Biology EOC

There has been a lot of talk at EJHS about the EOC at the end of the year for Biology.  Although I am not in a biology classroom, we are still looking at ways to prepare our kids for what they will eventually have to take.  The whole science department is having to look at the order of courses and decide where to teach background material.  Basically, they've decided that EOC prep needs to start the student's freshman year and progress until they take biology junior year.  There are a lot of chemistry concepts that students need to know (functional groups, hydrogen bonding, isotopes, etc) that are present on the test.  Its beginning to seem overwhelming to me to see what all these students will have to know well to be successful at the test.  I think it will be interesting to see the results at the end of the year.  In addition, I think that adding more EOC exams in the science classes, such as chemistry or physics, would be too much for students.  I do have high expectations for students and believe they can all learn the material, but I think that we are not helping students by overwhelming them with information that is nearly two semesters of content at a college level class.  I'm hoping that EJHS, and really all high schools, can learn to help students the best way possible with these new tests.