Jphone, my husband taught Special Ed, so regents were never a factor for his students.
My regents tests were not easier than the finals, which we ALSO had to take,a nd B”H I did very well in most of them. In fact the one regents exam in which I did somewhat poorly, was on material we never even covered in class. I also went to a school where the secular subjects were taken VERY seriously, and we were very well prepared for college. They ARE useless, a waste of three hours, and a thorough final exam would be a better indicator of what was covered in class during that school year. No other state to my knowledge feels the necessity to put their students through this, and there are plenty of extremely bright people who did not originate in New York.