From June 11th through 20th, high school students all across New York State are sitting for the Regents exams, comprehensive tests that assess whether they've mastered the material in their various high school subjects. As a New York City high school English teacher, I always feel in the weeks leading up to this period and into those ten days of exams like some sort of army general, preparing my company of 10th graders for battle--for a test that may not be fair, will definitely be boring, and is a dubious indicator of what they've learned, but a worthy foe to vanquish nonetheless. For them, the Regents period involves lots of studying, and then sitting for hours on end, sweating over their scantron™ sheets; for me, their nervous teacher, it involves (along with hours-long proctoring assignments) waiting on pins and needles for their scores, which may indicate--depending which side of the standardized testing debate you're on--just how good a military strategist I've been.

In the month before the exam, I was uncharacteristically tough on the kids: While their peers in non-Regents classes got to work on a creative project, the ones taking the test had to do Regents prep, and on several Friday afternoons, only the kids taking Regents exams got homework (a previous year's test to complete). At one point, when I had instructed them to do a packet and not only did no one complete it, only half of them brought it to class at all, I lambasted them: "You guys act like you don't have an exam in a week!" To which one of them muttered, "But Regents prep isn't real learning."

Click here to continue reading.