More than 400 city high-school seniors who needed to ace yesterday’s canceled Regents exams in order to graduate mid-year are being given a free pass, state officials said.
Rather than having them wait until the exams are administered again in June, students with January graduation dates will earn a local diploma if they passed the course associated with the exam.
It was the same solution the state took in January 2004 after a snowstorm canceled Regents testing.
“This is the fairest course of action for the seniors affected this week,” said state Education Commissioner David Steiner.
But for the more than 100,000 other city students, the snow day means they’ll have to study all over again for the high-pressure exams in US history, geometry and other subjects in June.
State officials said creating make-up exams, to prevent upstate students who took them from revealing their contents, would be prohibitively expensive — in the ballpark of $3 million.
“I can’t imagine this test is under such lock and key that it can’t be administered in two weeks,” fumed Stacy Siegel, a Staten Island mom whose daughter will now have to take four exams in June instead of three.
Susan Wagner HS junior Jason Saul, 16, said he’d been getting tutored twice a week all semester for the geometry exam.
“I’m not too crazy about taking the Regents in June,” he said. “I was prepared for it now.”