NY high school graduation rates may have been ‘inflated’ during COVID pandemic: report

High school graduation rates across the Empire State may have been “inflated” during the pandemic, a new report found.

Roughly three out of every four grads used at least one state test exemption to earn a diploma in 2021, according to data released Monday by the New York Equity Coalition.

New York’s graduation rate has been growing since 2016, to 86.1% in 2021, for a 1.3% increase, according to data analyzed by The Education Trust, a statewide policy and advocacy group.

But the report notes that, “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 state Education Department has made several tweaks to rules around Regents exams since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, first canceling the standardized tests altogether in 2020. For the 2020-2021 school year, officials allowed kids to graduate without taking exams, and only required they pass their Regents-based course by the end of summer.

Though the report described the need for flexibility during the pandemic as “understandable,” the number of students using a state test exemption to earn a diploma ballooned — from 10% of graduates in 2020 to 70% in 2021.

Fewer than 18% of graduates earned diplomas without exemptions, while 45% used two or more exemptions.

In Big Apple public schools, 66% of students used at least one exemption to graduate in 2020, and 60% used them in 2021.

The Education Department scrapped Regents in January during the surge of the Omicron variant. Most recently, officials cancelled the history Regents exam in May following the racist mass shooting in Buffalo, and passed emergency measures allowing students who scored down to a 50% to apply for less-rigorous “local” diplomas.

“I am becoming increasingly more concerned that a high school diploma does not mean our children are college and career ready,” said Buffalo parent Samuel Radford III, who leads the advocacy group We the Parents.

“What does having a diploma mean if our children can’t pass basic skills tests for employment or have to take non-credit bearing remedial courses in college?” he said.

Sebrone Johnson of the Urban League’s Rochester chapter, one of the groups in the NY Equity Coalition, said relying on these exemptions “devalues the very premise of the diploma.”

In recent years, education officials have started to consider other ways students can demonstrate readiness to graduate — including a pilot program involving oral presentation, research papers and science experiments, instead of the high-stakes tests, according to the education nonprofit news source Chalkbeat.

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks has called the exams “important,” but said that they play an “outsized role” in public education, at the expense of other learning and preparedness for adult life that’s harder to test.

The NY Equity Coalition called for increased data and transparency, including on how young adults fare after high school graduation.

The report suggests that the state education department publish data on the graduates who go onto and finish college, and if they need remediation help while there. They also called for wage and employment data.

The education department stood by the steps it took in response to the pandemic.

“It is worth pointing out that schools use multiple measures to assess student learning. Standardized tests are one of those measures,” officials said in a statement to The Post.

“As we return to regular administration of the Regents exams, we will be able to better measure how the temporary suspension of the exams affected graduation rates. To draw such a conclusion based on what we know now is premature,” they added.