Exit exams out, mediocrity in: The decline and fall of US graduation standards

Last month, the New York State Education Department announced that it intends to nix the Regents Exam as a graduation requirement in the Empire State.

The policy change received widespread condemnation. Former Gov. George Pataki (R) ripped the move as “incredibly stupid.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board criticized it as “as one more sorry milestone on America’s educational march to mediocrity.”

They’re right to heap scorn on the change. It’s entirely appropriate to test and ensure that graduates leave high school with basic competencies in reading, writing, and math. Receiving less opprobrium, but equally deserving of it, is what will replace the exam itself .

Education Commissioner Betty Rosa has explained that instead of relying on the Regents, the state is building a “graduation system grounded in New York’s Portrait of a Graduate,” a program wherein students can demonstrate their learning through performance-based assessments and portfolios. Instead of simply passing a basic competency test, the Portrait of a Graduate requires that students demonstrate their ability to be a “critical thinker” and “global citizen” through “multiple measures.”

Such banalities are superficially appealing — after all, who would oppose critical thinking? But the ability to think critically relies upon rudimentary academic skills of the kind the Regents Exam tested. No student can meaningfully analyze current events without basic factual knowledge of history or the ability to read paragraphs and comprehend them.

These portraits replace with vague aspirations the concrete, measurable, academic benchmarks that allow for higher-level cognitive functions. Consequently, students are likely to develop neither.

New York is actually late to this trend. In the mid-2000s, 27 states required high school exit exams. That number is now down to just six. Concurrently, 26 states have adopted some variation of “ Portrait of a Graduate ,” so we have evidence of what these shifts mean in practice.

A 2024 report by the ed-tech nonprofit Digital Promise analyzed more than 60 graduate portraits from districts. It devised a model for districts to follow that it says incorporates 90 percent of the specific competencies that appear across their sample. These include an ability to “care for and contribute to society” and “communicate in all media and modalities.”

In their report, they include models of what such a Portrait might look like in practice. For example, Digital Promise recommends middle school students demonstrate their problem-solving abilities through spaghetti tower challenges .

Another performance task that the ed-tech lauds comes by way of Howard-Suamico, Wisconsin , where students demonstrate “collaboration” by crafting tri-fold posters about potential gluten-free Taco trucks. Even the student model includes basic errors — get your taco with “ sweat corn .”

I was once a teacher. I don’t fault students for letting a typo slip through here or there. I have seen plenty of last-minute projects cobbled together the night before. But when such work is set forth as the ideal, it makes the whole effort look like a method to justify seemingly everything except academics.

Battelle for Kids, one of the main organizations behind the trend toward measurements such as “Portraits of a Graduate,” sets forth as an exemplar a student presentation analyzing Tupac and Lil Wayne lyrics from Affton School District in Missouri. It holds up as another example a collage of political posters on gun control and abortion rights in Winston-Salem, N.C.

In other words, by adopting poorly defined and unmeasurable goals, schools can use almost any activity to demonstrate preferred competencies. Running in parallel, schools can then also explain away academic failure. Sure, the students may not be able to add fractions, and they can’t name the three branches of government, but fortunately we have abolished all the tools we once had to measure such failures.

We can measure whether students can multiply and whether certain instructional practices helped them do it. But how do we measure global citizenship and determine if any one activity or another fosters it? We can’t, and so anything goes. Oh well — at least they can all conspicuously “ embrace diversity !”

Most everyone hopes that schools will foster some competencies, such as perseverance or problem-solving. But they are situated to do so best when they emphasize traditional academics.

How can a school foster grit? Maintain demanding academic gauntlets. How can schools create self-discipline? Set behavioral standards and hold students to them. How can schools enable critical thinking? Provide them the knowledge of history, science, literature, grammar, and the arts that become the tools of critical thought.

Students become thoughtful, self-controlled citizens by wrestling with worthy subject matter, not through kitschy activities where they make posters about how kindness is cool.

Getting rid of the Regents Exams was a mistake, but what they are replacing it with might be even worse.

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.