Cutting Regents exams is very troubling
The elimination of Regents exams removes one of the last remaining measures of universal academic performance across the state, a reader writes. Credit: Randee Daddona
Cutting Regents exams is troubling
The past, and apparently continuing, move to reduce the academic requirements for high school diplomas in New York State is extremely troubling [“Survey: Most favor Regents adjustment,” News, Nov. 15].
The elimination of Regents exams removes one of the last remaining measures of universal academic performance of high schools and students across the state. Relying on student presentations to determine competency in a subject is a joke.
Teachers will be able to pass students at will with no meaningful measure of competency. We already have seen that many freshmen entering colleges require remedial help to begin to be able to successfully complete college-level courses.
Setting the standards so low simply to allow our education leadership, be they state Education Department personnel or district administrators and teachers, to declare success with high graduation rates is essentially perpetrating a fraud on the taxpayers and certainly not doing the students any favors.
Why not make high school diplomas like Little League “participation trophies”? Everyone gets one so the graduation rate, by definition, becomes almost 100%, given a few students will still drop out.
— Howard Frauenberger, Malverne
State Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa says of those surveyed, “These are the voices of New York State.” However, she is only listening to a few voices, not the fuller “voices of New York State.”
The appendix of the survey indicates, as does the article, that 11% of the respondents are from Long Island. Those responses were based on a limited number of regional meetings held during the pandemic.
Only one in-person meeting was held in our area just before the onset of COVID-19, and a virtual meeting did not take place. Information relating to participating in the survey was also not widely circulated.
— Gloria Sesso, Port Jefferson
The writer is co-president of the Long Island Council for the Social Studies.
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