For more than 30 years, the path to high school graduation in New York State has required Regents exams, the rigorous end-of-year tests that have determined whether students receive a diploma.
The New York State Board of Regents, the governing body for its schools, voted on Monday to take a major step in its yearslong plan to phase out the exam as a graduation requirement, a far-reaching overhaul intended to eliminate barriers to graduation for some students. The board authorized the State Department of Education to move ahead with a plan to make the exams optional.
The changes represent New York’s most substantial education policy overhaul in decades, a sweeping rethinking of student expectations and diploma requirements in a state long held up as a model of rigorous graduation standards. State education officials insisted on Monday that the changes, which will introduce other options for students to demonstrate they have mastered material, will maintain high expectations.
“For years, we looked at what elite private schools provide to their students,” Dr. Betty A. Rosa, the state’s education commissioner, said at a Board of Regents meeting on Tuesday. “and they don’t worry about the Regents exams.”
Some education groups expressed concern about the shift away from the exams, saying that making them optional could water down academic standards and would not result in students being better prepared for college or careers.
“New York should not tear down the measuring stick before it builds a better one,” EdTrust-New York, an education advocacy group, said in a statement.
The first version of the Regents exams was introduced at the end of the Civil War, and the tests became a requirement for graduation in the mid-1990s, when they were made mandatory in an effort to raise standards. Today, the three-hour exams are so woven into the fabric of high school life that some students had to miss this year’s Knicks ticker-tape parade because it conflicted with state science exams.
In recent years, states across the country, including Massachusetts, have increasingly reconsidered high school graduation exams over concerns that the mandates harm disadvantaged students.
Under the state’s plan, the current class of seniors in New York high schools will be the last to be required to take the exams. Going forward, students could choose to take the Regents to earn a diploma or they could take other assessments, options that the Regents have not yet defined. (Students will still have to take the exams, which will continue to be used to measure student achievement even after they are no longer required for graduation.)
But those other pathways are not yet clear and are likely to take different shapes from one school district to the next. State education officials said that they would provide guidance to local school leaders about the new graduation system but that the schools would be in charge of designing their own assessments. They could include classroom assessments, teacher observations or work by students in internships, for instance.
Judith Chin, a Board of Regents member from Queens, said that she questioned how the state would ensure that every school district maintained academic rigor and offered reliable, high-quality assessments without standardized exams.
In response, Zach Warner, an assistant commissioner at the education department, said that the agency did not have a full answer yet. “It’s an important tightrope to ensure that there is quality while not having a heavy hand and say that our way is the only way,” Mr. Warner said.
In February, education department officials are expected to present regulations to the Board of Regents removing the exams as a requirement for graduation, followed by a final board vote in June.
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