Two related stories caught my eye this week.
First, the New York Times reports that State of New York might be dropping its quite longstanding end of course (EOC) Regents Exams as a graduation requirement. I first heard of these tests back in the mid-80’s, though I then lived in the DC suburbs. I later taught in New York, and became quite familiar with them. This story also mentions dropping the multiple different sorts of high school diplomas available in New York down to a single diploma, which is related to the use of the Regents Exams, as passing additional Regents Exams (e.g., more science?) was a major requirement for the higher level diplomas.
Second, there has been a steep increase in student absences since before the pandemic. I saw a chart from a DC school district report that showed how bad it’s gotten there, with nearly 50% of students missing at least 10% of school.
That is worse at the high school level, nearly 2/3 of student missing at least 10% of school days and over 25% missing at least 30% of school days. Anyone who has spent days digging out of the hole created from missing a couple days for vacation, due to sickness or just because of a work trip easily understands that the impact of missing a day or two of class stretches far beyond simply the days missed.
A White House Council of Economic Advisors’ blog post pointed to a larger national study of the pandemic’s impact on absenteeism. It shows nearly a doubling of chronic absenteeism across the country.
Of course, absenteeism is not evenly distributed across all schools. This is a greater problem in lower SES schools, and often in more minority and English Language Learner dominated schools. This is why DC’s numbers look particularly bad, as they do not include schools from the (more affluent) suburbs.
These stories feel connected to me. I know from my own teaching experience—both in suburban schools and in inner-city schools—that the kids who failed to graduate overwhelmingly were kids who had major attendance problems at least as far back as 9th grade. Most of the kids who had the most trouble passing the required Regents Exams came from the same group of kids, or they were kids who came to school but did not do homework or pay attention—so they were physically present but were not engaged in learning.
Why are we shifting away from standardized tests? I understand they do not do a good enough job measuring student proficiency with the state learning standards, but I did not see kids who really had those proficiencies and yet could not pass the exams. The bar on the required exams simply was not that high. Yes, there were occasional years when the Physics Regents Exam as outrageously difficult, but that was not a required exam for graduation. Yes, we need better exams, but what do we accomplish by moving away from them?
I am just troubled that we are removing the best information for voters, tax payers and community members about the academic performance of the schools, perhaps largely due to wanting to stick our heads in sand. We don’t want to pay attention to the degree of disparities across communities—disparities that have been exacerbated in the last few years. Senator Ted Kennedy agreed to an increase in standardized testing in order to shine more light on the disparities, and I find that reasoning compelling. I don’t see how dumping tests will help students who need the most help or (are supposed to) attend our lowest performing schools.