Graduation Requirements

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. 

 

Round Tables

Round tables are a small group based task given to freshmen and sophomores for the four major subjects alongside language (French or Spanish) and art. Round tables happen at the end of each semester with the exception of language being at the end of the year. These round tables are a way to test students on their mastery and skills of the course they took that semester with proctors pushing their knowledge of the subject even further. 

Students must complete three round tables for each of the main subjects (12 in total), two language round tables and pass art round tables when they have an art course.  

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.

Additional questions about roundtables or panels may be answered in the FAQ.

Graduating with Honors

The Valedictorian and Salutatorian are selected each year from the graduating class. The Valedictorian ranks first in GPA and is considered the top student of their class; the salutatorian ranks second in GPA and is considered the second highest student in their class. Students with a GPA of 90.0 or higher by the time of graduation will receive a special cord to wear at the graduation ceremony and will be acknowledged in the program.


The Valedictorian and Salutatorian will be determined by the GPA of the students at the mid-semester mark of spring semester before graduation. The mid-semester mark will be the date of the student-led conferences, which typically take place in April. The valedictorian and salutatorian must have been a student for ESA for 2 or more years. 

If a student transfers from another school, their grades from their previous school(s) will be calculated into the overall GPA.
If students’ GPAs are within 0.10 points of each other, the school may award the titles of valedictorian and salutatorian to multiple candidates.