The New York State Board of Regents has yet another idea to alter the high school Regents testing system. Board member Harry Phillips III has recommended that an appeals system should be created for students who fail the exams to be allowed to graduate from high school as long as they meet certain academic criteria in their classes.
This proposal may help gifted students who are unfairly challenged by a multiple-choice English-language test. However, rigorous guidelines must be put in place if the appeals system is used to ensure it does not become a shortcut around testing.
The appeals system proposal comes on the heels of many controversial changes to Regents standards in recent months. The format of the physics and math exams were changed to make the tests more fair and easier for students to understand and the Board of Regents also gave schools the option of lowering the passing grade 10 points from 65 to 55.
The proposed appeals system is based on a similar system instituted by Massachusetts's high schools. This was the first year the Massachusetts schools applied the appeals to their mandatory state testing, where 3,000 students of 60,000 failed to pass, according to a Buffalo News article. Over 2,370 appeals were made, and 1,191 of them were approved, allowing one-third of students who failed these tests to graduate.
The Regents Board must be extremely careful incorporating this proposal, and must carefully scrutinize who will qualify for these appeals. The Massachusetts system limits appeal applicants by only considering those who miss the passing score by only a few points. In addition, the system requires each student to have excellent attendance as well as grades that are comparable to those students who passed the tests.
The Regents Board must also create more specific guidelines. If attendance and class work are going to be used to determine appeal eligibility, then specific numbers must be made public.
It is important to remember that the Regents are given to prove that students hold the minimum level of knowledge for the specified subject. Before granting an appeal, instructors must be confident the student possesses that minimum level of knowledge but just failed the exam.
Heidi Perlman, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Education, said the appeals system there takes into account those students who clearly understand the material in class, yet "sit down and take a test and freeze." The Massachusetts guidelines are "designed out of fairness," and if New York adopts a similar program, it needs to take students who do not have equal academic skills into consideration.
Many students, such as those who have not been raised with English as their native language, may have trouble dealing with Literature and English Regents exams. If students like these fail certain Regents exams, the members of the Regents Board should seriously hear the opinions of the students' teachers. If a teacher truly sees that certain students are genuinely capable of writing and reading at a high level, an appeal must be considered.
The appeal system has its share of merits and downfalls. The Regents board must have known guidelines for choosing who will qualify for the appeal, but at the same time, the board members must openly accept student reports given by teachers in order to gauge reasons why certain students fail the tests The Regents are a key for the state to determine who has the necessary education to move to the next step of their academic careers, and it is hard to pinpoint which students should be allowed to slip through this potential academic loophole.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
