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New York is retiring the exam it built its diplomas around.
The short answer
New York plans to sunset the Regents exam graduation requirement and move to a Portrait of a Graduate model, which rewards demonstrated capability over rehearsed papers. Modern Age Coders builds exactly that: live coding and mathematics for ages 6 to 67, ending in work a student can show and defend. Batches of five to eight or private tuition, USD 100 and USD 150 monthly, opening class free.
For three generations a New York diploma has meant Regents exams. That is changing. The State Education Department has set out a plan to sunset the diploma assessment requirements and replace them with a Portrait of a Graduate, and the practical effect for a student now in middle school is that nobody can tell them precisely what they will be assessed on. In that situation, one strategy is obviously safer than the others.
Build something real, and be able to explain it. This page sets out what New York currently requires, what is changing, and the state's own computer science standards, which name a concept most states leave out. The wider national view is on coding classes in the United States.
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What New York families actually book
Cybersecurity leads because New York names it as its own concept and almost no school timetable carries it. The mathematics is here because the SHSAT has not gone anywhere.
Cybersecurity for teens
Threats, defences and consequences, taught as a subject rather than a safety talk.
See the syllabus
Python, complete
The language taught to real depth rather than to a demo. Our most requested course.
See the syllabus
AP Computer Science A
Java, the exam unit structure, and the free response questions that decide the grade.
See the syllabus
High school mathematics
The algebra and functions every computer science pathway quietly assumes you have.
See the syllabusThat is four of more than a hundred. The rest, sorted by age and subject, sit on the course atlas, and the order we teach them in is on the coding roadmap.
The four we are known for
Python, AI, vibe coding and agentic coding
These run underneath everything above. Every one is live and online, placed by ability rather than by age, and the first class is free.
Vibe Coding for Teens
Python, web and AI projects where the learner still owns the thinking.
See the syllabus
Python AI Automation
Automate the work you already do, then let AI carry part of it.
See the syllabus
AI and Machine Learning for Teens
Train a model, read what it learned, and be able to say why it is wrong.
See the syllabus
Codex and Claude Code
Run AI coding agents on real work without losing control of the codebase.
See the syllabusWhat is changing, and what has not changed yet
On November 4, 2024 the State Education Department presented NY Inspires, a plan to transform education in New York State, carrying forward the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures. Four transformations sit at its centre.
| Transformation | What it means for a student |
|---|---|
| Adopt the Portrait of a Graduate | A menu of ways to demonstrate skill across areas including critical thinking, effective communication and innovative problem solving |
| Redefine credits | Credit tied to demonstrated learning rather than only to seat time |
| Sunset diploma assessment requirements | Passing Regents exams would stop being the gate to a diploma |
| Move to one diploma | The tiered local, Regents and Advanced Regents structure would collapse into a single credential |
Nothing has changed yet, and we will not tell you otherwise
Until the Board of Regents approves specific changes, the current graduation requirements remain in effect for every public school student in New York State. Reporting has pointed at the 2027 to 2028 school year for the exam requirement to end. Treat that as a direction of travel, not a date to plan a timetable around, and get the position for your child's cohort from their school.
Now the part that matters strategically. A family with a child in Grade 6 or Grade 7 today genuinely cannot know which assessment regime that child will graduate under. The instinct is to wait for clarity. The better response is to notice which kinds of preparation are robust to the change and which are not.
Coaching for a specific exam paper is fragile: it is worth a great deal if the paper survives and very little if it does not. Genuine capability is robust: it helps under the current Regents system, it is precisely what a Portrait of a Graduate model asks a student to demonstrate, and it is what a university or an employer was going to want either way. A portfolio of real work is the only artefact that pays out under every version of the future being discussed.
We are not claiming to have engineered our teaching around a 2024 policy announcement. We built it this way because it is how people actually learn to program. The New York reform simply makes the argument easier to have.
One exam is being retired. Another still decides everything.
There is a contradiction running through New York education policy that is worth naming, because families live inside it.
While the state moves to sunset the Regents exams as a diploma gate, New York City still admits students to its most sought-after high schools on the basis of a single test. The Hecht-Calandra Act of 1971 requires admission to the specialized high schools to be determined solely by performance on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. It originally covered Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School, and the SHSAT is now the sole criterion for eight of the nine specialized high schools. The ninth, LaGuardia, admits by audition or portfolio instead.
Two different games, at the same time
A New York City family may therefore be preparing a child for a future where the diploma rewards demonstrated capability, and simultaneously for an entrance exam where one morning's score is the entire decision. Both things are true. Anybody who tells you to ignore one of them is selling you something.
