At the end of the school year, many high school students across New York will take the dreaded regents exams. Here in Irvington the regents count as final, and for most classes they make up 10% of a student’s final grade. To some students including myself, this large portion of the grade overshadows a student’s hard work throughout the rest of the year, and the formulaic style can appear out of touch with the various ways students understand a topic.
Generally finals are a common landmark of the highschool experience , however they don’t typically appear on a student’s final transcripts, but regents do.
At the end of the school year, many high school students across New York will take the dreaded regents exams. Here in Irvington the regents count as final, and for most classes they make up 10% of a student’s final grade. To some students including myself, this large portion of the grade overshadows a student’s hard work throughout the rest of the year, and the formulaic style can appear out of touch with the various ways students understand a topic.
Owen Liu, a freshman at Irvington High School, says, “I don’t think we should have Regents because… a lot of us will work hard the entire year just for everything we have done to be outweighed by a single test.”
Beyond the irregular amount of space one test takes up in the grade book, many people learn differently in today’s world, and these exams have failed to reflect this critical diversity. Instead of the exams, the state should offer more hands-on examinations that reflect student growth over time.
This can possibly be done in smaller more specific assignments like labs and essays in which students experiment with new topics and ideas. These smaller activities can be sprinkled throughout the school year, and would give a more detailed look at student proficiency. There is already a semblance of this with the state labs in freshman biology classes ( freshmen still take the biology regents), but this can be expanded to other classes before eventually phasing out the regents.
Additionally, there is an unproductive culture of teaching to the test which is an inevitable byproduct of large exams such as the regents. Smaller projects and activities will give more room for schools to develop problem solving skills, creativity, and innovation in higher levels that’ll be more beneficial for the students’ futures.
Finally, many people believe that the exams are more about rigor, and demonstrating knowledge of a topic, but the exams bring more pressure to the students that is necessary. This pressure can be avoided by changing the harsh testing environment into the smaller less stressful ventures as described above.
Sam Lee, a freshman at Irvington high school says, “regents are outdated, many people I know struggle with testing anxiety, and they often do badly on tests.”
Ultimately, regents have become an outdated testing system which has failed to properly measure and aid student development. Learning is about more than simply proving knowledge on a given topic, it’s about the deep cable between concept and reality; the state needs to better address this.
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