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The Wake County school system has expanded who can be exempted from taking high school final exams while also adopting a last-minute change to make more students eligible.
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This school year, Wake expanded its longtime policy of allowing some high school seniors to skip final exams to include all high school grade levels. But when students complained that the expansion didn’t go far enough, Wake announced a change this week to ease the attendance requirements for the exemption.
“The WCPSS final exam policy has been updated to allow exemption as long as the student has an A or B and has 3 or fewer ‘unexcused’ absences,” school board member Jennifer Job said in a Tuesday Facebook post. “We heard you. Thank you for speaking out.”
The updated final exam exemption policy goes into effect for the 2026-27 school year that’s beginning Monday for most Wake high school students.
Wake is North Carolina’s largest school system. The district had more than 53,000 high school students last school year.
High school seniors have historically been able to get exempted from taking final exams if they have good enough grades and attendance. The senior exam exemption is one of the ways that Wake tried to motivate seniors to not skip school as they near graduation.
The final exam exemptions only cover tests made by the teacher. It doesn’t include state-administered final exams such as the end-of-course exams and CTE (career and technical education) exams.
Last school year, 21 Wake high schools piloted a program to expand the exemption policy to include grades 9-11. While there was some variation among schools, a typical requirement was that students had to have 10 or fewer absences per semester and a grade of A or B in the class.
The expanded policy allowed some students to not take any final exams last school year.
Earlier this summer, Wake announced that the expanded exam exemptions would be offered at all high schools this school year. The district also included a uniform set of requirements to be eligible:
School officials hoped expanding the exam exemptions to all high school grades would increase attendance, which dropped sharply during the pandemic. Nearly one in five Wake students was chronically absent last school year, meaning they missed at least 10% of classes
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The new guidelines drew complaints from students because it didn’t differentiate between excused and unexcused absences.. Under Wake’s attendance policy, students can get an absence excused for any one of several reasons, including:
A Change.org petition asking Wake to only count unexcused absences for the exemptions has drawn more than 5,500 online signatures.
“While we support encouraging students to attend school regularly, we believe this policy unfairly penalizes students who miss school for legitimate, documented reasons beyond their control,” according to the petition.
Petition organizers argued that some medical appointments are only available during school hours.
“Students should never have to choose between taking care of their health and earning a well-deserved academic incentive,” the petition says. “Families also should not have to request a waiver for routine excused absences that already comply with Board Policy 4400. Excused should mean excused.”
The lobbying efforts paid off this week when Wake released updated guidance exempting excused absences when determining exemption eligibility.
Now a student with an A average will be allowed up to three unexcused absences per semester to skip a final exam. A student with a B average will be allowed one unexcused absence per semester.
The requirements of no more than four tardies in a class and no violation of the Honor Code remains in effect.
“The change creates one consistent districtwide standard and is intended to recognize both strong academic performance and regular attendance,” Wake says in the revised guidance.
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