State testing gets underway Tuesday in high schools across New York. It's Regents week, an exam that matters right now, but will become obsolete a few years down the road.

Hit the books and hit the hay. Students need plenty of rest this week as Regents testing returns Tuesday.

The tradition has shaped the path to graduation for years in New York.

But by the end of the decade, state education leaders want to change graduation requirements to focus more on executing on skills learned in the classroom, not passing Regents exams.

Education leaders, including the state's top officials, believe there are better ways to measure success for high school graduates.

“When children apply from Connecticut, New Jersey, other places, to our SUNY institutions, do we look to see if they have taken a Regents exam?" state Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa said. "Now you know what the answer is — absolutely not. In other states, we stand aside. Guess what? The GPA, the exams that they take in class with the teacher at the end of that year, midterms, end terms, we give them a grade for that class. And we honor that from other places. Yet we don’t necessarily honor them in our own state.”

A final vote on changes by the Board of Regents isn't expected until 2027.

Students will still have to take state assessment tests required by the federal government, but won't be required to pass them as early as 2028. The state Education Department is still in the early stages of outlining the future graduation requirements and nothing has been finalized.

One mother of three said her children react differently to the test requirements. She expresses frustration thinking there should be a way to opt out of the testing now.  

"There should definitely be an out for that and not having that option," said Valerie Peck, a mother of three school-age children. "And I think it should become effective immediately, rather than continuing this discussion for the next four years. They've already been discussing it for years. We don't need to keep dragging it out."