Traditionally, students at Townsend Harris have taken the English Regents Exam during their junior year. However, this year, the English Department piloted having three sophomore classes take the exam in January. After the experiment proved a success, the department has decided to have all remaining sophomores take the exam this June. Next year, all rising sophomores will take the English Regents in January and will do so annually from now on.
Ryan Dunbar, Assistant Principal of English, said that the decision to test some sophomores this past January was an experiment. “Typically, we only have juniors take the English Regents in January,” he said, adding that sophomore year usually doesn’t involve significant assessments in January, which made it a good time to test out how they would do on the Regents. “There were a few teacher volunteers needed for the shift, and both Mr. Sweeney and I were willing to experiment with it in our classes,” he said. Mr. Dunbar said that this shift meant that sophomores would undergo explicit Regents preparation for a month before the exam, focusing on the essential skills of reading, writing, and literary analysis.
According to English teacher Brian Sweeney, junior teachers originally proposed the shift, given that all juniors take an AP English course and junior teachers said that preparing juniors for both the Regents and the AP Exam took away too much from AP prep.
“It’s good to get it out of the way,” Mr. Sweeney said, “plus the sophomores [who piloted taking the exam] performed really well on it [in January].” He said that the change required him to sacrifice some “things that would’ve been taught in the fall and replace it with Regents prep.” Despite the adjustment, Mr. Sweeney said he believes that the shift was beneficial.
Sophomore Sophie Thanju, who was in one of the classes piloting the exam for sophomores, said she was “glad to take the English Regents earlier because then I do not have to worry about preparing for it in junior year.” Additionally, she thinks “taking the test in January would be better in the long run” as “taking this exam early will reduce my stress in junior year.”
Sophomore Brier Chng said that she felt “pretty prepared” to take the test and didn’t find it “too challenging.” The English teachers who volunteered their classes to take these tests gave students ample time and materials to prepare, Brier said.
“Mr. Sweeney gave the class practice tests, both multiple choice and writing, and gave us a set amount of time to complete them,” she said. “I think that this helped stimulate what the actual Regents would be like.”
“The main difficulty for me was teaching to the Regents, something I hadn’t done in a while,” Mr. Dunbar said. Despite this, he said the students rose to the challenge and performed well on the test.
Now that the department believes the experiment proved successful, Mr. Dunbar plans to have the rest of this year’s sophomores take the exam in June. That way, no rising juniors will have to take the exam next year and all rising sophomores can take it next January. Mr. Dunbar said he believes that the benefits will outweigh any initial hurdles with this transition. “For the long term, it’s going to benefit our students,” he said.
Sophomore students who spoke to The Classic said they agree with the decision, overall. Sophomore Ethmi Uyanwatte, who took the test in January, said that even if she was given a choice, she “would have still taken this exam early because I feel like it’s better to just get it over with early on rather than wait to do it later. Besides, I would say the test wasn’t too hard, so there isn’t much reason to wait until junior year to take it.”
For current sophomores who did not participate in the January “experiment,” having to take the exam this June might pose a burden since they do have other exams scheduled.
Sophomore Sarah Ahmed, who wasn’t part of the early-testing classes, said, “I would prefer to take the Regents in January.” Not only do sophomores have other Regents exam in June, they also have other AP exams at the end of the year. Sarah said, “I think I’m not going to be able to focus on studying for it as much since I’m going to take it with three other Regents.”
Junior Maimuna Kader said this decision is beneficial for students and shared that they “would definitely take the English Regents” in their sophomore year if given a choice, considering all the stresses from AP exams in junior year.
Junior Elvis Chan said the decision is about “efficiency,” and he was “glad to see that the school is willing to give [this plan] chance.”
“I would definitely take it in the sophomore year because then I’d have fewer worries about APs and other exams,” Elvis said, “but also because Sophomore English doesn’t have an exam that needs to be prepared for, unlike junior English with the AP Literature and AP Language and Composition exams.”
