New York state has an extended and proud historical past of administering rigorous subject-area examinations, permitting its most superior college students to show mastery of demanding tutorial content material. For the final 20 years, the state has required all college students to cross 5 of those exams—later diminished to 4—to earn a highschool diploma. The state’s Board of Regents is poised to get rid of that requirement. Critics argue that to take action would imply dumbing down requirements.
That criticism is fallacious. Casting off the exams of their present configuration might serve to revive rigor and meritocracy to New York’s excessive colleges, whereas additionally making certain {that a} extra various array of scholars, together with those that should not college-bound, are positioned for fulfillment in early maturity.
For over 100 years, the Regents exams weren’t administered to each pupil. They aimed to measure the achievement of the best performers—these deemed able to school preparatory work. In New York Metropolis, house to the nation’s largest public-school system, these exams, just like the SAT, had been a part of the ladder of social mobility for poor, immigrant, and first-generation American college students. A “Regents diploma” signified excessive achievement throughout a broad vary of school prep coursework by way of 4 years of highschool. Different college students obtained a “native diploma,” signifying that that they had attended highschool for 4 years and handed the required variety of programs.
The final 20 years, which the Board of Regents is now looking for to undo, have witnessed a failed try to lift achievement by setting a bar that the majority college students had by no means been requested to fulfill—school preparedness—whereas concurrently reducing requirements for the academically gifted and losing the time and abilities of the workforce-bound.
Since 2004 all college students who cross the 5 (later 4) exams required of all college students have been awarded a Regents diploma. A pupil who passes the complete sequence of 9 exams receives a Regents diploma with superior designation. Solely college students with particular wants can earn a neighborhood diploma.
This variation has resulted in quite a few cases of diminishing rigor to accommodate lower-achieving college students, thereby defeating the exams’ objective. Incidents have ranged from outright dishonest on the a part of faculty directors to extra benign makes an attempt to “scrub” exams, searching for the few further factors in an essay response that may get a child over the bar for commencement.
The state schooling division additionally appears to have dumbed down the exams’ content material and has diminished the quantity and proportion of appropriate solutions required to cross the take a look at. The English Regents examination, for instance, was as soon as a six-hour take a look at administered over two days; it’s been shortened by half. As early as 1996, when the state was phasing within the new commencement requirement, the state threw out the outcomes of a Regents Arithmetic examination when seventy college students failed it, permitting them to graduate if that they had earned a passing grade of their coursework.
These practices, prompted by the ill-advised resolution to require all highschool college students to take these previously rigorous exams, reached absurd ranges in the course of the Covid faculty closures. The spring 2020 exams had been cancelled and the spring 2021 exams had been curtailed. In 2022, college students had been allowed to enchantment examination outcomes in the event that they scored at the least 50, versus the standard passing rating of 65.
The Regents are proper to be shifting to undo this requirement. The place they appear poised to err, nonetheless, is with their obvious intention to make use of a single diploma coverage for all college students. As a substitute of three diploma sorts—native, Regents, and Regents with Superior Designation—they’d enable a single Regents diploma to incorporate a notation or seal indicating superior achievement.
The Regents ought to return to the unique system. They need to acknowledge that college students enter and depart highschool with completely different talents, motivations, and targets—and guarantee all highschool graduates meet a excessive commonplace of accomplishment commensurate to their chosen path. Those that enter highschool with acute tutorial prowess ought to be guided by way of the old-style Regents examination observe on the trail to a full Regents Tutorial diploma—with exams restored to their prior stage of rigor. College students extra inclined towards workforce preparation ought to be allowed to pursue a sequence of programs aligned to business requirements of their chosen discipline and have their efficiency measured by demonstration of their proficiency on these requirements, not by Regents examinations. In spite of everything, the labor market doesn’t want solely white-collar employees; it wants college students who can excel and lead fulfilling lives in technical fields.
Some college students flourish in a extra progressive academic surroundings, which reduces the significance of formal examinations. The faculties presently within the Efficiency Requirements Consortium, working underneath a partial waiver of the present testing necessities, are allowed to exchange two of the 4 required Regents exams with their very own rigorous assessments and have a powerful file of success with these college students. The Regents are proper to increase that challenge, with assist for the right coaching of lecturers within the Consortium’s strategies. Lastly, the native diploma ought to be reinstated, indicating {that a} pupil attended highschool (with their attendance actually tracked and at an inexpensive stage) and handed their programs.
The period of pretending that each one college students need or must attend school is over. New York’s Board of Regents ought to settle for actuality and acknowledge that success and achievement look completely different for various college students. Solely then will our colleges supply ladders of social mobility to all college students.
Ray Domanico is senior fellow and director of schooling coverage on the Manhattan Institute.
