Algebra I Regents curve history — what a 65 cost at every sitting

Across the 33 published administrations, the raw points needed for a 65 have ranged from 26 (June 2018) to 31 (August 2014) — a spread of 5 points. As a share of the exam, that runs from 30.2% (June 2018) to 36.0% (August 2014). Part of that movement is not difficulty at all: the raw total changed from 86 to 82 points at June 2024. The percentage view is the one that survives that change. What none of this supports is a claim about the next sitting.

No. NYSED publishes a conversion chart only after an administration has been scored, so no chart exists for a sitting that has not happened, and the movement in this series is not regular enough to stand in for one. This page is a record of what the exam has actually required. Treating it as a rule for a future sitting would put a number in a student’s head that nobody can stand behind — on a decision as consequential as a diploma credit.

Because those administrations never took place: June 2020, August 2020, January 2021, August 2021, January 2022 were cancelled around the pandemic. The lines on the charts break rather than jump the gap — the drawing code emits a new segment whenever two points are not consecutive sittings — because joining them would draw a data point that does not exist. The same break appears wherever NYSED has published no chart for a sitting, for any other reason. Where a special administration was held — a limited June 2021 sitting for a handful of exams — it is labelled rather than treated as an ordinary session.

33, from June 2014 to August 2026. Sessions before June 2014 exist only as PDFs on the NYSED site and are not included, so this is not a claim to cover the whole history of the exam.

Yes. The whole dataset — this exam and every other one — is downloadable as CSV from the links on this page, and the figures are NYSED’s, reproduced as published. Each row in the table below links to the NYSED file it came from, so anything here can be checked against the source in one click.