poor... well poor or rich if they go to school together they will have access to the same resources. The students who goes to the same school are given the same textbooks to study from just like the rest and a number of school resources to use like the library which is a quiet environment and usually have internet access for the students to use. A teacher will usually not require a student to buy expensive materials to do homework. Contention 2 If teachers are biased then they should not be teachers. We are not talking about the ethics of teachers we are talking about how grades should be distributed. Again Projects usually require just research and all students have access to a school library to do research and a textbook that helps them. Contention 3 I do not think class attendance would drop. I will go back to one of your points that school teaches about real life. Well it is up to the student to decide whether or not he/she wants to gain an education. Students who want to learn will most likely attend class to learn the material and try hard to pass the test. This puts more pressure on students to actually learn instead of relying on homework or classwork to fall back on to save their grade. Students who generally do not want to learn will not attend class and what is the point of forcing them to go? There are also those students who decide that they already know all the material so they do not go to class because it is a waste of time. If this particular kind of student can prove that they actually do know all of the material and pass the test then they shouldn't have to go to class to learn something they already know. School attendance would only plummet for those students not wanting to learn or for those who feel they know enough of the material to pass the class. This is where personal responsibility comes in if a student really cared about their future they would go to class if they felt they were unsure about their knowledge of the material. There is no point of forcing children who generally do not want to go to school, to go to school when they will most likely not put any effort into learning in the first place. Cheating on a test is not easy because they are usually monitored by the instructor unlike homework which is not and can be easily copied by other students. If cheating on a test was so easy then everyone would score really high on the SAT and ACT which they usually don't. Test are usually how teachers discover how much their students have learned and those who fail obviously do not know the material and should not move on to the higher level if they do not know the prerequisites. If a student failed every algebra test you cannot send him/her off to advance algebra and expect him/her to succeed if he/she dose not know algebra 1. This is the only effective way to determine if children are actually learning the material that the schools intended them to learn. contention 4 School's main objective is to teach kids the material. Homework can easily be copied after leaving school. Classwork does not prove anything because the student can just be repeating what the teacher said 5min ago but not truly understand the material. Basing a grade off tests will force students to actually put an effort into learning the entire material and in doing that help them discover which subjects they truly enjoy reading about to determine what kind of future they want. Attendance to school and work are completely different you cannot compare the two. Going to class everyday is to benefit the student, going to work everyday is to benefit the productivity of the work force. Summary Tests evaluate how much a student has learned and if a student fails to show what they have learned then it is only obvious that the student has not understood the material and should not move on up to a higher level of a subject if they did not understand the lower level subject. Class Attendance- I believe should be optional, those students determined to learn will show it by going to class to study for their tests that determines their grade. Student who do not want to learn will not want to learn even if you force them so they will only disrupt the learning environment. Students who thinks they are wasting their time learning the same material can just show their knowledge by taking the same test everyone else takes to determine if he/she really does know as much as the others. Students will work harder to learn if they realize they have to know the material to pass. Homework, classwork, group work, class participation shows very little on how much a student actually knows and these activities should have no percentile factor in their grade. A student who does all the homework, classwork and group work is not showing they know the material these activities are very inaccurate. School is to educate the children and these factors were intended to help children better understand the material to prepare them for the upcoming tests. You kept talking about real life situations. A system like this will teach students early on how to survive in college as most of their grades will be decided on their mid terms and finals not their homework or etc. With all this pressure to learn subjects early on it will really show which students are really capable of handling work on the college level. If grades in high school were really just based on tests alone, those who pass will be better off in college because they have proven they understood the material that their high school has tried to teach them.