Passing Is Optional but The Test Isn’t: Regents Exams Still a Requirement

In September, students in New York received news that might have made their lives slightly less stressful: they would no longer have to take the annual Regents Exams to graduate high school. 

Under the rules, students wouldn’t have to take the regents exam in order to graduate, the exam wouldn’t count towards any grade or GPAs, and the three diplomas New York offered would be consolidated to one. The first class to operate under the new rules was the class of 2028. 

But the Regents Exams aren’t dead yet. During the Board of Regents meeting on Nov. 9, it was announced that students in New York will still have to take at least four Regents Exams during their high school careers — at least until 2029-30 when a new assessment is expected to be implemented. 

The students don’t have to pass these four exams to graduate, and they won’t count towards their GPA as they have in the past.  Instead, the Regents Exams will exist to fill a federal requirement for all states to have some sort of assessment to measure student performance in key areas. 

The requirement to have testing comes from a federal law passed in 2015 called the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) which replaced the 2001 “No Child Left Behind” law. Under the ESSA, states are required to test students in reading, math and science, post key data about school performance, and identify school districts of need. Failure to comply with this law results in loss of federal K-12 education funding.

In addition to the three subjects mandated by the Department of Education, New York also tests in social studies as part of the federally approved ESSA plan. According to Zachary Warner, the Assistant Commissioner of the New York State Department of Education Office of State Assessment, keeping the Regents Exam for now allows a smoother transition to the new assessment.

“We want to acknowledge that educators are absolutely already navigating significant transformations, and we want to be thoughtful about how we sequence any changes so that the introduction of new statewide assessments and supports can support our broader transformation rather than compete with all of the different pieces of it,” Warner said.

Regent Shino Tanikawa expressed concerns that parents will be confused about how the new changes to the Regents Exams will be implemented but ultimately believes that this is the right approach. She also summarized how the changes should be messaged to parents and the public.

“We should be very clear that the regents’ exams used to have two separate purposes,” Tanikawa said.  “We just got rid of one of the purposes, but the other purpose remains. It is the federal requirement that we do so, and funding is attached to it, which is why we can’t just discard them.” 

According to data from the National Center for the Education Statistics, in 2022-23 New York had the second highest total education funding nationwide with an estimated $85,560,758,000 across all sources. Only California, the largest state by population, ranks higher with that state having $144,367,482,000 going towards education. 

New York receives the third most from the federal government with $8,491,447,000, only behind Texas and California. In terms of per pupil money from the feds, New York receives $3,457.00 per student — 7th highest in the country. Still, this money accounts for only 9.9% of all funding for education statewide. 

In terms of where the remaining 90.1% of funding comes from, state funding accounts for 38.6% of funding ($33,022,644,000), 45.9% ($39,237,534,000) comes from local property taxes, 5.3% ($4,494,651,000) comes from other local funding sources, and 0.4% ($314,483,000) comes from private entities including educational foundations, parent teacher associations/organizations, campus booster clubs, and private individuals.