Every school year culminates in exam week—a notoriously unforgiving period where students cram, write feverishly in echoing gyms, then leave hoping for the best until report cards land. It’s an archaic system that leaves kids without any room to learn from their mistakes—or to even see where they went wrong.

I’ve spent more than 25 years in Ontario’s public school system: first as an elementary teacher and special education resource teacher, then as a principal, and now as associate director of the Simcoe County District School Board. I’ve seen how that narrow scope and one-size-fits-all model of traditional exams limits learning and leaves teachers frustrated. When I was a superintendent of education, every July I’d receive anxious calls from students and parents questioning their marks, confused as to why their grade didn’t reflect their effort. Without first-hand knowledge of the student’s history or their coursework, the school principal could only offer a semblance of guidance and readjust their grades from a distance. It never felt fair to the teachers or helpful to the students.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, traditional in-person exams became impossible, and we had to confront how we evaluate learning and who the system genuinely served. Our assessment models were clearly built for another era—one that’s heavily focused on memorization and learning standard knowledge geared toward a single, university-bound pathway. The way we access and use knowledge has shifted. Today’s students have 24/7 access to information through the internet, which makes rote memorization far less relevant.

What’s more useful to students is learning how to evaluate the credibility of information and apply knowledge practically. After high school, they’ll enter a world full of diverse career paths. There’s college and........

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