New York is changing what students will need to do to earn a high school diploma, phasing out a decades-old system that requires students to pass a prescribed set of Regents exams as the state moves toward new graduation requirements beginning with the class of 2028.<\/p>\n
The New York State Education Department says students will still take state assessments required by federal law, but passing Regents exams will no longer be required to graduate. Instead, the state is developing a broader system intended to allow students to demonstrate proficiency through multiple measures.<\/p>\n
The change has sparked debate over whether New York is modernizing an outdated graduation system or removing an important measure of whether students have mastered fundamental academic skills.<\/p>\n
Speaking with The National News Desk, Erika Sanzi, senior director of outreach for Defending Education, argued the state should focus on helping struggling students meet existing standards rather than eliminating the testing requirement.<\/p>\n
“I often refer to this as putting the quit in equity,” Sanzi said.<\/p>\n
She argued that eliminating a test can make poor academic results less visible without necessarily addressing the underlying problem.<\/p>\n
“Obviously it looks worse if students can’t pass or do well on tests,” Sanzi said. “If we remove the test, then we don’t really have to grapple with the reality that we’re facing.”<\/p>\n
New York education officials describe the change differently.<\/p>\n
The state Board of Regents approved its transformation plan after years of study and public engagement. Education officials argue that a single standardized examination should not be the determining factor in whether a student receives a diploma and that students should have multiple ways to demonstrate they have acquired the skills necessary for college, careers and civic life.<\/p>\n
Under the state’s timeline, students entering ninth grade in the 2028-29 school year would be the first cohort subject to the fully redesigned graduation requirements. Regents exams will continue to be administered during the transition and remain part of the state’s assessment system.<\/p>\n
Sanzi said New York’s Regents system has historically distinguished the state from jurisdictions where graduating students are not required to demonstrate proficiency through exit exams.<\/p>\n
“This is a huge deal,” Sanzi said. “The state Board of Regents in New York predates the United States Constitution.”<\/p>\n
The Board of Regents traces its origins to 1784, three years before the Constitution was signed. Regents examinations themselves came later, beginning in the 19th century.<\/p>\n
Sanzi argued the traditional philosophy behind academic standards was that disadvantaged students should be given the support necessary to meet high expectations rather than be held to different ones.<\/p>\n
“It was always sort of a bedrock belief that poor children or children coming from unstable homes could still achieve at high levels,” Sanzi said. “The idea was that poverty made education more difficult, but it did not excuse failure.”<\/p>\n
She believes New York is moving away from that philosophy.<\/p>\n
“It seems as though New York is really sort of moving away from that belief to a totally different paradigm,” Sanzi said.<\/p>\n
New York is not alone in reconsidering standardized graduation exams.<\/p>\n
Massachusetts voters approved a ballot measure in 2024 eliminating the requirement that students pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS, to receive a high school diploma. Students are instead required to complete coursework demonstrating mastery of state academic standards.<\/p>\n
Sanzi pointed to Massachusetts as evidence of a broader shift away from high-stakes exit examinations.<\/p>\n
“Massachusetts got rid of its test for graduation in 2024,” she said. “And here we see New York taking a huge step backwards as well.”<\/p>\n
Whether eliminating an exit-exam requirement lowers academic standards depends in part on what replaces it.<\/p>\n
New York officials say the state’s plan is not simply to hand out diplomas without academic requirements. The Education Department’s “Portrait of a Graduate” framework identifies skills students are expected to demonstrate, including critical thinking, communication, collaboration, problem solving and literacy across different disciplines.<\/p>\n
But critics question whether those alternative measures will provide the same objective indication of academic proficiency across different schools and districts.<\/p>\n
Sanzi warned against confusing an increase in graduation rates with an improvement in educational achievement.<\/p>\n
“You can give more students diplomas, but that does not mean those students can read, write or do math at the level colleges and even employers expect,” the host said during the interview.<\/p>\n
Sanzi agreed, arguing that New York previously required students to provide at least one standardized measure of academic mastery.<\/p>\n
“New York was different because it was requiring evidence of some proficiency and mastery in order to graduate, while many other states were not,” she said.<\/p>\n
She warned that without an objective benchmark, students could receive diplomas despite having significant academic deficiencies.<\/p>\n
“Students are going to be getting diplomas whether or not they have basic skills,” Sanzi said.<\/p>\n
New York officials maintain that students will still have to meet state learning standards and that the redesigned system will provide more meaningful ways of demonstrating those skills than relying primarily on standardized exams.<\/p>\n
The disagreement ultimately centers on what a high school diploma should certify.<\/p>\n
Supporters of the changes argue graduation should reflect a student’s complete academic record and demonstrated abilities rather than performance on a limited number of standardized tests.<\/p>\n
Critics such as Sanzi argue eliminating an external benchmark risks weakening the diploma’s value and masking deficiencies that schools should instead address.<\/p>\n
“What message does this ultimately send to students?” Sanzi asked. “If you can’t clear the bar, we’re going to remove the bar.”<\/p>\n
She said lowering expectations can itself communicate a damaging message to struggling students.<\/p>\n
“What it sends is the message of, ‘We don’t believe that you can do it,'” Sanzi said.<\/p>\n
Her biggest concern is what happens after graduation.<\/p>\n
Students who receive diplomas without possessing the reading, writing or mathematical skills expected by colleges and employers may not discover those deficiencies until they have already left the public school system, she argued.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, we are lying to kids and we are lying to parents when we pass them through the grades, when we inflate the grades on the report card,” Sanzi said.<\/p>\n
“If they’re not prepared, it’s going to come back to haunt them at some point,” she added.<\/p>\n
New York’s transition will unfold over several years, meaning the ultimate effect on academic achievement, graduation rates and college and career readiness will not be immediately clear.<\/p>\n
But the debate highlights a larger question confronting education systems nationwide: whether standardized exit exams provide an essential measure of academic accountability or unnecessarily prevent otherwise qualified students from receiving diplomas.<\/p>\n
For Sanzi, the answer is to preserve measurable academic expectations while giving students the support necessary to reach them.<\/p>\n
For New York education officials, the goal is to replace a test-centered graduation system with one that measures student readiness in multiple ways.<\/p>\n
Beginning with the class of 2028, New York students will start experiencing that new approach \u2014 and the years that follow will provide the clearest evidence of whether it raises opportunities without lowering expectations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York is changing what students will need to do to earn a high school diploma, phasing out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-350404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}