How many raw points a 65 costs on the Algebra I Regents

The movement

Algebra I has held its line

The Algebra I line is close to flat. The first three sittings on record charged 35.3% of the paper for a 65, the last three 35% — a gap of 0.3 points of the exam over 33 sittings. Peak: August 2014, 31/86 (36%). Trough: June 2018, 26/86 (30.2%) — 5.8 points apart. Narrow enough that a raw-mark target holds better here than a percentage one. Both extremes are old; recent sittings cluster on the 31.4% median.

Read the raw column with the total beside it: Algebra I has been marked out of 86, then 82 raw points, changing at June 2024 (86 → 82). Quoting a raw figure across one of those breaks can reverse the direction of the finding, which is why this page works in shares.

Sat in January, June, August: 10 in January, 12 in June, 11 in August. In August 2026 the 65 line sat at 29 and the 85 line at 69: 40 marks apart, 48.8 points of the paper — the stretch an Advanced Regents average is won on. Sharpest single move: January 2024 to June 2024, 4 points in one step, against the student. 6 of the last 6 sat above the 31.4% median — the recent run is at the demanding end of this exam’s history.

The one almost every student sits, and usually first

Algebra I is where a New York high school career meets its first Regents, often in ninth grade and sometimes in eighth. That makes its curve the one families feel earliest, and the one they generalise from — usually wrongly, because Algebra I has run a more forgiving 65 line than any of the sciences on this site. The forgiveness stops at the top: the distance between the 65 line and the 85 line on this paper is the widest of the three maths, so a student aiming at an Advanced Regents average is working against a much steeper section of the same chart than the one that decides a pass. The paper was also cut from 86 marks to 82, which means a practice score off an older past paper is not directly comparable to a target set on the current one.

There is a second reason this particular curve gets quoted more than any other, and it is worth naming. Algebra I is the exam a student is most likely to sit more than once. It is offered in January, June and August, it is taken early enough that a weak result still leaves years of school ahead, and a retake in the next window is an ordinary outcome rather than a crisis. That means a family reading this page is often reading it with two sittings in mind, not one — and the two will not have the same chart. Nothing about a January result tells you what the following August will ask for.

What the record can settle is an argument that comes up in almost every first conversation: whether a near miss means the child was close. On this exam the marks between a fail and a pass are concentrated in the part of the paper that is most teachable — the questions that are worth partial credit for working shown. A student who missed by a handful of raw marks is usually missing method on a small number of question types, not the year's mathematics. That is a different piece of work, and a much shorter one, than the student who is short by a quarter of the paper.

Every sitting

The 33 Algebra I administrations on record

One row per published chart, newest first, with the NYSED file behind each one. Every published sitting carries a 65 line, so none has been dropped. June 2020, August 2020, January 2021, August 2021, January 2022 are absent because no exam was held.

Want the conversion table itself — every raw score against its scale score for Algebra I? That is a different question and it has its own page: the Algebra I score calculator converts a raw score you already have. This page answers the one you ask before the exam.

What to do with it

Setting a Algebra I target for the year ahead

Algebra I currently asks for the smallest share of its paper of the 9 here. The line barely moves, so one target holds year to year: about 29 of 82, the recent average of 35%. That is a diploma floor, not a goal: 69 marks bought an 85 in August 2026 (84.1%), and that is the line a transcript is read on.

It is a band, not a forecast: across 33 sittings the 65 line on Algebra I has never left 30.2–36% of the paper, and aiming at the top of that band survives a hard year instead of being surprised by one.

Algebra I against the other exams

35.4% places Algebra I 9 of 9. Its immediate neighbours on that scale:

All 9 exams, side by side →