The Regents Exam and High School Diploma: It’s Time to Evolve into the 21st Century by Superintendent Michael J. Hynes

 

This post is by Mike Hynes, Superintendent of  Port Washington School District on Long Island. His previous post on this site, After the Pandemic: Our Children Deserve an Education Revolution, garnered 199,000 page views -- a record for this blog. 

The Regents Exam and High School Diploma: It’s Time to Evolve into the 21^st Century

 

By Michael J. Hynes, Ed.D.

 

 

After more than twelve years serving as a school superintendent and twenty-five as an educator, I’ve pushed back at the Editorial Board at Newsday when they conflate their love affair of rigorous testing to the magical potential of high educational outcomes. I’ve also seen when anyone opposes their viewpoint, it means they side with watering down the educational system with low expectations that would allow it live in a malaise of mediocrity.

 

In their most recent harangue, they share, “Seasons come and seasons go, but there is no off-season when it comes to caring about how we educate our children.” I’m the first to say; the Editorial Board cares about educating children, my concern is how they believe we need to do so. Let’s begin with their central argument over rigorous testing and its relation to academic progress and graduation rates. The Board warned, “That Regents tests, part of getting a diploma in New York State for more than a century, should not be abandoned or watered down just because students are having difficulty passing them. Improve what and how we teach.” The Editorial Board continues to argue, “Writing that Regents tests are not the problem with our high schools or our high schoolers. The exams are telling us there is a problem. That’s why they’re under attack.”

 

First, their opinion is far from accurate. They are under attack because we have been assessing our students in New York with the same type of exam since the end of the Civil War. We have assessed our students pretty much the same way for 150 years in New York State. I can’t think of anything else we do on the planet the same way for 150 years in medicine, transportation, technology or even how we entertain ourselves. Think about that for a moment. Everything else in the world has evolved around us except for the way we assess the learning of a student when they complete a course or grade level. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Regents Exams are terrible. We must however understand they are not the only way to assess learning in the classroom.

 

On an aside, a major problem we have with many students isn’t measured by a single test in math, science, English or social studies. We have students who are more anxious, depressed or suicidal than any generation before and it’s getting worse each year. The fact that schools don’t pay enough attention to that should be under attack, not the fact that we want to explore and potentially change how students graduate high school, the number of Regents exams a student takes, or if we should administer them at all.

Over the years, I have come to appreciate columnist Lane Fuller at Newsday and would like to think I’ve matured in my old age respecting divergent viewpoints. Mr. Filler recently warned against easing standards which he believes are driven by the Board of Regents, the state Assembly, and teacher unions. Mr. Filler believes, “If that happens…the crowing over instantly increased graduation rates will drown out the warnings that the soft bigotry of low expectations is too often leaving children adorned in caps and gowns behind.” I understand most people fear change, but to equate much needed change to bigotry and leaving children behind seems extreme from my perspective. We can increase graduation rates and still embrace high expectations…just different ones.  

I agree when the Editorial Board identifies that, “Skills and competencies unheard of 50 years ago now are crucial, while some traditional requirements have lost relevance. Not every student must be pointed toward a four-year liberal arts education, if a direct job path suits them better. But they all must have basic skills to function in this more complex world.” I truly feel we must look to the alternative methods some public and non-traditional school systems evaluate both teaching and learning. There are many viable ways for students to express proficiency and mastery in an area of study. The shift happens when the conversation reduces the importance of one data point at the end of the year to embracing the purpose and meaning of a students’ growth over time.  

I ask adults, when was the last time you took a multiple choice test or were assessed at work by the administration of a multiple choice test? To think we have assessed the children in New York the same way since Lincoln was in the White House is heartbreaking. The fact the New York State Education Department brought together a Blue Ribbon Commission to make potential changes to graduation requirements gives me hope. Let’s become familiar with some of the innovative schools around the world who embrace authentic learning and assessment. Students showcase their deep understanding by project and problem based assessments and performance minded tasks.  

