Good Riddance to Regents Exams; But What Should Replace Them?

“Oh no,” a student in my 11th grade English Language Arts class groaned dramatically. “Anything but Regents prep!” As a teacher in the New York City school system for the past 17 years, it has been hard not to feel the same way.

But news that New York students will no longer be required to pass Regents exams to earn a diploma could have hardly come as a shock to many in today’s test optional climate. And longstanding debates about the role of standardized testing in education threaten to obscure an opportunity for change that is far more urgent.

British journalist Johann Hari called it nothing less than an “attention crisis” brought on by the increased exposure to digital distractions like social media, constant notifications, and the rapid switching between online content, which trains the brain to quickly shift focus rather than maintain deep concentration.

In 2011, the English Language Arts Regent was truncated from two days to one, six hours to three. Where students previously wrote four essays, they now were required to write two. Destined for the chopping block was an infamous essay called the “Critical Lens,” which required that students discuss two full length works of literature they had read through the “lens” of a quotation they had to first interpret.

In 2011, 87 percent of teens aged 14-17 had a cell phone. The fracturing of our attention had begun, and getting kids to read and remember not one, but two, books well enough to write about them was becoming more difficult each year. Many teachers heaved a collective sigh of relief at this revision, but who knew where we were heading?

Educators know that the very foundation of learning is the ability to focus the attention. And yet, schools in NY State opened for the 2024-25 academic year without a cell phone ban in place. For too many years, teachers have been left to figure out this problem on their own.

Former schools chancellor David Banks declared in his final State of our Schools address that the alternative to standardized testing was...more technology. “The very notion of an annual test that everybody takes at a single moment in time” is “an age-old thing,” Banks said, dismissing a practice that has been used in the United States since the mid 1800s. “In this new 21st century that we are in with the advent of technology, I truly believe that we can do assessment of our students in real time.”

In 1977, American social scientist Herbert Simon wrote, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” The barrage of information that our students withstand on a daily basis is staggering. They struggle to read a passage or complete a math problem, while their cellphones flash and buzz like slot machines, a competition for attention that even adults, with their fully developed brains, often lose.

Meanwhile, a Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures presented their “Portrait of a Graduate” at a meeting of the Board of Regents in November, a plan aimed at “transforming education” in New York. Their “portrait” relies on previously tried and tired alternatives such as portfolios, community service, and project-based learning to demonstrate proficiency in the absence of standardized tests.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with these methods of assessment, we do not have the luxury of retreading old ground, or recklessly embracing a spate of new AI technologies, billion dollar companies that race to market their tools to school districts all too eager to contract with them. We have to get to work rebuilding what has already been lost, our deteriorating powers of attention.

“This is going to require attention to attention, and dedicated spaces to learn (or relearn) the powers of this precious faculty,” explain D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt, in an opinion piece for the NY Times. “Spaces where we can give our focus to objects and language and other people, and thereby fashion ourselves in relation to a common world. If you think that this sounds like school, you’re right: This revolution starts in our classrooms.”

By all means, get rid of the Regents exams. But don’t squander this pivotal moment to reconsider what students really need to succeed right here and now in 2024.