Did NY use AI to write Regents exams?

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Happy Friday! It’s Dan. We made it through a long week filled with a lot of exciting election news.

In today’s CapCon, I looked into a claim made Friday that New York’s Regents exams were written using an artificial intelligence chatbot, given complaints over how difficult they were this year. I also have details on a new letter filed in federal court Friday seeking to delay certain local elections on Long Island, including for Hempstead town supervisor.

We’ll later get into an effort by state lawmakers to regulate automatic license plate readers, which are popping up in parking lots at big businesses all over the place.

We’ll round out the week with This Week in New York History, which includes a look at the Stonewall riots, West Side Story and Rip Van Winkle.

There’s been enough backlash against the content on this year’s Regents exams in New York that even the state’s teachers union is soliciting complaints.

If you’re not familiar with New York’s school system, Regents exams are the state’s required tests for high school students. They’re set to soon be phased out.

As someone who had to take Regents exams, I can tell you that some are more difficult than others. I used to have nightmares about the now-defunct Math B exam.

But some of this year’s exams have yielded complaints from parents and school officials, who’ve said the content of some of those tests didn’t match the curriculum taught to students. That resulted in a more difficult experience than anticipated.

One mother of a 10th grade student on Long Island told News12, for example, that her daughter still struggled with the Earth Sciences exam despite months of prepwork.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman on Friday issued a statement claiming a culprit behind those complaints: artificial intelligence.

"Our kids spent the entire school year working hard, studying, and preparing for their futures — only to sit down for a high-stakes exam that looked like it was cooked up by a generic chatbot in five minutes,” said Blakeman, a Republican challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul this year.

“Kathy Hochul has completely abandoned her duty to oversee our state’s education system,” Blakeman said. “This is systemic incompetence, and it's a direct slap in the face to every teacher who pours their heart into the classroom and every parent expecting standard accountability from Albany.”

That quote from Blakeman was sent out by his campaign, which claimed in the email that Hochul had allowed “unvetted artificial intelligence to generate this year’s high-stakes high school graduation exams.”

Blakeman said he’s now seeking an independent investigation from the state inspector general’s office into the procurement of this year’s Regents exams. That office doesn’t comment on potential or ongoing investigations.

So did New York use AI to write this year’s Regents exams? I looked into that and how Hochul fits into it.

How Regents exams are written: Let’s start with how the questions that appear on the Regents exams are created. I watched this 8-minute video from the state Education Department to find out.

The questions are written by teachers recruited by the state Education Department. Those teachers receive training on how to craft those questions from “experienced testing professionals.”

After that training, those teachers practice writing questions and receive feedback from other teachers and those testing professionals.

After that part is done, they get to work writing the questions that will appear on the Regents exams. Those questions are then vetted by other teachers and tested with students, who are essentially the guinea pigs.

After multiple rounds of that review, the questions that make the cut are used to build the Regents exams that are given to students.

Hochul’s control over education in New York: Hochul has very little direct control over the state Education Department.

That’s something she’s previously bemoaned, saying she would like to have more power over education policy in New York. But her hands are tied by state law.

Unlike other state agencies, the state Education Department’s governance is chosen by the state Legislature. 

The state Legislature elects members to the state Board of Regents, which is the governing board of the state Education Department. That board oversees education policy and regulations and, importantly, chooses the state education commissioner.

The only way Hochul can change education policy is to work with the state Legislature to approve laws that mandate the agency to change course.

That happened this year in the state budget, in which Hochul and lawmakers approved legislation that will require the state Education Department to overhaul how math is taught in state schools.

The state budget is really Hochul’s most effective avenue to affecting education. It’s how she cleared a bell-to-bell ban on smart phones in schools and overhauled the state’s school aid formula.

What NYSED said in response to Blakeman: I reached out to Blakeman’s campaign to ask where they saw that AI was used to write this year’s Regents exams.