WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES FEBRUARY 25, 2021 15
EDUCATION
New York may ease Regents
requirements while holding
to federal testing mandate
Photo via Getty Images
BY ALEJANDRA O'CONNELL-DOMENECH
EDITORIAL@QNS.COM
@QNS
School districts in New York state
will still be required to administer
standardized tests this year
despite the pandemic, but offi cials are
working to waive the exams graduation
requirements and cancel some
tests altogether.
On Monday, Feb. 22, the Biden
administration announced states
would not be given a blanket waiver
for federally required exams but
schools could administer shorter or
remote versions of the exam as well
as extend testing windows.
New York State Education Department
offi cials responded by saying
they were “disappointed” in the decision
but said the federal government
“made the right call” in stating that no
student should be made to come to
school to take an exam and agree that
exam results would only be used to
measure student learning.
As a result, NYSED plans to propose
a number of modifi cations to state exams
during its next Board of Regents
meeting in March including waiving
federally required Regents Exams as a
graduation requirement and canceling
all non-required Regents Exams.
“USDE agreed to uncouple state
assessments from accountability
measures so no school will be aff ected
by the results of state assessments
and the results will solely be used as
a measure of student learning,” said
NYSED spokesperson Emily DeSantis
in a statement. “Given these circumstances,
the Department will propose
a series of regulatory amendments at
the March Board of Regents meeting so
Regents Exams would not be required
to meet graduation requirements and
to cancel any Regents Exam that is not
required by USDE to be held.
New York state is required to give
annual standardized tests to third
though eighth-grade students and
high school students are required
to pass fi ve Regents exams in a math,
science, social studies, and English but
state offi cials last month requested a
waiver from the federal education
department to exempt third through
12th-grade students from taking state
exams this spring.
Offi cials argued that amid the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic standardized
tests could not be “safely, equitably
and fairly administered to students
in schools across the state,” Board of
Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young
Jr. said in a statement.
Last year, NYSED offi cials canceled
June, August and January 2021 Regents
exams due to the pandemic and allowed
some students scheduled to take
Regents in order to fulfi ll the graduation
requirements to forgo exams.
Many teachers who have largely
opposed administering the exams
during the pandemic supported the
state’s proposal.
“In a year that has been anything
but standard, mandating that students
take standardized tests just
doesn’t make sense,” said president
of New York State United Teachers
Andy Pallotta. “As the educators
in the classroom, we have always
known that standardized tests
are not the best way to measure a
child’s development, and they are
especially unreliable right now. We
need to ensure that our students
who have been hit hardest during
the pandemic receive the support
they need. Sizing up students with
inequitable and stressful exams is
not the solution.”
HIGHER ED TODAY
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It has been an extraordinarily difficult
year for New Yorkers, including the 270,000
students enrolled every year in the City University
of New York. In the last 12 months, our
students have weathered a global pandemic,
suffered the loss of loved ones and withstood
economic hardships, all while transitioning
to remote learning — a daunting and at times
overwhelming experience, especially for students
juggling multiple responsibilities — as
they tried to hold onto their academic dreams.
Despite their perseverance — the University
awarded 56,527 diplomas last year, the
second-highest total in our history — our current
students, and high school seniors who will
soon be CUNY students, will need additional
support to succeed after this once-in-a-lifetime
experience and nearly a year and half of distance
learning. CUNY has been building on existing
and new student-support programs and
partnerships to help students navigate a classroom
experience that has been upended by the
pandemic.
CUNY students who participated in focus
groups after the Spring 2020 semester described
how the change in their learning environments
from campus to home impacted their focus and
motivation, making it difficult for them to be
as productive at home as they were on campus.
The feedback, obtained in partnership with
independent non-profit research group Ithaka
S+R, suggested colleges could improve remote
learning for students by — among other steps
— making a concerted push to increase professional
development for faculty in online instruction.
In response, CUNY’s School of Professional
Studies created an award-winning
series of workshops in online instruction that
drew 3,400 faculty members.
Other existing support programs were
quickly adjusted to a distance-learning environment.
One of those, CUNY Edge, targets
students who receive public benefits. Supports
such as virtual “walk-in hours” provide a platform
for students to ask questions and request
assistance without having to wait for an appointment.
It’s also a way of building community
for our students in a time of increasing social
isolation. CUNY ASAP and ACE, programs
that provide wraparound support to ensure
timely graduation, maintained their engagement
with nearly 100 percent of students via
Zoom, email and telephone, sustaining the high
contact rates of semesters when students were
on campus. Similarly, we have intensified our
campaign to provide students with step-by-step
virtual support as they file for financial aid.
And the payoff is clear: the number of CUNY
students submitting a FAFSA application is on
the rise, bucking the national trend.
We also redoubled efforts to make sure students
graduating from city public schools continue
on to college. We expanded the reach of
CUNY Tutor Corps, a successful program in
which CUNY students mentor middle and high
school students from the NYC Department
of Education (DOE). CUNY and the DOE are
working with the City’s Young Men’s Initiative
to hire an additional 50 diverse mentors. That
means 10,600 public school students in all five
boroughs will have access to 350 CUNY students
to support their needs.
The pandemic exposed the systemic injustice
of long-standing social and economic inequities,
conditions that so many CUNY students
— 80 percent of whom are either Black, Latino
or Asian — struggle to overcome even in the
best of times. Students derive greater benefit
from mentors who can address their linguistic
and cultural needs, as well as their educational
ones. Because they are students themselves,
CUNY mentors can speak from the perspective
of personal experience.
As Nataly Toro, a John Jay senior and Tutor
Corps mentor says: “It’s important for students
to hear from current college students like
myself because it lets them know they are not
alone. We were high school students not too
long ago; we can relate.”
Another new program, the Application Advisors
Initiative, is enabling CUNY to support
7,000 New York City high school graduating seniors.
Working under the supervision of high
school counseling staff from February through
May, CUNY students will ensure that seniors
complete their college applications, file for financial
aid and complete all of the requisite paperwork,
as they transition to college.
We also recently launched CUNY Winter
Bridge, a new program to re-engage seniors
who committed to a CUNY college last fall but
for a variety of reasons never matriculated.
An outgrowth of our College Bridge for All
program, which helped support 57,000 DOE
high school seniors thanks to a $1.1 million
grant from both Bloomberg Philanthropies
and the Petrie Foundation, Winter Bridge college
coaches reached out to 8,000 recent DOE
graduates by Zoom, email and text, starting
last December, to guide them through the full
enrollment process. I’m happy to say 1,000 of
those students were already participating in
one of our transition programs such as CUNY
Start/Math Start, or polishing their English
language skills in our CUNY Language Immersion
Program.
These are just some of the ways that CUNY
is making sure the pandemic doesn’t erase
the progress we have made. As I’ve said many
times, CUNY is an integral New York institution.
By helping CUNY students, current and
future, obtain a college education and learn the
skills they need to succeed in the job market,
we are helping our beloved city to rebuild, and
planting the seeds for its steady rebound.
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