NY’s ‘leaders’ are destroying public education by lowering standards

Canceled state exams and various pathways to commencement enabled metropolis commencement charges to prime 82 % final 12 months.
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Excellent news: New York’s high-school commencement price rose to 86.1% final 12 months, with town hitting 82%. Unhealthy information: A lot of these diplomas are nugatory, as a result of the Board of Regents and State Training Division tossed one of many chief educational necessities for graduating, the necessity to go no less than 4 Regents exams.

SED’s press launch makes noise about how “the mandatory Regents Examination exemptions” may have been an element. However the reality is that the parents accountable for state schooling would like to do away with Regents testing eternally, in order that extra colleges can “succeed.” They’ve already canceled the newest spherical of the exams (which ought to have come final month), nonetheless citing COVID as their excuse though all colleges have been open since September 2020.

Commencement charges within the metropolis and throughout the state have been steadily rising since 2005, when lower than half of metropolis children completed in 4 years. However the latest progress is especially about decrease requirements: The present crew of “leaders” (because the retirement of former Regents chief Meryl Tisch) have “modified” the principles greater than a dozen instances to create “various pathways” to graduating.

A few of these could also be legitimate, however that they preserve including new ones exhibits the motive. Equally, canceling the exams on the peak of COVID didn’t appear outrageous, however (once more) they preserve doing it.

In the end, that is on Meeting Speaker Carl Heastie, who successfully appoints the Regents. And pulling his strings on this difficulty are the state’s academics unions, whose assist he wanted to turn out to be speaker.

Mother and father, in brief, can’t maintain anybody accountable for this rolling catastrophe — besides by leaving New York’s public colleges completely, as rising numbers are doing. Rely it as another method the vested pursuits are destroying every little thing that when made New York nice.