Deepa Sachdev and her daughter studied for the 10th grade Earth Science Regents exam for months. Review sessions, flash cards, and late-night discussions of atmospheric cycles and rock formation diagrams. According to Sachdev of Dix Hills, “She was very overwhelmed, she cried a little bit during the exam,” so when her 16-year-old left the testing room crying last Thursday, it wasn’t just disappointing but also perplexing. “She hasn’t done that before in any exam or test, so that was a little disheartening.”
Her daughter is not by herself. Parents in several New York school districts are voicing almost the same worries: that this year’s science Regents exams were not only challenging but also contained content that students were never taught in class. Social media, school parking lots, and now direct calls to local news outlets are all places where the complaints are appearing. There’s a sense that something really went wrong this cycle, and the students occupying those chairs were the ones who had to pay for it.
Since the Regents examination system has been in place since 1865, most New Yorkers have come to accept it as a natural part of the educational system. To obtain a typical Regents Diploma, students must pass five of these tests. Whether it is Earth science, chemistry, or the living environment, the scientific component has always been important. A student’s confidence is not the only thing damaged by a low score. Transcripts, graduation schedules, and occasionally college admissions paths can all be impacted.
The consistency of the current complaints is what makes them especially noteworthy. When a few students struggle with an exam, that’s one thing. It’s another when parents from various districts, schools, and teachers are all reporting the same thing: inquiries that didn’t seem to relate to what was taught in class. Sachdev stated, “It’s OK to be tested on what you learned,” which makes it more difficult to ignore that pattern. “But it’s not fair to be tested on what you didn’t learn.”
If the state has a response, it hasn’t yet been effective. Exams are administered by NYSED through a committee of New York educators who create each test over a period of several years in accordance with state learning standards. Before being converted to a final scale score, raw scores are statistically equated. The system is calibrated for consistency in theory. In reality, depending on the school, the teacher, and the pacing guide used, what is “aligned to standards” in a testing room and what is actually covered in a classroom can differ—sometimes considerably.
This year’s exam might have revealed a change in the curriculum that hadn’t yet permeated the classroom. The Next Generation Learning Standards, a realignment process that started with Algebra I in June 2024 and is progressing through subjects in waves, are currently being implemented in New York. The June 2025 rollout included Earth and Space Sciences. It is important to consider whether teachers had enough time and resources to adequately prepare students for those revised expectations.
It’s more difficult to overlook the Board of Regents’ November 2024 vote to completely phase out these exams as a graduation requirement, starting in 2027–2028. That timing has a certain irony to it. Just as worries about exam fairness are becoming more prevalent, the state is abandoning the Regents as a high-stakes requirement. For the students who sat down last Thursday and struggled to leave, this does not imply that the transition is happening quickly enough.
Families are currently waiting to see if scores accurately reflect the challenges students have described and whether Albany residents are paying enough attention to notice.
