Essex Street Academy is a member of The New York Performance Standards Consortium, which means that we have a waiver from New York State for most of the Regents exams, allowing us to assess students in a different way to determine graduation status. Instead of taking 5 Regents exams like students do at conventional NYS high schools, our students take 1 Regents exam (Common Core English) and complete 4 Performance Based Assessment Tasks. ESA students still graduate with a Regents diploma. 

Regents

The English Regents will be taken by students at the end of the fall semester of their junior year, and can be taken again at the end of each semester. A score of 65 or higher is needed for graduation; a score of 75 or higher is required for those who would like exemption from remedial classes in CUNY colleges. 

Panels

Performance Based Assessment Tasks (PBATs), or panels as we call them at ESA, take the place of the other 4 Regents exams. Panels are formal presentations of student projects to a panel of teachers and external evaluators. At a panel presentation, a student presents and answers questions about his/her work to demonstrate mastery of content, skills, and concepts. The panel presentations are assessed by rubrics developed by the NY Performance Standards Consortium.

Students must complete 4 panels over the 4 semesters in their junior and senior year: literature, social studies, math, and science. Students have a choice in which subject to panel as long as they meet deadlines for their papers and their papers meet standards. Students can panel 1 class their fall semester of junior year, and then 1-2 panels each of the following semesters. 

Credits 

As is the case with all NYC high schools, students at ESA must earn 44 credits to graduate, with a specific number of credits in each subject.