Our position is unglamorous and, we think, correct. Mathematics carries both. It is the substance of the entrance exam, it underpins every serious computer science pathway afterwards, and unlike exam technique it does not evaporate when a policy changes. A student who genuinely understands ratio, algebra and proportional reasoning is better placed on the SHSAT than one who has memorised question shapes, and is still better placed four years later when the exam no longer exists in anybody's plans.
That is why mathematics is not an upsell here. It runs on the same track as the coding, with the same teacher continuity, from middle school mathematics through high school mathematics. For students who want the competitive edge specifically, olympiad and competition mathematics is the harder road and the one that builds the most durable reasoning.
Five concepts, including one most states omit
The Board of Regents adopted these standards in December 2020 after a two-year statewide authoring and review process, organised into grade bands of K-1, 2-3, 4-6, 7-8 and 9-12, with full implementation expected by September 2024. Four of the five concepts will look familiar from other states. The fourth will not.
Computational Thinking. Breaking a problem down, spotting the pattern, and expressing the solution as steps a machine can follow.
Taught before syntax, because a student who cannot describe a process in words will not rescue it by learning a language. See Problem Solving and Computational Thinking.
Cybersecurity. New York's distinctive call, treating security as foundational rather than as an advanced elective.
A named track, not a safety talk. Students learn how systems are actually attacked and defended, with the ethics argued rather than asserted. See Cybersecurity for Teens.
Networks and System Design. How machines are connected, and how the design of a system shapes what it can do.
Taught by building something that has to survive being used by somebody else, which is where design decisions stop being theoretical. See HTML and CSS for Beginners.
Digital Literacy. Using tools competently and understanding what they are doing on your behalf.
The least glamorous concept and the one most enrichment providers skip entirely, which is exactly why we teach it properly. See Microsoft Office for Kids.
Impacts of Computing. What the technology does to people, work and society.
Argued with students old enough to disagree with us, particularly about AI tools, where the honest position is sometimes that a thing should not be built. See AI Tools Mastery for Teens.
Where a New York learner joins
The ladder below leans toward security and digital literacy, because that is where New York's standards are unusual and where school provision is thinnest.
Elementary
Grade bands K-1 to 4-6
Middle
Grade bands 4-6 to 7-8
Everything we run is on the course atlas, with the method described on how we teach.
Which neighbourhood has the worst noise problem?
New York's project turns on the error that has settled more bad policy arguments than any other, and it hides inside one of the largest open civic datasets in the world.
New York City publishes every 311 service request it receives. The dataset runs from 2010 to the present, updates daily, and had passed forty million rows by the end of 2025. Each row carries a complaint type, the agency that responded, and a location. It is one of the largest open civic datasets anywhere, and a thirteen year old can query it.
The question is deliberately ordinary. Which part of the city has the worst noise problem? A student groups the noise complaints by borough, counts them, and produces a ranking. It looks like an answer. It is not one.
The trap
Boroughs are not the same size. Ranking by raw count largely ranks boroughs by population, and the student has produced an expensive way of discovering which borough has the most people. Divide complaints by residents and the order can change completely. The count was correct. The comparison was meaningless, because there was no denominator in it.
Then it gets more interesting, because the denominator is not obvious either. Per resident is one choice. Per household is another. For a noise complaint about a bar, complaints per licensed premises might be the honest measure, and for street noise it might be per mile of road. Each choice answers a slightly different question, and the student has to say out loud which question they are answering. That single habit, stating the denominator before computing the ratio, removes a large fraction of the bad statistics an adult will meet in their life.
There is a second layer that older students reach on their own. A 311 record is not a noise event. It is somebody choosing to report a noise event. Neighbourhoods differ in how likely people are to call the city, for reasons including trust, language, and whether anybody expects it to help. So even a perfectly normalised rate measures reported noise, not noise. Saying so in the write-up is not a weakness. It is the difference between an analysis and a claim.
| Step | What the student does | What it teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Count | Rank boroughs by raw noise complaints and commit to the answer | Write down the naive result before critiquing it |
| Divide | Recompute per resident and compare the two rankings | A count without a denominator compares nothing |
| Choose | Argue for a denominator and justify it in one sentence | The denominator encodes the question |
| Doubt | Explain what a complaint record actually measures | Data is generated by people, not by nature |
| State | Answer with the caveat included rather than appended | Honest limits make a finding stronger |
Students pull live data themselves rather than working from figures printed here, which is both better practice and the only way the exercise stays current. The finished piece is short, argued, and has a chart that earns its place.
The same habits carry into data analysis and, for students who would rather build models than audit them, AI and machine learning in the USA. Finished student work sits in the student labs.
What you are buying, without the euphemisms
A class is one hour, live, with a teacher present for all of it. Groups hold between five and eight learners and keep the same teacher week after week; private tuition is one learner and one teacher. Either way it is two classes a week, eight a month, and every course finishes with something built rather than something revised. A certificate follows completion, but the project is the part that carries weight in a Portrait of a Graduate world.
