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New York is about to make the same mistake its neighbors have made. On September 14, the New York State Board of Regents voted to eliminate Regents exams—the standardized tests administered to all New York high schoolers—as a high school graduation requirement and replace them with a system offering multiple graduation pathways.
The experiment is likely to end poorly. Just look at what’s happening in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, which enacted similar reforms. In 2024, Massachusetts voters repealed the state’s exit-exam graduation requirement—a passing score on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS)—through a ballot measure supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA). In 2018, Pennsylvania introduced alternative options for students struggling with standardized tests, which went into effect for the class of 2023.
Those states’ experiences show that weakening graduation requirements reduces accountability for schools. New York shouldn’t follow their lead. Replacing objective standards will introduce nebulous requirements that exist mainly to boost graduation rates rather than help students learn.
The MTA promised that Massachusetts schools would maintain their high standards without the MCAS requirement, but that proved false. The state’s former education secretary, James Peyser, reviewed the competency requirements at more than 50 school districts that replaced the MCAS graduation requirement. Districts resorted to defining competency as the lowest passing grade. Two-thirds of districts set the bar at D-, another 18 percent at D, and 15 percent didn’t specify at all what counted as passing.
The MCAS is still administered for grades 3 to 8 and grade 10. But newly released MCAS scores show declining scores, particularly for tenth-graders. In 2019, around 60 percent of students were at least meeting expectations in both reading and math. The pandemic took a toll, but there were sharp drops after 2024. In 2026, 45 percent of tenth-graders met expectations in reading and math. It’s unclear whether the results were primarily due to fewer students being academically prepared or whether students were less motivated to do their best on tests with low stakes. Neither of these explanations is particularly reassuring. Massachusetts is now trying to restore meaningful graduation requirements.
Pennsylvania offers multiple tracks for students to graduate, some of which don’t require passing state exams. The “evidence-based” pathway has become a particularly popular option in struggling districts like the School District of Philadelphia. Students with weaker state exam scores can provide three pieces of “evidence” to demonstrate that they are graduation-ready. In 2023, more than half of Philadelphia students demonstrated preparedness by means of state exams. But by 2025, only a little over a third of students demonstrated competency through state tests, while 40 percent of students graduated through the “evidence-based” pathway.
Under the “evidence-based” pathway, pieces of evidence can include AP test scores, service-learning projects, and community college courses. But an “industry-recognized credential” is, by far, the most popular option. Though such credentials—which, according to the state education department, “measure competence in core content and performance standards in a specific set of work-related tasks”—have some merit for demonstrating career readiness, students tend to select ones that are easy to earn but not highly valued by employers. In Philadelphia, teachers report that students at schools under pressure to boost graduation rates resort to options like a two-hour online ladder-safety course. The incentive for Philadelphia education officials is clear: on paper, they get to claim that graduation rates have improved, even as the majority of students struggle with basic reading and math.
New York’s incoming changes to graduation requirements combine vulnerabilities from both states. Under the system, students can submit portfolios and projects to demonstrate academic readiness. Using projects as replacements for state exams introduces a host of problems.
New York’s Performance-Based Learning and Assessment Networks (PLAN) pilot program, currently implemented at 23 schools and created to inform the state’s graduation overhaul, provides a glimpse of what’s to come. State leaders insist that they are not dumbing down expectations, but educators in the pilot program seem to believe that the alternative measures are less rigorous than the Regents exams.
For example, one school leader at Dana West Junior/Senior High School said that she would “love” to have an alternative assessment option, “because taking a test like that is hard for them.” Another leader at Brentwood High School said allowing students to submit portfolios would enable students to show how they’ve “mastered those standards, even if they do not pass the Regents [exams].” A student who understands the course content should be able to demonstrate that understanding regardless of the evaluation method.
Project-based assessments also put less emphasis on students’ core knowledge and create greater potential for AI misuse. For Algebra 1, Saugerties Senior High School highlighted student projects in which students talked about math but demonstrated very little knowledge of it. The school’s approach also appears unconcerned with “rote correctness.” One teacher said, “I’m not assessing if they know how to multiply. . . . I’m assessing what they got from the unit.” Meantime, an English class gave students nearly four weeks to write lyrics for a song about a social or personal issue. The length of time for this flimsy assignment, even if primarily conducted in class, gives students ample opportunity to use AI between classes.
The Regents exams avoid these issues while offering other benefits. They give students external motivation to care about their academic outcomes. They keep teachers on track. They make it harder for schools to weaken expectations just to graduate more struggling students. And they provide an efficient, transparent way to evaluate students.
New York state education leaders say the move away from the Regents exams is about lowering the stakes for students. In reality, they are relieving schools of the mandate to ensure that students are adequately prepared for graduation. Students will suffer the consequences later, in the real world, where the stakes are much higher.
