Testimony on the overhaul of high school graduation requirements

Testimony of UFT before the New York City Council Committee on Education Oversight Hearing on the Portrait of a Graduate

Our names are Mary Vaccaro, the Vice President for Education at the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), Janella Hinds, the Vice President for Academic High Schools at the UFT, and Leo Gordon, the Vice President for Career and Technical Education Schools at the UFT. On behalf of the union’s 200,000 members, we want to thank Chairperson Eric Dinowitz and the Committee on Education for holding a hearing on New York State’s Portrait of a Graduate framework and the ongoing overhaul of high school graduation requirements.

The UFT supports the Portrait of a Graduate’s underlying goal of ensuring that the graduation measures used in our state better reflect the knowledge and abilities of New York high school graduates. For years, our members have argued that a single high-stakes exam should never be the only door to a diploma, particularly for the multilingual learners, students with disabilities, students in career and technical education programs, and students in transfer and alternative settings whom our teachers serve every day. That said, a promising vision is not the same thing as a workable plan, and right now, our school communities do not have a plan. As one Regent put it recently, current 9th-, 10th- and 11th-graders are in a “purgatory period”: The class of 2027 will be the last one to graduate under the old rules, but the state has not yet told any stakeholders, including districts, teachers, students and parents, what will replace Regents requirements for all other current high schoolers, even though these changes are due to take effect in less than a year.

New York City cannot afford to wait until the state issues further guidance, which is tentatively expected in February 2027, before we start answering the numerous questions that have arisen. Our members educate roughly 900,000 students in the nation’s largest school system. Albany’s decision to change what is required to earn a high school diploma has the potential to negatively affect hundreds of thousands of students, families and educators. That is why we are grateful the Council is examining this issue now.

On Sept. 14, 2026, the Board of Regents voted unanimously to direct the State Education Department to proceed with sunsetting the Regents examination graduation requirement and moving to a single New York State diploma. Beginning with students who are currently in grades 9 through 11, and fully in place for students entering 9th grade in September 2029, New York State will replace the current local, Regents and Regents-with-advanced-designation diplomas with one diploma carrying optional seals and endorsements. Students graduating after 2027 will no longer be required to pass the Regents examinations to receive a diploma. Regents exams will continue to be administered, to serve as a rigorous measure of the state learning standards and to be used for federal accountability purposes — at least until the state develops another accountability measure for high schools — but they will no longer be the gatekeeper to graduation.

In place of the old exam-based requirements, the Regents have adopted the New York State Portrait of a Graduate, which outlines six “interconnected attributes” that all New York State high school graduates must possess. Graduates should be academically prepared, creative innovators, critical thinkers, effective communicators, global citizens and reflective and future focused. Students will demonstrate these attributes through what the state calls “exhibits of evidence”: performance tasks, portfolios, capstone projects, work-based learning and other locally designed assessments, guided by each district’s own “local assessment strategy.” The state has said these expectations apply equally to every New York student, no matter where they attend school. 

The research on project-based and performance-based learning shows that when students read, write and problem-solve for an authentic purpose and audience rather than a bubble sheet, their achievement and engagement improve. New York City’s career and technical education programs, which the UFT has spent decades helping build into rigorous, industry-aligned pathways, already demonstrate what authentic, work-connected assessment can look like when properly funded and staffed. Additionally, staff and students at the 38 schools that are members of the New York Performance Standards Consortium have years of hard-won knowledge and skills related to assessing student learning beyond Regents exams. A Portrait of a Graduate that is developed by these educators could be a genuine improvement over a system that reduced a student’s readiness to a single score.

State officials confirmed at the September 2026 Board of Regents meeting that they do not yet have an answer for how they will ensure locally designed assessments are consistent and rigorous across districts. Many outside analysts have warned that a system this loosely defined runs the risk of repeating the failures of portfolio-based assessment systems that other states tried and abandoned decades ago. Even educators who support the direction of this work caution that a Portrait of a Graduate will require years of sustained, well-resourced implementation — working with educators through calibrated rubrics, protected planning time and genuine piloting — and that skipping those steps turns a promising framework into a hollow promise. 

We ask this committee to press New York City Public Schools and, through our state partners, the State Education Department, on the following:

1. A public, city-specific interim plan for current students. Students currently in grades 9 through 11 need to know this school year what will be expected of them for high school graduation. NYCPS has not yet responded publicly to questions about how it plans to assess these cohorts, and families should not have to wait for a February 2027 state memo to get answers about their children’s diplomas. Students beginning their junior year are making post-secondary plans with their parents without clear expectations for their graduation requirements. New York City’s high school students and the educators who teach them deserve to know now.
2. Protected, compensated time for educators to build the new assessments and aligned pre-K through grade 12 curricula. Designing portfolios, capstones and performance tasks, as well as pre-K through grade 12 curricula that are aligned with these new assessments, will take time. That work cannot be squeezed into existing prep periods on top of a full teaching load. The city should fund dedicated, compensated planning time and professional learning throughout the process of shifting to these new measures, so that the educators who are expected to implement the new standards have a hand in each part.
3. Citywide consistency so an “exhibit of evidence” means the same thing in every school. State officials do not yet have an answer for how they will keep locally designed assessments rigorous and comparable across districts. In a city with over 1,600 schools, NYCPS needs its own shared rubrics, scoring calibration process and, where possible, common anchor tasks, so that a high school diploma means the same thing whether a student attends a specialized high school or a transfer school.
4. Explicit equity protections for students with disabilities and English language learners. In alignment with the stated goals of the Portrait of a Graduate, andas local assessment strategies are designed, the city must ensure that students who received exemptions or alternative pathways under the old system have clear, viable ways to demonstrate readiness under the new one. The implementation of this new framework must include flexibility that will empower students to demonstrate their learning.
5. Investment in what already works. New York City does not need to invent authentic assessment from scratch. Students in our career and technical education programs and long-standing performance-based assessment and International Baccalaureate schools already demonstrate mastery through projects, internships and portfolios. The city should build the Portrait of a Graduate on these proven models and with the educators who run them, rather than starting over or turning to outside consultants. We should tap into our established resources that are proven to work.
6. Ongoing public reporting and Council oversight. This committee should require regular, public updates from NYCPS on its implementation timeline, its interim guidance for current students and school-by-school data on how local assessment strategies are being rolled out, so families and the Council can track progress rather than learning about problems after the fact.

If done well, the move away from content-based exit exams for high school graduation could give many more of our students, especially those whose strengths were never well captured by Regents scores, a diploma that truly reflects what they know and can do. 

The UFT stands ready to work with this Council, NYCPS and the State Education Department to make sure New York City gets this transition right. We thank you again for the opportunity to testify and look forward to our continued collaboration on behalf of every student in our schools.