I think we can all agree, that is how we navigate in the real world. It’s time we move New York State away from the 19^th century and into the 21^st. We can do so by developing alternative assessments that don’t bring down standards, but make them higher than what we already have. Maybe…just maybe, this is something we can all agree on in a world that celebrates divisiveness and extremes.

 

After the Pandemic: Our Children Deserve an Education Revolution by Michael J. Hynes

Mike Hynes is the Superintendent of Port Washington schools and a progressive education leader for change.  In my opinion he would make a terrific Commissioner of the NY State Education Department.

After the Pandemic: Our Children Deserve an Education Revolution

Michael J. Hynes

April 21, 2020

It’s amazing how quickly we go from one way of life to another in the blink of an eye. It happens in an instant. One day we live our life a certain way…and the next day it is turned upside down. This global pandemic has historically changed our economy, way of life, use of technology and how we physically interact with each other. All within a few months.

Millions of parents have suddenly found themselves responsible for overseeing their children’s education from home. This is a formidable challenge to be facing on top of all of the other stresses due to the pandemic. My hope is that our parents, educators and policymakers will finally realize how important school is and why it must evolve once our children resume going back to school in September.

Now is the time for our school leaders to generate a new compelling philosophy of education and an innovative architecture for a just and humane school system. We must refocus our energy on a foundation built on a sense of purpose, forging relationships and maximizing the potential and talents of all children. Let’s take advantage of the possibility that our nation’s attention can shift 180 degrees, from obsessing over test scores and accountability to an entirely different paradigm of physical, mental, and emotional well-being for students and staff.

It is our collective responsibility to foster engaging and meaningful environments when educating our children in the new era of a post pandemic education. As the great philosopher John Dewey stated over one hundred years ago, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” The first sentence in the 2018 World Bank Group’s Flagship Report- Learning: To Realize Education’s Promise states, “Schooling is not the same as learning.” I couldn’t agree more. The report continues to speak about that as a society, we must learn to realize education’s promise. Now is this the time to revolutionize this antiquated system built on old structures and ideologies. I recommend we change the purpose of schooling to the following core values:

·       Emphasize well-being. Make child and teacher well-being a top priority in all schools, as engines of learning and system efficiency.

·       Upgrade testing and other assessments. Stop the standardized testing of children in grades 3-8, and “opt-up” to higher-quality assessments by classroom teachers. Eliminate the ranking and sorting of children based on standardized testing.  Train students in self-assessment, and require only one comprehensive testing period to graduate from high school.

·       Invest resources fairly. Fund schools equitably on the basis of need. Provide small class sizes.

·       Boost learning through physical activity. Give children multiple outdoor free-play recess breaks throughout the school day to boost their well-being and performance. We observed schools in Finland that give children four 15-minute free-play breaks a day.

·       Change the focus. Create an emotional atmosphere and physical environment of warmth, comfort and safety so that children are happy and eager to come to school. Teach not just basic skills, but also arts, crafts, music, civics, ethics, home economics and life skills.

·       Make homework efficient. Reduce the homework load in elementary and middle schools to no more than 30 minutes per night, and make it responsibility-based rather than stress-based.

·       Trust educators and children. Give them professional respect, creative freedom and autonomy, including the ability to experiment, take manageable risks and fail in the pursuit of success.

·       Improve, expand and destigmatize vocational and technical education.   Encourage more students to attend schools in which they can acquire valuable career/trade skills.

In short, if we learn anything at all from this pandemic, we should clearly recognize that we need our teachers more than ever before. It’s imperative that schools focus on a balanced approach to education, one that embraces physical, emotional, cognitive and social growth. We have an enormous amount of work to do, but our children deserve nothing less.

Many questions remain as to the reliability of the state’s new list of struggling schools and why some schools were taken off the list and others not

On January 17, 2019, Commissioner Elia released a new list of “struggling” schools under the new accountability system created by the state to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, that replaced NCLB in 2016.  As an article in Chalkbeat explained,

Eighty-four of the city’s schools are on the lowest rung — known as “Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools” — and will be required to craft improvement plans approved by the state. The remaining 40 schools are only in need of “targeted” support and will face less intense oversight.

