The New York State Education Department is speeding up its timeline to overhaul graduation measures that could spell the end of standardized testing as a requirement for high school diplomas.
A statewide commission charged with developing recommendations will now wrap in November, instead of June 2024, education officials announced at the monthly Board of Regents meeting Monday. The group is considering a variety of ways students can prove they’re ready to graduate.
“This is not about getting rid of Regents exams,” said Angelique Johnson-Dingle, deputy commissioner of instructional support at the Education Department. “It is about ensuring all students are provided with the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in the best way that suits them.”
A 64-member blue ribbon commission will meet in person for a few days at the end of July to start putting together their recommendations for the new policy.
“There has been a narrative out there that we already have an idea of what we want the recommendations to be, and that is simply not true,” said Johnson-Dingle.
The group has studied current measures and met with the Department of Labor and Empire State Development, as well as SUNY, CUNY and Long Island University, about the skills high school graduates need to be successful in college and careers.
Some of those priorities could include an emphasis on so-called “soft” skills like self-motivation or timeliness and attendance, or technical expertise in using computers or software such as Excel.
The Education Department will also pilot different ways of evaluating if students are grasping the material, such as capstone projects, presentations and portfolios.
“One of the beauties of this approach is that the actual assessment is a time for learning,” said Regent Frances Wills, who sits on the commission.
New York is an outlier in the nation for its graduation measures. Before the pandemic, just 11 states still required students to pass exit exams to earn a high school diploma.
Advocates for removing the requirement argue there is no evidence that exit exams increase student achievement or increase job earnings afterwards.
Over the winter, the state reviewed a 161-page report showing exit exams may increase dropout rates, “with especially large effects among Black students.”
Still, Commissioner Betty Rosa lamented “the optics” that the Education Department is lowering standards, while the same criticism has not applied to other entities that overhaul exams — a likely nod to the College Board watering down its African-American studies exam after conservative backlash.
Supporters of the graduation measure say it is a particularly bad time to remove the assessment tool as students recover learning that was lost during school closures.
The overhaul comes amid numerous changes to how students can earn a diploma since the COVID outbreak.
Last year, students could appeal Regents scores as low as 50 to qualify for a diploma, a pandemic emergency policy that was renewed through this summer.
Regents exams were also canceled in spring 2020, then scrapped as a graduation requirement the school year after, meaning students earned a diploma so long as they passed the course associated with each test.
“I think this is the most important work we’ll be doing going forward,” said Regent Aramina Ferrer. “We are positioned to do something really significant and important for children.”