BY MATT LINDSEYNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM – New York's shift to a new high school graduation system will unfold over several years. Regents exams will continue, but their role in earning a diploma is changing, Potsdam Central School District Superintendent Jerry Griffin said.

Students graduating this school year will follow current requirements. However, the class of 2028 will no longer have to pass a specific set of Regents exams to earn a diploma.

"Students will continue to take Regents exams as a measure of achievement of New York state learning standards. What will change is their role in earning a high school diploma," Griffin said in a message to families.

The state is also moving to a single diploma, replacing the Local, Regents and Regents with Advanced Designation diplomas. Seals and endorsements will continue to recognize advanced accomplishments.

Regents role is changing

"The larger idea behind these changes is that no single test can tell the complete story of what a student knows and can do," Griffin said.

The transition will happen in phases. New credit requirements are scheduled to begin with the class of 2031, and a broader move to a competency-based system is scheduled for the class of 2033. Under that system, students would have to show proficiency in both the state's learning standards and the attributes in the New York State Portrait of a Graduate.

More guidance and regulatory work remains. Griffin called the state's current plan a "clear direction and transition timeline," not a full set of implementation details.

"For me, the biggest question is what it will actually look like for students to demonstrate the competencies in the state's Portrait of a Graduate and how consistently that will be implemented across New York," he said.

He supports the broader approach but wants clear expectations for how students will show proficiency, whether through projects, portfolios, work-based learning or traditional assessments.

"We also need to make sure the system is manageable for teachers and schools and understandable to colleges, employers, students and families," he said.

Potsdam prepares for changes

Assessments will still help measure learning and show where students may need extra support, Griffin said. But standardized tests don't always capture whether a student can apply knowledge to an authentic problem, explain their thinking, collaborate, revise their work or keep going when something doesn't work the first time.

"As a father of an NYS high school graduate and a former teacher, I think about this in pretty simple terms," Griffin said. "I wanted my son and my students to get the right answer, but I also wanted them to understand why it was the right answer, explain how they got there, and use what they learned when the problem looked different next time."

Potsdam's work developing its own Portrait of a Graduate could help the district prepare for the state changes. More than 1,000 students, staff members, families and community stakeholders took part in the local process.

"We didn't undertake that work simply to comply with a state requirement," Griffin said. "We did it because we wanted our community to answer a much bigger question: What do we want students to know and be able to do when they leave us?"

The district will next look at how its Portrait of a Graduate and strategic plan line up with the new state requirements, and how its local work can help students prepare.

Griffin said the Portrait of a Graduate is a pre-K through 12 initiative, not something that starts in high school.

"If we want students graduating as confident communicators, collaborators, critical thinkers and creative problem solvers, we need to intentionally develop those skills from the time students first enter our schools," he said.

For now, families do not need to change anything, Griffin said. Students should keep following their current courses and graduation plans and preparing for Regents exams as appropriate.

Potsdam High School counselors will contact families whose graduation pathways or course selections may be affected. The district will also seek family feedback as it reviews its strategic plan and considers how the Portrait of a Graduate work can connect to it.