At their core, tests are meant to assess a student’s understanding and application of concepts in a high-stakes environment. Since Advanced Placement (AP) courses — science courses, in particular, which tend to assign the most take-home tests — require a deeper understanding of the material, students should not be allowed to assess themselves at home. Take-home tests undermine the purpose of an assessment by permitting cheating and grade inflation.
Handing students a packet of free-response questions and telling them to complete it at home relies on good faith that they will not cheat, plagiarize or exceed the allotted time. However, in a world where homework, extracurriculars and grades monopolize students’ attention during the week, expecting them to sit down for two hours on a Saturday and risk not getting an A on a test worth 60% of their grade is lunacy. Students have access to AI, can discuss the answers with friends and often have two or more days to complete the exam.
Creating take-home tests is also complicated: if teachers use questions from previous AP exams, which science teachers tend to do, students can find them online. If teachers come up with the questions themselves, students have less of a chance to practice with real versions.
Also, some teachers give explanation-based questions to lessen the likelihood of students directly copying an answer from elsewhere, but students can circumvent this with ChatGPT. None of these outcomes would emerge if teachers gave tests solely in class.
No matter how lengthy, broad or complex the test, the ability to cheat on take-home exams wipes out any gains. Some argue that the simple act of taking a test — regardless of whether students receive outside help — is beneficial since it forces students to write down the answers and (however minimally) think about the questions. However, the difficulty of take-home tests — ironically much higher than in-class tests in an attempt to prevent cheating — decreases the chance students will even try to answer the questions themselves.
What’s more, take-home tests are weighed significantly more than in-class assessments in AP Chemistry, for example, since they are longer and more in-depth. This is ironic given the unlimited resources and time students have, compared to the time pressure and atmosphere of in-class exams that truly force students to be solid in their understanding of the material.
With teacher supervision, and without the ability to take the test whenever they feel most ready, students taking tests in class have no room for error. Furthermore, the skewed weighing of take-home tests incentivizes students to cheat on them to ensure an A, while also allowing them to perform poorly on the in-class assessments with virtually no effect on their overall grades. This contributes to a cycle of students not bothering to study for the in-class tests, knowing their scores on the take-home exams will make up for it. Besides inflating students’ grades, it encourages a shallow understanding of concepts with no consequences.
Most importantly, tests are meant to be taken in a high-stakes environment that requires students to quickly recall key concepts. Take-home tests lack the strict time limit and pressure of an exam taken under supervision, an entirely different atmosphere that fails to prepare students for the real world. Though some argue that the stress of solely in-class exams unfairly burdens students, letting students take exams at home on their own time only makes them less prepared for in-class tests.
Another argument in favor of take-home tests is the little oversight they require, being simpler to administer than in-class exams. For teachers under time-sensitive lesson plans, the ease of take-home tests is key.
“When the schedule changed from an eight-period day to a six-period rotating day, we lost about two weeks of teaching time. In-class tests take up an entire day of teaching. If we give seven to eight take-home tests a year, we’re gaining that time back,” said Mr. Alexander Falat, a chemistry teacher at East.
However, changing the grading system so that take-home tests are worth less, or simply assigning more homework grades, can combat this.
Not only do take-home tests encourage shallower thinking and active cheating, but they also fail to prepare students for assessments in the long-term.