Yet the state formula used to develop this list of struggling or CSI schools is complex, confusing, and unreliable. Moreover, the Commissioner exempted certain schools that would otherwise have been identified as CSI schools through a decision-making process that is opaque.

Thirty-eight in NYC and 84 statewide were designated as “good standing #”, meaning according to the spreadsheet that their “Accountability status is based on a finding by the Commissioner of extenuating or extraordinary circumstances”. Why certain schools were taking off the list of struggling schools by the Commissioner due to “extenuating circumstances” and others were not is nowhere explained.

There were at least two very controversial issues that repeatedly were raised by parents, teachers and advocates during the hearings and comment period that preceded the adoption of the ESSA state plan. First was how opt out students would be counted, which is an especially critical issue since about 20% of the state’s eligible students in grades 3-8 have opted out of the state exams every year since 2015.

NYSAPE, Class Size Matters and other groups opposed the state plan to count these students as having failed on the state exams – and instead proposed a different system, called Opportunity Learn index, which would measure whether schools provided their students with the conditions for success.
If test scores had to be used, as the federal law required, then we recommended that the scores of opt out student scores should be assumed as average for that school and their subgroup.

The state rejected our proposals, however,  and instead adopted a complex formula that incorporates two variables – one called the Weighted Average Achievement Index, which counts opt out students as having failed in terms of test score proficiency, and another called the Core Subject Performance Index, which removes them from the formula entirely.  These two variables are combined to create a Composite Performance Level, in a mathematical process that is difficult to understand. [See this memo that attempts to explain how the two variables will be combined.]

Sure enough, at least two highly regarded NYC schools, Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies (BCS) and Central Park East One (CPE1) both designated by InsideSchools as “staff picks".  A letter sent by BCS school leaders to parents pointed at that "for the first time, New York State used a formula for calculating proficiency on the state tests where students who did not take the exam counted at the lowest level for schoolwide accountability to generate a Composite Performance Index.  At BCS last year, …76% of parents opted their children out of the Middle school exams.”

They added that BCS serves 36% students with special needs, much higher than the city average, and that while “incoming students have, on average, lower 5th grade Math and Reading levels than the city …  Our internal data shows that all students make progress every year at our school, even if they are not yet at grade level standards.”

Similarly, CPE 1 is well-respected as the oldest public progressive school in NYC. About 80 percent of its students boycotted the state’s English and math exams last year – which makes any attempt to evaluate the school’s quality on the basis of its test scores untenable.  In fact, both these two school earned above average “impact” scores from DOE of  0.55 and 0.51 respectively, which attempts to adjust for the racial, ethnic, disability and poverty level of its students.

An op-ed by Tish Doggett and Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, parents with children attending these two schools, argued that the NY State Education Department privileged narrow indicators such as scores on state exams while ignoring factors such as their students’ racial and socioeconomic background, which affect test scores and absenteeism  and these measures that profoundly affect the accountability status of a school. They proposed a more holistic alternative for assessing schools: “When will we measure whether a school meets state mandates for art and music? How small (or large) class sizes are? The number of guidance counselors and sports teams available? Whether there is a library?”

NYC schools were not the only ones to protest their CSI designations.  In a letter sent to Associate Commissioner Ira Schwartz, Michael J. Hynes, the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island, called the CSI list an "abomination" and demanded answers to why five of his district’s elementary schools were on the list, despite his appeal and the fact that only 10-20% of students at these schools took the state exams.  “I have several questions that need to be answered before we possibly move forward with any next steps.  I also need answers about what happens if, as a school district, we choose NOT to move forward with the nonsensical requirements associate with this false designation.”

