Coalition Activities and Public Comments

As the Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures develops its recommendations, the Coalition joined more than 80 advocacy organizations, educators, and families from across New York State in releasing a research brief calling on the State to end the practice of requiring students to pass five Regents exams in order to graduate from high school.

The Coalition issued recommendations to the State’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures as they consider graduation requirements and how to measure students’ readiness for post-secondary life.

The Coalition released a petition signed by more than 1,200 New Yorkers, calling on State leaders to permanently decouple Regents exams from graduation requirements, a practice which currently makes New York State an outlier in the US.

The Coalition submitted comments to the State Education Department regarding the special appeal to earn diplomas with a lower score on Regents exams taken in the 2021-22 or 2022-23 school year. We are pleased that this measure will open the door to college and career pathways for some students who might otherwise leave high school without a diploma and help more young people to graduate when they have passed Regents-level courses and demonstrated mastery of State standards. We also made suggestions for strengthening the regulations and continued to strongly urge the State to immediately decouple exit exams from graduation requirements, as the vast majority of states have done.

Following announcements that January 2022 Regents exams would not be required for graduation due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Coalition sent a letter calling on NYSED and the Board of Regents to immediately waive June 2022 Regents exams as individual students’ graduation requirements and, instead, allow students to graduate if they have met their coursework requirements for those classes.

In October 2021, NYSED announced that its Graduation Measures initiative would be resume after a 21-month pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to culminate in recommendations by summer 2024. In response, the Coalition urged NYSED and the Board of Regents to take immediate action decoupling Regents exams from graduation requirements while the work of the initiative is pending.  As the letter explains, this action would bring New York State into step with the vast majority of states that use ESSA-mandated accountability assessments to measure school performance but not to determine individual students’ readiness for graduation.

In March, Coalition members joined more than 100 education and advocacy organizations and over 150 parents, educators, and other individuals from across New York State in a sign-on letter to the Board of Regents and the State Education Department, urging them to extend guidance from June 2020 to give students aging out of school in 2020-21 the opportunity to return to high school for the 2021-22 school year, rather than lose their chance to earn a high school diploma because of COVID-19. The following month, State officials released this memo strongly encouraging districts to allow 21-year-olds return in 2021-22 if they need more time to finish earning a diploma, diploma endorsement, or exit credential.

In January 2021, the State Education Department announced that it would seek a Federal waiver allowing New York State to cancel Regents exams in June and August 2021 because it will not be possible to fairly or equitably administer these tests.  The Coalition thanked the Board of Regents and the State Education Department for this decision and called upon the Board to take additional, immediate action to ensure that no student loses the chance to finish high school due to COVID-19. Among other things, the Coalition recommended that New York State immediately extend COVID-19 exemptions to Regents exam graduation requirements through August 2021.  In March, the Board of Regents approved COVID-19 exemptions to allow students to graduate without taking Regents exams during the Pandemic.

In response to calls from the Coalition, the Board of Regents, in Spring 2020, approved COVID-19 exemptions to Regents exams and other high-stakes tests required to graduate from high school. As many students returned to remote or hybrid learning again in 2020-21, the Coalition urged State education officials to extend these COVID-19 waivers to graduation requirements through the 2020-21 school year so that high school students and educators could focus on preparing for students’ future success rather than preparing for high-stakes tests.  Read the August letter and the October letter.  In December, over 1, 1,000 individuals from around New York State — including more than 100 students, 650 parents, and 249 educators — had signed a petition joining in this request.

In May and June, members of the Coalition joined with over 100 education and advocacy organizations and more than five dozen parents and educators from across New York State to urge the New York State Education Department and Board of Regents to give students aging out of school in June 2020 the opportunity to return to high school for the 2020-21 school year, rather than lose their chance to earn a high school diploma because of COVID-19. Read the letters from May and June. Shortly thereafter, the NYSED issued this memo strongly encouraging schools across the state to allow 21-year-old students to return for summer school and, if necessary, attend school in the 2020-21 year, to complete their education.

In the face of unprecedented school closures due to COVID-19, the Coalition urged State education officials to suspend exit exam requirements for students otherwise eligible to graduate in 2020.

In November 2019, the Board of Regents and State Education Department launched Phase 1 of a two-year plan to reexamine graduation requirements in New York State, including plans to convene a Blue Ribbon Commission in 2020. In response, the Coalition released a list of recommendations for creating a graduation framework that is fair, comprehensible, and accessible to all students. The Coalition also released this one-page research summary in support of our recommendation that New York State decouple Regents exams from graduation requirements.

In response to Chancellor Rosa’s announcement that New York State would form a Blue Ribbon Commission to re-examine high school graduation requirements, the Coalition submitted a list of stakeholder groups and study questions that are critical to consider as the state works to identify graduation requirements that are comprehensible, rigorous, and that meet the needs of all learners.