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In New York State, Regents Examinations are statewide standardized examinations in core high school subjects required for a Regents Diploma. Regents diplomas are optional and typically offered for college bound and non-disabled students. Most students, with some limited exceptions, are required to take the Regents Examinations. To graduate, students are required to have earned appropriate credits in a number of specific subjects by passing year-long or half-year courses, after which they must pass Regents examinations in some of the subject areas. For higher achieving students, a Regents with Advanced designation, and an Honor designation, are also offered. ==Purpose== The Regents Examinations are developed and administered by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) under the authority of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York. Regents exams are prepared by a conference of selected New York teachers of each test's specific discipline who assemble a test map that highlights the skills and knowledge required from the specific discipline's learning standards. The conferences meet and design the tests three years before the tests' issuance, which includes time for field testing and evaluating testing questions. NYSED also sometimes refers to elementary and intermediate grade statewide standardized tests as Regents Examinations. "At the close of each academic term, a public examination shall be held of all scholars presumed to have completed preliminary studies…To each scholar who sustains such examination, a certificate shall entitle the other person holding it to admission into the academic class in any academy subject to the visitation of the Regents, without further examination." The legislature’s intent in establishing the Regents Examination system is described in the ordinance. The central idea of the legislation was to create an educational control system that could be used to regulate the flow of funds to the well established academy system of schools that existed throughout the state of New York. This goal would be accomplished by: # creating a Regents Examination system, which would measure student achievement through process of examination; and # creating a new and privileged class of students in the secondary schools of New York. The new class of students would be called the “academic class,” and those students who qualified for admission to it by sustaining a process of examination would be known as “academic scholars.” Academic scholars, and the institutions with which they were affiliated, would receive recognition and privilege under New York’s school funding formula.〔 The focus of the ordinance was on assessing student achievement in the preliminary, or elementary curricula. In essence, the examinations were being positioned in the primary role of gatekeeper between the primary and secondary schools of the state of New York. The need for a gatekeeper examination system was due in part to the state’s 1864 school funding formula, which allocated public funds to private academies based on criteria that included the number of enrolled students. Typically, the academies used money distributed from the state literature fund to offset operating expenses, and any expenses in excess of funds received from the State were passed on to students and their families in the form of “rate bills.” Under this system, individual academies could realize economic advantages by lowering academic standards and enrolling less qualified students. In 1864, during a time of war, the New York legislature became concerned about this issue of who was and who was not qualified to be enrolled in the common, mostly private academies of the state and also in the rare, public high schools of the state. The timing of the legislature’s concern and actions in 1864 may have been related to two conditions that existed during the Civil War: the military’s need for young men of fighting age and a period of fiscal austerity in school funding.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Regents Examinations」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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