New York must keep its Regents exams

It appears the Board of Regents plans to eliminate Regents standards entirely. This follows a proposal last fall to use 50% as a passing grade to indicate mastery, which is ridiculous.

Some supporters of this new plan want to eliminate standardized testing, claiming that education is a complex field and that it's wrong to gauge success by standardizing measurements and comparing school districts. The problem for school taxpayers and parents is: How do we ensure that students are taught sufficiently, or at least taught well enough to pass an exam?

At their June meeting, the Regents proposed that all students still be tested but that none will have to pass the tests in order to graduate. A final decision will be made in November.

Despite modern “complexities,” student learning from competent teaching is not complicated. Unfortunately, unionized schools in New York have a rigid tenure system where teacher pay and pensions are independent of results. Teachers not doing their job are rarely “let go.” The teachers union protects all members. They get raises and perks until they collect their pensions. Eliminating testing hides the system's failure to teach.

To a Catholic school student who graduated from high school with both a Regents diploma and Regents scholarship, this decline in Regents standards is shocking. If the current Regents consider a 50% score a passing grade, they're saying you can graduate despite getting half the answers wrong. In judging a school’s academic quality, it was assumed that the higher the number of Regents diplomas, the better the school. For over 100 years, the Regents standards kept New York among the top school systems in the country. With the possibility that school choice will expand, allowing students to use public funds to attend charter schools and private and parochial schools, having a strong academic standard in place will be essential. Now is not the time to end the Regents system.

Another factor in eliminating the Regents exam was the growing population of migrant families. Public schools are required to educate their children and put them in age-appropriate classes. Their struggles with English led to difficulties passing exams which dragged down district rankings and made comparisons between school districts impossible — especially for districts with large numbers of these students, like Brentwood, Central Islip, and Hempstead.

The elimination of Regents standards and exams also is a problem for taxpayers who fund our expensive education systems. How are they to know how well districts are performing without objective criteria like Regents exam scores? 

The rise of Long Island's opt-out movement had already muddled the value of student test result data. In districts like East Islip, up to 73% of students opted out of exams. This waste of time and money was not a consideration to anti-testing advocates, but it is important to everyone paying taxes and concerned about students getting a good education. The majority of us who are neither educators nor parents of school-age children should demand to know what is being taught, as well as how the money is being spent.

Getting rid of Regents exams would make it more difficult to judge whether our money is being used wisely, and how our districts are performing compared to others and to Long Island as a whole.

The Regents need to hear from everyone opposed to the plan before they vote on it. If you care about the further erosion of academic proficiency standards, let them know.

This guest essay reflects the views of Andrea Vecchio, a founding member of Long Islanders for Educational Reform, a regional advocacy group.