Regents Exams Cancelled, But What Will Replace Them?

Great work, everyone!  The exams are cancelled, but we need to keep the pressure on to make sure the state does right by our students.  We added the language below to our petition to demand that the Board of Regents waives the graduation requirement for all students taking Regents-bearing classes.  

Please keep sharing the petition and write an email to the Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa asking for these graduation requirements waived for all students!

New language to the petition:

In addition to waiving the Regents graduation requirement for seniors on track to graduate in June 2020, we must also reduce Regents graduation requirements for all students enrolled in high school during the COVID-19 crisis. Students currently taking Regents-bearing classes will be underprepared for exams come June. In the event that June 2020 exams are canceled, students should not have to take them at a later date when they are no longer taking the Regents-bearing class.  For example, if a current 9th-grade student is enrolled in a Living Environment course, they will not be adequately prepared to pass the exam next year because the material will no longer be fresh and they will be occupied with their new courses. As with all high-stakes testing, low-income students, English language learners, racial minorities, and students with disabilities will be disproportionately disadvantaged if we do not reduce the testing requirement. While we should be moving away from testing as a measure of student success anyway, reducing the number of exams required for graduation to three or fewer for all current high school students will alleviate the undue emotional burden on students and families in the aftermath of this unprecedented health crisis.