The Regents exams are a joke, especially the English one. From what I remember, the majority of it was mindless tedium. I am pretty sure it consisted of four odd essay questions that required more time to conjure up something valid or useful to say rather than work on the part that actually would reflect one's command of the language. It should be modeled after the SAT's verbal section, instead.

Can't we just leave some children behind.

Who says school in America is about education? It's about passing tests!! As long as a good percentage of kids pass standardized tests, it means teachers/schools are doing their jobs, and tax dollars are not being wasted.

Cut budgets so teachers can't teach. Crowd classrooms so kids can't learn. Make tests easier and easier each year so these kids that are basically now uneducated can still pass them.

Now when you look at the numbers of graduating students and standardized test scores over the last 20 years, they remain constant. What an easy solution to cover up the fact that kids have been getting less and less of an education over the years.

At least our taxes aren't wasted, right?

Now that we've dumbed the tests down they're not worth taking.

Don't know why society is being so tolerant of ignorance.

Because it costs less to lower the passing grade or to make the test easier than it costs to actually pay teachers and fund schools.

Because we live in a society of short-sighted idiots who want to put sandwiches in cans instead of educating the doctors that will be performing our triple bypasses on us after we eat too many canned sandwiches...

It goes further than that.

It starts at home, when the unacceptable becomes the norm.

It continues in school with friends, when good grades are seen negatively.

And goes on.

No one has to be accountable for their actions anymore.

oh don't forget about the fact that parents leave ALL of their kids education to the public school system, the same one that lets Johnny graduate from High School never actually knowing how to read or write, instead of educating them at all at home.

I could read before I was in school, because my parents taught me. How often is that happening now?

Yup, there's more to being a parent than having a kid.

That's right. You need to go to Dept of Social Services to fill out a bunch of paperwork before receiving your well-deserved welfare benefits.

Pretty much all of this. Plus add in the fact that the social structures in school oust kids who actually want to do well in academics. Do too well and you're an outcast.