What Happens If You Don’t Take a Regents After Failing the Whole Class? A High School Teacher Explains
The clock above my whiteboard ticks toward 4:30 on a Tuesday in January, and the plastic chair across my desk squeaks as 16-year-old Javi slumps lower. His mom twists the crumpled first-semester progress report between her fingers, her coffee cup (emblazoned with this high school’s 1998 logo, from when she was a student here) sweating on the edge of my desk. Half a granola bar sits forgotten next to my lesson plans. She takes a breath and asks the question I’ve gotten three times in the last two weeks: “He’s already failed the entire Global Studies course this semester. Does it even matter if he doesn’t take the Regents next month?”
Javi’s case isn’t unusual. He missed 18 days of school after his parents split last fall, and by the time he started showing up consistently again, he was so far behind on essays and projects that he stopped turning in work altogether. His final average was a 32, and we’d already sorted out that he’d retake the course in summer school to get his credit. His mom wasn’t asking because she wanted to let him skip work; she was asking because she’d watched him have three panic attacks in as many weeks over catching up in his other classes, and she didn’t see the point in adding more stress if he was already starting over.
I’ve taught 11th and 12th grade in upstate New York for 12 years, and for most of my early career, I would have automatically said of course he has to take it. Every chance to pass counts, I’d say. But I’ve seen too many kids leave an unneeded Regents broken, and I’ve changed my mind. The answer isn’t the same for everyone, but there are very real cases where skipping the exam doesn’t matter at all—and it can actually help you get back on track faster.
First, let’s clear up the basic rule that a lot of parents mix up. To graduate high school in New York, you need two things: the required number of course credits, and passing scores on a set number of Regents exams. If you fail the entire class, you don’t get the credit for it anyway, so you’re going to have to retake the class before you can count it toward graduation. That means you’ll get another chance to take the Regents after you retake the class, when you’ve actually learned the material.
What happens if you skip it this time? For the vast majority of districts, nothing permanent. Most schools don’t mark a no-show on your permanent transcript; it just stays a blank slot until you take it later. If you did show up and fail, it’s also not a big deal on your transcript—failing a Regents doesn’t hurt your GPA or your college applications, most of the time. But the tradeoff is the three hours of stress, and the weeks of cramming that take time away from the classes you’re still trying to pass right now.
Last year, I saw this go wrong with Mia, a sophomore who failed Algebra I first semester after a concussion kept her out of school for six weeks. Her dad insisted she sign up for the January Regents anyway, saying it would be good practice. She studied three hours every night after school for a month, fell behind in her biology and ELA classes, and had a panic attack halfway through the exam. She had to leave early, and she avoided asking her math teacher for help for almost three months after that, convinced she was just bad at tests. Skipping that exam wouldn’t have changed that she had to retake Algebra in summer school, but it would have saved her all that extra stress that set her back even more.
That doesn’t mean skipping is always the right call. There’s one main exception: if you only failed the class by a few points, because of missing assignments or attendance rather than not understanding the material, it’s worth taking. Some schools will let you earn class credit even with a low average if you pass the Regents, which means you don’t have to retake the whole class. That’s a big win, so it’s worth the effort in that case.
For parents trying to figure this out for their own kid, there are three concrete steps you can take right now that don’t involve guessing. First, call your kid’s guidance counselor to confirm your district’s policy. A tiny number of schools charge a small fee for no-shows if you don’t cancel your spot a week ahead, so it’s just good to check, rather than assuming. Second, ask your kid what they want. If they say they’d rather get it over with even if they fail, that’s their call. If they say it feels like climbing a mountain they can’t see the top of, don’t push them just because you worry it looks like giving up. Third, if you decide to skip, mark the next Regents test date on your calendar right after you sign up for the credit recovery class. That way it doesn’t sneak up on you six months from now.
Back to Javi’s meeting. His mom asked if colleges would care if he skipped one exam. I told her colleges don’t see Regents scores unless you choose to send them, and even then, they care far more about the fact that he’s retaking the class and bringing his attendance up than they do about when he took his first Regents. He looked up when I said that, and for the first time all meeting, he relaxed a little.
A month later, Javi dropped a rough draft of his ELA research essay on my desk on his way out of class. He’s got a C average this semester, his attendance is almost perfect, and he’s signed up for summer Global Studies. He didn’t take the January Regents, and nothing bad happened. No notes went on his transcript, no one penalized him, and he had the bandwidth to focus on getting back on track in the classes he was still taking. He’ll take the exam in August, after he’s re-learned the material, and we’ll see how it goes. It’s still a work in progress, but picking which battles to fight has already made it a lot more winnable.
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