Nearly three-quarters of New York State public school students who graduated high school in 2021 would not have been able to do so just two years earlier, according to a report by the New York Equity Coalition.

The coalition said 71 percent of the state’s 2021 graduating class would not have met graduation requirements in 2019. One of the reasons was that more than 100,000 students relied on one or more of the exemptions introduced by the state to offset the effects of Covid in order to meet their graduation requirements, the report said.

The Board of Regents, which oversees the New York State Education Department, has eased up on its testing requirements in recent years, introducing a number of measures to ease the burden on students seeking their diplomas. The effort was accelerated over the past three academic years because of the Covid pandemic.

New York confers two types of high school diplomas upon graduation: the standard Regents diploma and a local diploma. Most students are required to pass at least five Regents examinations in academic subjects with scores of at least 65 in order to receive a Regents diploma. Students with learning or other disabilities are eligible for a local diploma by passing two Regents exams with scores of at least 52 and “otherwise demonstrat[ing] competency” in three other subjects. 

The vast majority of students graduate with a Regents diploma. In 2021, fewer than 870 students graduated with a local diploma.

New York students spent three months in remote instruction as part of the initial school shutdown in 2020. Disruptions continued during the 2020-21 academic year, among them mask requirements and regular quarantines. 

To account for the varying circumstances of study, the Board of Regents reduced the examination requirements. In 2021, due to Covid, students who passed a class corresponding to a Regents exam — “successfully completed courses leading to required Regents Exams” — were not required to sit for the examination itself. The exams themselves were canceled in January, June, and August 2021.

The class of 2021 had an 86.1 percent graduation rate — 1.3 percent higher than the class of 2020. As the New York Equity Coalition noted, 70.9 percent of these students used at least one exemption.

“While this is great news on the surface, recent changes to state graduation requirements make it difficult to know if graduation rate improvements accurately reflect how well schools are preparing students — especially those who have been historically underserved by the education system — for future success,” the coalition wrote in its report.

The coalition advocates for greater educational opportunities and higher achievement for all students in New York, and particularly for underserved students. The group expressed concern about measuring academic achievement in the face of changing Regents requirements.

The Board of Regents has instituted further exemptions in the past year. A new appeals process, resulting from “the continued impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” allows students to appeal an exam score of at least 49. In 2014, a study from the New York State Education Department found that scores above 78 were the best indicators for professional and college preparedness. 

The Regents also expanded eligibility for the local diploma. Students can now request “special determination” to graduate with a local diploma if they fail Regents exams or miss the tests due to illness or “other restrictions attributable to Covid.”

“If exemptions and appeals” remain “common practice, there is a critical need to ensure that classroom instruction — teaching, learning, and formative assessment — is aligned to the rigor of Regents examinations,” the coalition wrote in the report.