Setting high educational performance standards linked to content-rich curriculum and tying teacher preparation and professional development to those standards are the keys to boosting achievement levels for all public-school students, as shown in a recent Empire Center report comparing education outcomes in New York and Massachusetts.

In the 1990s, Massachusetts committed to establishing high standards in every subject and preparing high-quality, content-rich curriculum frameworks.

For example, in English Language Arts the content-rich curriculum “should expose students to a diversity of high-quality, authentic literature from multiple genres, cultures, and time periods. The purpose of teaching literature is not only to sharpen skills of comprehension and analysis, but also to instill in students a deep appreciation for art, beauty, and truth, while broadening their understanding of the human condition from differing points of view. This kind of curriculum which focuses on the acquisition of knowledge will also help students develop empathy for others while learning about who they are as individuals, citizens of this nation, and members of a wider civilization and world.”  

Unfortunately (and ominously), New York’s education policymakers are moving in the opposite direction—aiming to weaken measurable performance standards as part of a “Vision to Transform New York State’s Graduation Requirements,” the results of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures (Graduation BRC), unveiled in June by the State Education Department.   

The Commission’s “Vision” is based on the “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework” (CRS) that was developed by a previous Blue Ribbon Commission (Framework BRC) appointed by the Regents in 2015. The Regents, whose members are appointed by the legislature, are the body responsible for formulating the policies governing education in New York State.  

The CRS, which was completed in 2018, was ostensibly designed to “create true equity in New York State’s public education.” Achieving “Equity” in education, according to the CRS, means to “affirm racial, linguistic, and cultural identities; prepare students for rigor and independent learning; develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference; elevate historically marginalized voices; and empower students as agents of social change.”  

The CRS includes claims that it will entail “high expectations and rigorous instruction,” defined as “student-led civic engagement, critical examination of power structures, project-based learning on social justice issues, and student leadership opportunities.” 

But where and how will “rigorous instruction” occur under the CRS?  If students are leading, what will the teachers be doing?  Just stressing the importance of students’ separate “identities” and the necessity of their promoting (unspecified) “social change”? Will there be no attempt to explain and stress the common culture that unites us as Americans rather than trying to pit one group of citizens against others? (The very notion of a “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education” implies the latter approach: “sustaining” what are thought to be distinct “cultures” based on students’ racial or ethnic backgrounds rather than promoting, as part of the learning process, a sense of common citizenship and humanity.) 

The CRS was followed five years later by the report of the Graduation BRC that produced recommendations leading to the “Vision to Transform New York State’s Graduation Requirements,” (Vision) currently under consideration for approval by the Regents, following promised hearings that will be open to the public. 

According to the Department of Education’s website, the proposals contained in the Vision reflect the Regents’ and the Department’s “shared commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and with a foundation rooted strongly in the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework.”   

The Vision is the product of the 70-member Graduation BRC appointed by the Regents following the release of the CRS Framework. Described by Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa as “an incredibly diverse group of expert practitioners and the public,” the Graduation BRC was actually noteworthy for its lack of substantive diversity.  

The Graduation BRC did not include a single representative of private employers and only three members of parent groups (one of them representing home schoolers). Aside from seven public school teachers and a half-dozen college professors and administrators, the Graduation BRC was otherwise dominated by current and former public-education bureaucrats and school board members. 

Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr., described the proposed changes in an accompanying press release as “raising the bar for all students” by offering increased opportunities and avenues for them to demonstrate “mastery of the State’s rigorous learning standards.” However, the Vision’s four proposed transformations show no connection to achieving such mastery.   

The first Transformation listed requires the state to adopt a certain “Portrait of a Graduate.” But only one component of that portrait—“demonstrating literacy across all content areas”—has any reference to the acquisition of substantive knowledge, and it is simply too vague to mean anything. “Literacy,” properly, means the ability to read and write. Knowing mathematics isn’t part of “literacy.” Nor are science, history, economics, or even foreign languages. Are they to be included? 

Beyond literacy, the rest of the graduate portrait makes no allusion to substantive knowledge at all. Rather, according to the proposal, graduates should “demonstrate proficiency in cultural competence, social-emotional competence, innovative problem-solving, critical thinking, effective communication, and global citizenship.”  Yet no objective definition of “cultural” or “social-emotional competence,” let alone “global citizenship,” exists.   

The second Transformation called for by the Vision, far from authorizing schools to help students meet “rigorous learning standards,” would “redefine” the credits required for graduation by enabling students to achieve them “in a number of different ways,” such as “service-based learning experiences” and “participation in the arts.”  

While the third Transformation—the only one relating to current subject-matter Regents exams—would still require students to take “state-level assessments” of their learning that federal law requires to track their progress, any such assessments would be “decoupled” from requirements for a diploma.  Passing Regents exams in the basic subject areas of math, science, social studies and English Language Arts would be an option but would no longer be required for a high school diploma.  

The fourth and final Transformation would collapse New York State’s long-standing distinction between “local” and “Regents-advanced” diplomas (with the latter denoting college readiness) into a single diploma, to which local districts could “add additional seals and endorsements.”  

It is unlikely that most New York parents will have any interest in seeing their children’s education based on the Regents’ “portrait.”  We send our young people to school to make them literate, and to become sufficiently schooled in subjects like math, science, history, and foreign languages to equip them for success in the work force and/ or in higher education to be responsible and productive American citizens.  The Vision envisions public schools stepping in where families and social and religious institutions traditionally have been sources for cultural and social-emotional competence. All while minimizing objective criteria for measuring academic progress. 

Raising the level of all students’ learning in academic subjects — and thereby preparing them for success in life, as workers, parents, and citizens — is a truer path to success and good citizenship than eliminating objective criteria for assessing what they learn. The greatest losers from the de-emphasis on substantive learning will be students whose families are least likely to be able to compensate for what the schools are omitting.  

It will be up to New York parents and other concerned citizens, along with their elected representatives, to decide whether the Regents’ Vision to Transform New York’s Graduation Requirements merits adoption, or whether the state needs to move in the direction exemplified by the Massachusetts approach described in the Empire Center’s recent report. It should be noted the changes now being considered by the Regents risk increasing the exodus of families out of that system (already most visible in New York City), either to private or parochial schools, or to other states that have aimed at fortifying academic learning.
 
The Education Department has promised to seek “stakeholder input and feedback” on the Vision and Transformations at a series of “Ambassador Forums” to be held across the state starting this summer and continuing into October (although no forum schedule has yet been placed on the department website). Public feedback can also be entered until October 6 on the Commission’s “Thought Exchange” website. But time is short for public input. Final recommendations are scheduled to be presented to the Regents for adoption in November.