In a statement to the community, Hynes related that he appealed to “SED a few weeks ago when we found out our schools were potentially going to have this ridiculous designation. Earlier this week we heard our appeal was denied. I’d like to know why our appeal wasn’t accepted…and I’m just finding out that several others were approved. I’m thankful other schools were approved based on “extenuating or extraordinary circumstances”. I believe ours should as well.  It should be public knowledge since this list is.”

Another controversial aspect of NY State’s accountability formula relates to how high schools with four-year graduation rates lower than 67% would be rated—especially in the case of transfer schools, which enroll students who are already overage and under-credited by the time they enter these schools.

Many parents, teachers and students from the transfer schools flooded the state hearings, to beg the Commissioner to give their schools special credit for having saved them from dropping out altogether, by offering them small classes and the personal attention and close support that they had been unable to receive in their previous high schools. [See the account of the Brooklyn hearings here, and Manhattan hearings here.]

In a joint letter written to Commissioner Elia and Chancellor Rosa on July 10, 2017, state and city officials maintained that applying the same standard to transfer schools would be harmful and unfair:
We are deeply troubled by the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) intention to designate all transfer schools that have a 6-year graduation rate below 67% as failing schools. We believe that the State’s proposed plan will greatly limit the ability of transfer schools to carry out their mission of supporting NYC’s most vulnerable students.

So we took a closer look at how the new accountability standards assessed NYC transfer schools and found that these schools were nearly four times more likely than non-transfer schools statewide and citywide to be designated as needing comprehensive support.

They were also five times more likely to receive “good standing #”, meaning they were removed from the struggling schools list based on the Commissioner’s decision that there were of “extenuating circumstances.” It is still unclear what those specific circumstances were, and why some transfer schools were taken off the list and others not.

In the table below, we outline the accountability status and the percent of schools statewide, citywide, and NYC transfer schools that received each type of designation.

Table 1. Accountability Status for Schools Statewide, Citywide, and NYC Transfer Schools

18-19 Accountability Status for School	% of schools statewide (4280 schools)	% of all NYC schools (1492 schools)	% of all NYC transfer schools (50 schools)
CSI (Comprehensive Support and Improvement)	5.6%	5.4%	20.0%
GS (Good Standing)	89.5%	89.5%	68.0%
GS# (Good Standing #)	2.0%	2.5%	10.0%
TSI (Targeted Support and Improvement)	2.7%	2.1%	2.0%
TSI# (Targeted Support and Improvement#)	0.2%	0.5%	0.0%
Closing	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%

# - Accountability status is based on a finding by the Commissioner of extenuating or extraordinary circumstances. Data drawn from 2018-2019 Accountability Status Report. Charter schools not included in analysis. Data available here: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/accountability/essa/documents/AccountabilityStatus2018-19.xlsx

Commissioner Elia had promised last year that she would take the special status of transfer schools into account when considering whether to put them into Receivership, which can involve radical changes in governance and staffing:

“As a result of this adjustment, schools that have been identified as being among the lowest performing for more than three consecutive years are placed under Receivership. Alternative schools (e.g., Transfer high schools and Special Act schools) will not be automatically placed into Receivership; instead, the Commissioner will work with the district, should any alternative school be identified as among the lowest-performing for more than three consecutive years, to determine the most appropriate interventions for that school. " (page 111)

However, the disproportionate number of NYC transfer schools on the CSI list questions Commissioner Elia’s commitment to acknowledge and respect the special nature of these schools. Without more transparency, it is impossible to know why certain transfer schools were given special dispensation and others were not, as listed below.

NYC transfer schools that received “CSI”:

• Bronx Arena High School
• Bronx Regional High School
• Brooklyn High School for Leadership and Community
• Jill Chaifetz Transfer High School
• New Directions Secondary School
• North Queens Community High School
• Olympus Academy
• Providing Urban Leaders Success in Education High School
• South Brooklyn Community High School
• West Brooklyn Community High School

NYC transfer schools that received “Good Standing #."

• Bronx Haven High School
• Brooklyn Frontiers High School
• English Language Learners and International Support
• Liberation Diploma Plus
• Research and Service High School