What Happens If You Don’t Retake a Regents After Failing a Class: A High School Teacher Explains
It’s 3:15 on a Thursday last May, and my classroom smells like dry erase marker and the half-dead coffee I left on my desk overnight. Javi, a 10th grader I’ve had in global studies all year, is slouched in a plastic chair by my desk, staring at the scuff on his sneaker. His mom, Mia, sits across from him, twisting the edge of her hospital scrub top (she works the night shift at the local medical center, she told me once) and holding his end-of-year progress report. The bold red F for the class and the 54 stamped next to his Regents exam don’t leave much room for interpretation. Then she asks the question I get at least three times every June: “He says he doesn’t want to retake the Regents. Does it actually matter if he doesn’t take it after failing the whole class?”
Javi missed 18 days of school between September and December. His 7-year-old little sister has severe asthma, and she ended up in the ER three times after a bad cold outbreak. Mia couldn’t leave her at the hospital alone when her shifts overlapped, and Javi would leave school early to pick her up from daycare or stay with her when she got discharged. By the time his sister’s asthma stabilized, he was six weeks behind on essays and unit tests, and no amount of after-school help was going to pull his grade up before the Regents. The district offered two options: retake the whole class in summer school, which ends with retaking the Regents, or do a self-paced online credit recovery course that gives you class credit for passing the course, no Regents retake required. Javi picked the online option. Mia was terrified that meant he’d never graduate, never get into college, never have options.
I pulled up the current district graduation requirements on my laptop, because rules have shifted a lot even in the last five years, and most parents don’t keep up with the changes. For Javi, who wants to do HVAC after high school and already works part time with his uncle doing installs, skipping this Regents retake doesn’t close any doors he cares about right now. He’s already passed four other required Regents, he only needed this one class credit to get back on track for a standard Regents diploma, which is all the local community college’s HVAC program requires to enroll.
I’ve seen both sides of this call. Two years ago, I had a junior named Lila who failed biology and the corresponding Regents. She decided she didn’t want to give up her summer job at the local lake to retake the class and test, so she got credit through the online program and skipped the Regents. When she was applying to the SUNY nursing program the next year, she found out they required a minimum 75 on the biology Regents for admission. She had to squeeze the retake into her senior year schedule, on top of AP classes and college applications, which added a lot of unnecessary stress. It still worked out for her, but it would have been far easier if she’d taken care of it the summer after she failed.
The first thing I tell any parent who asks this question is to ignore the hearsay from other parents at soccer games or the panic-inducing takes on TikTok. The answer isn’t the same for every kid, and there are three concrete steps you can take to figure it out for yours.
First, schedule a 15-minute meeting with your kid’s guidance counselor, and ask two direct questions: Can my child still earn the type of diploma they need if they don’t retake this Regents? Are there any current district rules that will block their graduation if they skip this retake? Don’t leave until you get a clear answer, not a vague “it’s better to retake it just in case.” Most of the time, “just in case” ends up costing your kid time and energy they don’t have.
Second, cross-check that answer against your kid’s actual post-grad plan. Pull up the admissions page for whatever program they’re looking at, whether that’s a trade apprenticeship, a community college, or a four-year university. If it doesn’t list a specific Regents exam or minimum score as a requirement, it doesn’t matter. For most trade programs and many community college majors, the only requirement is a high school diploma. They don’t ask for individual Regents scores. For most out-of-state colleges, administrators don’t even know what a Regents exam is, so they don’t care.
Third, remember that you can always retake a Regents later. It’s not a now-or-never test. If your kid skips the retake now to work, to handle family stuff, to just recover from a really bad semester, they can sign up to take it the next time it’s offered if they end up needing it down the line. That’s what I told Mia. If Javi decides in two years that he wants to go to a four-year college that needs that Global Regents score, he can sign up to retake it then. It’s not a closed door just because he doesn’t take it this summer.
When they left my room that day, Javi was a little less slouched than when he came in. Mia still looked worried, like she was scared she was making the wrong choice. That’s normal. We’re all conditioned to think that checking every box the school gives you is the only way to succeed, even if the box doesn’t actually do anything for your kid.
I saw Javi last month at the grocery store, loading a bag of mulch into the back of his mom’s minivan. He waved me over, told me he finished the online credit recovery class back in July, got a B, and got his credit sorted. He’s picking up more shifts with his uncle this semester, and he’s already put in his application for the community college HVAC program starting next fall. When I asked if he ever thought about retaking that Global Regents, he shrugged and grinned. “Why would I?” he said. “I don’t need it to do what I want.”
It wouldn’t have been the right choice for Lila, who needed that Regents for her nursing track. But for Javi, it’s working. There’s always a little uncertainty, of course. He could change his mind later, he could decide he wants a different path that requires that test. But if that happens, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there. Right now, the choice that let him catch his breath after a really hard year is the right one. And that matters more than checking any box.
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