For more than two decades, a group of New York public schools has operated under a waiver that most educators do not know exists: their students graduate through performance-based assessment tasks — research papers, science investigations, and oral defenses — instead of most Regents exams.
The results
- College enrollment 24 points above the citywide average.
- English language learners graduating at nearly double the city rate.
- Stronger college persistence than demographically comparable peers.
These are not boutique private schools. Consortium schools serve a higher-need population than the city average — which makes the outcomes harder to dismiss.
Why it works
Performance assessment changes what daily instruction has to look like. You cannot defend a thesis you did not build, so classrooms reorganize around investigation, drafting, feedback, and revision. The assessment is not an event at the end of learning; it is the shape of the learning itself.
When the graduation requirement is a defense, every unit becomes a rehearsal for thinking out loud.
InquiryLab exists to make that shape available to any teacher — without needing a waiver, a network, or twenty years of trial and error.
