New York State Regents Exam History
Contrary to what I believed as a graduate of a small suburban school in New York where I took about 15 Regents Exams in at least 5 separate disciplines over the course of 4 years, the New York Regents exams are not a new-fangled torture device introduced in the last century like the College Board’s SAT: Scholastic Aptitude Test. No, the New York State Regents was first administered in 1878 (Center on Education Policy 1) and have evolved into New York’s most widely used exit test for secondary schools and “the basis for the curricula, initiating a cycle of curriculum development and testing that was cohesively intertwined in a yearly process of teaching and assessment” (Johnson 2).
The roots of this test are situated in a few different policies and bureaucratic bodies:
Morrill Act: In the words of Brad Lightcap: The Morrill Act of 1862 was also known as the Land Grant College Act. It was a major boost to higher education in America. The grant was originally set up to establish institutions is each state that would educate people in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and other professions that were practical at the time. The land-grant act was introduced by a congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill. He envisioned the financing of agricultural and mechanical education. He wanted to assure that education would be available to those in all social classes. There were several of these grants, but the first passed in 1862. This bill was signed by Abraham Lincoln on July 2. This gave each state 30,000 acres of public land for each Senator and Representative. These numbers were based on the census of 1860. The land was then to be sold and the money from the sale of the land was to be put in an endowment fund which would provide support for the colleges in each of the states.
The University of the State of New York:
Today it is, a section of the New York State Education Department that “visits and inspects” the following…
- More than 7,000 public and private elementary and secondary schools;
- 248 public and private colleges and universities;
- 251 proprietary (for-profit) schools;
- Nearly 7,000 libraries including the New York State Library;
- 750 museums;
- The State Archives;
- Vocational rehabilitation and other services for adults with disabilities;
- Special education services for pre-school and school-age children and teenagers;
- A School for the Blind;
- A School for the Deaf;
- 25 public broadcasting facilities, including seven public television stations;
- More than 750,000 professionals practicing in 48 licensed professions, including, for example, pharmacy, architecture, accounting, and nursing; and
- 240,000 certified public school teachers, counselors, and administrators.
How Has The Test Been Working?
In the past 133 years, the NYS Regents Exam has gotten a face lift each and every year, but there are a few issues and characteristics that are constantly brought up for discussion.
Who has traditionally made the tests?
Teachers from upstate and the most successful schools in the state are asked to attend test production conferences in Albany where they are paid to draft questions and participate in discussions on test improvements. Only 5-6 percent of teachers are represented in test production (Johnson).
Why have the test?
-Accountability: Rising public interest in testing and other political pressures led many states and localities to begin publishing scores in the early 1970s, after decades of secrecy. By now, many do so as a matter of course and often conviction. State and local school agencies also increasingly turned to tests in efforts to improve instruction. The favored method was to institute “account- ability” schemes, often based on minimum competency tests.
-Universal Academic Curricula: In 1984 Commisional Gordon Ambach set up something called the “Action Plan” where schools would write up a “Comprehensive Assessment Report (CAR) that listed information about the schools’ data on enrollment, attendance, dropout rates, and student performance results on the basic comprehensive exams,” (Johnson 8) which essentially provided the local and state governments with their first measures of efficiency.
What should be tested?
When the Regents Exams were conceived there was a lot of excitement and a spirit of experimentation which overtook the New York State Examinations Board. Using our 21st century imaginations, pretend there is no such thing as the SAT, GRE, MCAT, GMAT, etc. The Regents Board had control over many of the New York exit examinations that would be administered to students who aspired to be doctors, lawyers, and other specialized experts. In 1925, Regents high school exams were offered in 68 different subjects in specialty courses such as art, architecture, electricity, structural design, and more (Johnson). In the 2000′s there are still many different tests students could take in math, science, foreign language, social studies, and English, but they’re only required to pass five with a score of 65 or over to attain their regents level diploma.
Is it fair that districts in New York receive funding based on their Regents testing scores?
With the exception of a few states, school funding can be summed up as follows: “High schools in the United States are locally funded so wealthier areas vote tax dollars to their schools and the poor cannot,” (Johnson 3) making it impossible for all schools to be adequately set up to give students the tools they need to succeed on exit tests like the NYS Regents.
Why are the overt correlations between wealth and Regents success not addressed by the state?
In 2001, the Supreme Court of New York found the New york legislature guilty of misalocating funds in a way that prevented school districts from reaching the high standards set by the Regents testing board. Governor George Pataki defended the state’s educational testing board against these claims in an appeal in the appellate court and won. Again the case went to trial and the State was told it must provide a cost based system that could adequately supply schools with materials to prep them for tests. The state has ignored this order (Johnson).
What’s The Public Pulse on the Exam?
Kamourii tells us how he feels about the regents. Warning, this video contains explicit, adolescent, and real language:
Pushes Towards Alternatives
Since the 1960′s, by which time the supreme court had established that parents had the right to choose their child’s education (Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary) and that states could use buses to transport children to parochial schools (Emerson v. Board of Education), Alternative public schools were first making their appearance in the U.S. (Conley 22-23) and with them groundbreaking theories on assessment were being put into practice. Only since 1995 have select alternative schools in New York been given the go-ahead to nix the Regents.
The Consortium
“In 1995 New York State’s Commissioner of Education, Thomas Sobol, granted the Consortium schools a waiver from the state’s Regents exams” (Foote) which essentially allowed these schools to use alternative assessments that can be shown to colleges.
Listen To A Story From 2010 On NPR: “State Literature” by Margo Adler
Questions For Further Research:
1. What is testing? What does testing do? What is some of the psych and ethics behind testing? Survival of the fittest? What is assessment?
2.Why should students be tested? Dewey?
3. Were/ Are students getting enough preparation? How is this quantified?
4. What can assessment become? What other exit tests exist out there that could potentially be implemented in NY?
Sources:
Conley, Brenda Edgerton. Alternative Schools: a Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Print.
Folts, James D. “History of the University of the State of New York and the State Education Department 1784-1996.” ERIC. 1996. Web. Online Database
Foote, Martha. “Performance-Based Assessment.” The National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest. Fair Test. Web. July 2011. <http://fairtest.org/performance-based-assessment>. Website
Hillocks, George. The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning. New York: Teachers College, 2002. Print.
Johnson, Carol. History of New York State Regents Exams. Tech. Web. <http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Jyl3-WUV6KEJ:web.njit.edu/~cjohnson/research/pprs/history.regents.pdf+carol+siri+johnson+regents+test&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjvQ0sl0EBeyY7kdHufeja5vMFmZ9b7FZVDN-p-Z2OE3Al1mPwOcsubnTvr1mWrxk_W6N9k8vWn00eE2zu36l2-OjSWkEBmXuOBmtuRzBYvn6tvYtOqNbEp3zyRWBJstykNG8_B&sig=AHIEtbT4LtaGKTv2iXfkKhnH6FvvyiEsXA>.
Kutz, Eleanor, and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1991. Print.
NY State Profile- New York Regents Examinations. Publication. Center on Education Policy, 2010. Web.
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