New Role For Regents: Regents exams not a grad requirement starting next year
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The state Board of Regents is moving ahead with work to move toward one New York state high school diploma.
In February, education department officials are expected to present regulations to the Board of Regents removing the exams as a requirement for graduation, followed by a final board vote in June. The first thing students and parents will notice is that Regents exams won’t be required to graduate starting with the 2027-28 school year. Rather than a requirement for graduation, the Regents will transition to a seal or endorsement that recognizes additional academic achievement for students.
In addition to changes to how the Regents exams are used, the Board of Regents will hear from state Education Department officials in February about a plan to change the state’s testing program to include third through 11th grade ESSA testing to provide achievement measures for high school students prior to their senior year. Those assessments will be used in concert with assessment strategies approved by individual school districts around the state to determine if a senior is ready to graduate. Those strategies can include classroom assessments, performance-based learning, career-connected learning, internships, capstone projects, and interdisciplinary courses.
Full implementation of the NY Inspires program is expected to take place starting in 2029. In the interim, students will graduate by meeting current credit requirements, with students also assessed according to local assessment strategies.
"As Shannon just laid out to everyone, this is the biggest initiative in New York State education, and we are proud to be a part of that work," said Michael Bennett, deputy state Education Department commissioner for P-12 Operational Support. "But I want to make sure that we understand that today we’re going to focus on two separate things right now. We’re going to focus on the decoupling of the Regents exams, and we want to make sure that the board understands the move to one diploma."
CHANGING HOW REGENTS TESTS ARE USED
State Education Department officials pushed back on the criticism heard over the past couple of years that not requiring students to pass Regents exams lessens the quality of a diploma from New York's schools. Several officials reiterated that the Regents exams will still be available to students who want to take them to show colleges they are ready for college-level work.
The state Education Department introduced high school end-of-course exams in five subjects in 1876, according to the state Education Department website. The first high school examinations were administered in June 1878 with about one hundred institutions in New York participating in Regents tests for algebra, American history, elementary Latin, natural philosophy and physical geography. In 1879, after evaluating the results of the first administration, the Board of Regents approved a more comprehensive series of examinations for secondary schools to be given in November, February, and June each year, in more than 30 subjects that included Latin grammar and exercises, zoology, astronomy, chemistry, botany, geology, rhetoric and English composition, English literature, algebra, through quadratics; plane geometry and plane trigonometry, among others.
The Board of Regents adopted a multi-pronged plan in late 1995 to raise academic standards for all New York state students that included the adoption of uniform standards, revision of the assessment process, enlarging schools' capacity to support learning and devising an institutional accountability system with public transparency. During the summer of 1996, the Board of Regents approved a set of learning standards in seven subject areas: ELA, math, science, social studies, arts, languages other than English, and physical education. The Regents exam was the primary standard for most students required for graduation with the less rigorous local diploma option phased out.
"What we are proposing to change under this new model, under moving forward with New York Inspires, is the use of the Regents exams. And you’ll recall that I said that purpose and use needs to be connected," said Zach Warner, state Education Department assistant commissioner of the Office of State Assessment. "There has not been a clear connection between what the exams are intended to do and the way we have been using those results for a number of years."
WHAT'S NEXT?
Several members of the Board of Regents asked what will replace the Regents exams.
Regent Shino Tanikawa raised concerns that some schools may opt to keep the Regents exams as their preferred method of deciding if a student is ready to graduate. Regent Judith Chin asked what the Education Department plans to do to make sure the local assessments that are to measure graduation readiness are reliable and of high quality.
Warner said there is no firm answer to that question yet, with the first step being to remove the Regents exams from the graduation requirements with an eye toward guidance on local assessments coming in time for the 2027-28 school year.
"I’m going to invoke (the) chancellor a little bit to say that’s not something we obviously have a full answer on yet," Warner said. "But here are some of the things that we have discussed, because it’s an important tightrope to do exactly like the vice chancellor is saying and ensure there is quality, while not having a heavy hand and saying, 'This is our way. This is the only way.' And what we know is that much of that is going to come through resources, through trainings, through partnerships with the transformation collaboration, our BOCES, our Big Five."