With the 2025-2026 school year coming to an end, it is important that everyone knows how testing works. This is important if you have normal class tests, EOCs, AP exams, or CTE exams.
For the basic exams. Those that go on during the normal testing days are the most common for a lot of students. This includes Guilford County tests and many AP classes, even if it is just a project. Each day has 2 testing times and they correspond with class period. These days are at the end of the year and each lasts around 3 hours. If you do not have tests on these days or for a part of the day, you get that time out of school and do not need to show up at all.
EOCs are another type of test that many underclassmen take and vary a bit from the normal class exams. They do last around the same amount of time but are made and run by the state of North Carolina. They do not happen on the test days that the other tests happen. They have specific days that they must be held and if you do not have it you also get out of school for that day. There are only a few classes with an EOC and they are math 1, math 3, english 2, and biology. This also includes the honors forms of those classes. These classes also do not have a final test on the test days so you would be out of that class period.
CTE classes have a quite confusing and case to case situation. Some of those classes have their tests on the EOC days which could conflict with your other classes, forcing you to make them up on one of the 3 makeup days after the school year (days that you generally do not need to show up to). Some classes also get you automatically exempted from the final exam days. For example, entrepreneurship 2 has 3 attempts at a certification exam earlier in the year and, if you pass those, that will be taken as your final grade instead of having to come in on an exam day. If you do not pass one of these types of things for a CTE class, you will need to go in on the test day. This varies by class and is best to ask your teacher what your final situation is.
AP and IB exams are other very important testing things to figure out. Throughout May, there are a lot of AP exams that happen across the month. Make sure that you know when your exam is so that you do not miss it and need to pay. These exams are only for the college credit if you get a high enough score with the only difference for IB being that they are not held at Page and can conflict with other AP exams. These scores do not affect your grade because there are other teacher made finals during the exam week that can also include projects.
One thing that is a favorite among students is exemption forms. They allow you to exempt one teacher made exam. These cannot be AP, IB, EOC, or CTE classes. Many people choose electives like your honors or basic foreign language class or other ones like journalism and newspaper. This makes it so that there is no need to go to school that testing period and takes the average of your class grade. You must also be exceeding a high enough average in the class to exempt it.
