Having taught in both a traditional Regents high school and in a consortium school (only English Regents, projects replace other four), I see many arguments on both sides of the debate on possibly abolishing the Regents Exams as a high school graduation requirement in NYS. However, the exams are really besides the point. There are deeper issues that must be addressed whether the Regents stay or go.
Let us take a look at scrapping the exams. This is taken from The Times Union:
ALBANY — Taking "the Regents," one of the oldest academic exam systems in the country, has been a right of passage for high school students in New York for generations.
That may soon change as the state Board of Regents considers scrapping the high school Regents exam requirement as part of an effort to improve the state's graduation rates and better define the significance of a New York high school diploma.
This fall, a commission convened by state Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa will meet to examine — among other questions — "to what degree requiring passage of Regents exams improves student achievement, graduation rates and college readiness," Rosa announced at the Board of Regents' July meeting.
Rethinking the tests builds on the Board of Regents recent effort to create more avenues for students to graduate aside from take the exams.
While graduation rates have inched up in recent years, gaps in achievement persist for students of color, students with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income students, Rosa noted.
"Simply put, the system is not working for everyone, and too many students — particularly our most vulnerable students — are leaving high school without a diploma," she wrote in a February column for an online site accessible to New York State School Boards Association.
New York is among 11 states that require students to pass an exit exam to graduate. Many are questioning the practice amid a growing debate over the effectiveness of the exam to evaluate proficiency and its impact on graduation rates.
The Regents Exams don't test all that well and their conversion charts on grading mean a student can do "iny meany my nemo" to pick answers and still have a good chance to pass on some exams. In addition, having attended marking sessions for years, particularly when schools, teachers and principals are now rated in large part on Regents results, the pressure to pass students is enormous.
I thought my own standards were rather "holistic" but there were times I couldn't believe what was an acceptable answer. To be truly open, there were teachers on the frugal side who gave every answer a 0 or 1 out of a possible 5 points in social studies but there is less of that now that teacher ratings are tied to the Regents scores. Please don't tell me about how norming goes on to ensure grade objectivity. The grading is subjective when it is not in the multiple choice sections.
Taking it as a given that the Regents are flawed, replacing them with project based assessments is an invitation for rampant grade hyperinflation. Consortium schools can't be scaled up. Those kids want to attend those schools generally.
My fear is something readers here comment on all the time. If we take away virtually every standard including the Regents Exams, high school diplomas that teachers continually complain are meaningless will become even more so. We all know an ambitious administrator can easily intimidate teachers into passing almost every student. Imagine the pressure on portfolio grading. "The kid wrote a sentence; he is a genius so pass him."
Teachers and the UFT in NYC are too weak to uphold any standards unlike before the Regents became mandatory exit exams in 1996. In those days of yore, many teachers would refuse to change grades and would battle it out with administration. From what I have read here, those days are long since gone. We also had the Regents Competency Tests as a backup in the eighties and nineties and beyond in special education.
Before we can seriously discuss exit exams, integrity needs to be restored to NYC schools and class sizes need to be lowered. (Class size is a different post.) As a first step toward returning some ethics, there needs to be a student attendance requirement for course credit to be granted. How can a pupil pass who misses 75 days of a 90 day semester? I understand extenuating circumstances but exceptions have become the rule in many schools. Missing all of a term's classwork can't be acceptable. (Sitting at a computer to make up a semester's worth of work in a few days does not count to recover the credit.)
Teachers need to be held safe harmless on teacher ratings if students do not attend class or if they do not complete assignments. Under current conditions, teachers are often blamed if kids miss class or do not do work while in class. If a real troubled student or a few are placed in a class, teachers who need help enforcing rules are many times told we have classroom management problems. Accountability has become a one way street only for teachers in many schools. It is amazing anyone still drops out as the system bends over backwards to accommodate students with alternate ways to pass. We are not doing those kids any favors by pushing them through, almost no matter what. When they get to college, they are extremely disadvantaged. That won't change if we go to portfolios instead of Regents.
Until a simple change is implemented that puts some responsibility on students along with providing better learning conditions, the academic fraud will continue and worsen. Ending the Regents will just accelerate the process in the name of boosting graduation rates.
Please no comments here on the race of the students being the problem. There is ZERO scientific evidence that race has anything to do with natural intelligence. If someone would like to blame any race, gender or nationality, please cite some scholarly evidence to back your point. The principal forcing you to pass students who happen to be mostly from one background or another is not scientific evidence. It is not the fault of a child that he/she is passed while barely being able to read. It is the administrators, teachers and our union who have allowed this to continue.
3 comments:
It's becoming so obvious, the "powers that be" just want these kids out of the system after 4 years of high school, whether they actually learned anyting is irrelevant. As long as government can save money by getting kids out of the system as quickly as possible is all that matters. It's the same motivation behind the attempts to push out or terminate veteran teachers that actually know what they're doing. You would never imagine the nation pushing out the experienced surgeons, lawyers, and accountants, but it's "OK" to do it to teachers. "Penny wise and pound foolish" as many of the kids leave with no meaningful knowledge or skills to help them obtain gainful employment and actually support themselves. Government is going to have to cough up much more money throughout their lives in public assistance for them and their families.
It's a game changing mistake for NYC public schools if the Regents exams are eliminated. It's a step backward and we should remember why they became mandatory. CUNY professors were bemoaning the fact that the NYC public school diplomas were becoming meaningless and there was no objective way to distinguish and compare a student's academic average - a 95% was considered the same if it came from Bronx Science or Taft HS. Worse the diploma wasn't a guarantee of the basic base knowledge needed to enter college with the opportunity of success. Professors had students sitting in class that were functionally illiterate. During that time I remember such a college student, who was a NYC public school grad, suing NYC because he couldn't read. There were many such students back then and they spent years in remedial classes at zero credit until their financial aid ran out.
There are other facets to this mistake as well. If NYC public schools can not objectively prove their worth to colleges, professors, employers or the graduates themselves it opens the door to those that will say they can. Not only will they say they can, they will say they can do so at a fraction of the cost. It's going to be very difficult for the UFT or any friendly voice to persuade anyone, especially parents and the public, that NYC children should be subjected to a worthless education and diploma if there is a viable alternative.
Reading specialists are very important. I've been a special ed teacher a long time and have met intelligent students who can't read above 1-2nd grade level. Believe me, they want to read, but they need the help from specialists.
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