The New York State Board of Regents oversees education in the state, from kindergarten through the university system. In 2024, they issued a “Vision to Transform New York State Graduation Requirements,” a general plan for high school education reform.
You need to understand that New York spends more than $36,000 per pupil, twice the national average and more than any other state. Yet, the performance of students on national tests like the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) is mediocre at best. New York’s fourth-grade students ranked 32nd and 46th on reading and math, respectively. Eighth-grade students ranked 9th and 22nd on reading and math.
Not much bang for the buck.
The Regents' "vision" could be boiled down to how best to achieve "equity." How that aids students in functioning in the world after high school is a secret. Or perhaps the Regents don't know and are too embarrassed to say so. In fact, achieving equity has become an end in and of itself.
In short, the Regents are looking for equity as it relates to "equality of outcomes." If this means dumbing down curricula, so be it. If it means eliminating minimum competency requirements, so be it. For New York high school students, it means that the Regents Exam — a right of passage for NewYork High school students since the late 19th century — will be voluntary starting in the 2027-28 school year.
The exam has changed over the decades, but it was always focused on measuring achievement. What's replacing the Regents Exam won't do that. It will measure exactly what the student wants to be judged on.
The Regents’ reform agenda rests on what it calls four “transformations.” First, students will be judged against a new Portrait of a Graduate standard, which emphasizes critical thinking, social-emotional and cultural competence, and “global citizenship” over subject mastery. Second, traditional coursework will no longer be the standard for academic credits; students will be able to earn credits through work or service projects, participation in the arts, or career and technical programs. Third, as noted, the state will no longer require students to pass Regents exams to graduate. Finally, the three current diploma types—Regents, Regents advanced, and local—will be replaced by a single diploma for all graduates, with optional “seals” or endorsements added for further achievements.
Taken together, these transformations replace objective, comparable academic metrics with obscure, subjective ones. A diploma will no longer signal a baseline level of academic competence but instead report whatever alternative path the student finds most convenient and relevant for his particular interests. Far from raising standards, these four transformations threaten to render the very idea of a New York State diploma all but meaningless.
This is the Idiocracy writ large. "Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework," approved in 2018, was designed to "help education stakeholders create student-centered learning environments that affirm cultural identities; foster positive academic outcomes; develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference; elevate historically marginalized voices; and empower students as agents of social change to redress historical and contemporary oppression.”
Johnny can't read, but he looks beautiful marching against the patriarchy.
According to the authors of the report, Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education means subjecting students to “high expectations” and ensuring that they receive “rigorous instruction.” But it is hard to see how those commitments can be squared with the insistence that students be “co-designers of curriculum,” which should involve “student-led civic engagement; critical examination of power structures; project-based learning on social justice issues; and student leadership opportunities.”[9]
In this understanding of education, the chief aim is not the transmission of knowledge but rather training students to be agents of change who will learn how to challenge and dismantle the existing, allegedly unjust, American power structure and replace it with a more equitable one.
Making the Regents Exam voluntary is one small outrage in a sea of indignation. It's just more evidence that confirms the efficacy of homeschooling.