The equipment list is short enough to write in a line: a laptop or desktop, a microphone, and a connection that can hold a video call. Everything runs in the browser, which matters in a household where the computer is shared and locked down, and it means nothing has to be installed on a school-issued device.
There is no enrolment fee, no materials charge and no minimum term. The opening class is free, and it is a genuine lesson that doubles as a placement check rather than a sales call with homework attached.
Monthly, in US dollars
Five to eight learners with a teacher who does not change. Where most New York families start and stay.
One learner, one teacher, the pace entirely their own. Usually chosen for exam preparation or where a group cannot stretch far enough in either direction.
Pauses, plan changes and missed classes are set out on the pricing page.
What families say
Rated 4.9 across 547 Google reviews. These are real reviews, reproduced as written.
★★★★★
"The one step solution for my son. Modern Age Coders make learning coding so simple that kids love it. The teachers explain complex concepts clearly with practical exercises and interactive content."
Ria Mukherjee
Parent
★★★★★
"Modern Age Coders has been a game-changer for me. I struggled to grasp IT concepts and coding before joining, but their classes transformed everything. I can now confidently write complex programs with ease."
Samriddha Mondal
Student
★★★★★
"One of the most wonderful education centres out there. Education is not limited to school syllabus but focuses on skill development."
Vansh Agarwal
Student
★★★★★
"My child Dhairya is really enjoying the Modern Age Coders classes. This is his first online class and he eagerly looks forward to it. I can already see his improvement, and the teachers are very cooperative."
Sonam Oswal
Parent of Dhairya
★★★★★
"Modern Age Coders have wonderful teachers who teach in a clear, easy and practical way. The teacher boosts students' confidence and inspires them to learn without hesitation."
Sonu Goyal
Parent
★★★★★
"I highly recommend this computer coding class! The teachers are incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about coding."
Ritu Kedia
Parent
More, with photographs and student work, on the wall of love.
New York questions, answered plainly
Is New York really removing the Regents exam requirement?
That is the announced direction. The State Education Department presented NY Inspires on November 4, 2024, carrying forward the Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations: adopt a Portrait of a Graduate, redefine credits, sunset the diploma assessment requirements, and move to a single diploma. Reporting has pointed to the Regents exam requirement ending around the 2027 to 2028 school year. Nothing has changed yet. Until the Board of Regents approves specific changes, current graduation requirements remain in force.
If the exams are going, what should a student aim at instead?
Something that survives a rule change. A Portrait of a Graduate model rewards demonstrated capability, so a student who has genuinely built things and can explain them is in a better position than one who has only rehearsed an exam paper. That is what we were doing anyway, and it is why every course here ends in a project rather than a mock paper.
What are the New York computer science standards?
The Board of Regents adopted the New York State Learning Standards for Computer Science and Digital Fluency in December 2020, after a two-year statewide authoring and review process. There are five concept areas: Impacts of Computing, Computational Thinking, Networks and System Design, Cybersecurity, and Digital Literacy. They are organised in grade bands of K-1, 2-3, 4-6, 7-8 and 9-12, and schools were expected to be fully implementing them by September 2024.
Why does New York name cybersecurity as its own concept?
Because it decided the subject was foundational rather than advanced, and it is one of very few states to make that call at the standards level. It changes what a serious course looks like: a student is expected to understand threats, defences and consequences, not merely to avoid weak passwords. We teach it as a named track rather than as a safety lecture bolted onto something else.
Do you teach across New York State or only the city?
The whole state. Live video means Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Yonkers, Long Island and every borough are identical to us, and none of them involves a journey. A learner needs a laptop or desktop, a way to be heard, and a connection that holds a call. There is no hardware to receive and no software to install.
What times work for a family on Eastern Time?
The timetable is built around your week rather than ours. Weekend slots are the easiest to arrange on Eastern Time, and weekday slots are settled individually. Everything is confirmed on the demo call before any payment, because a slot agreed in principle and impossible in practice helps nobody.
What are the fees?
USD 100 a month for a group of five to eight, or USD 150 a month for private tuition. Each is two classes a week, eight a month. Nothing is charged to enrol, nothing has to be bought, and there is no minimum term, so any month can be your last. The opening class is free.
Which ages do you take?
From six to sixty-seven. The entry point is decided by what a learner can demonstrate in the opening class, not by a birthday or a school year. That cuts both ways: a fast ten year old is moved up, and a fifteen year old with gaps is placed where the gaps actually are rather than where pride would prefer.
How big is a class, and who teaches it?
Groups run between five and eight learners with one teacher who stays with them, or one to one for a student who needs the whole hour. We do not rotate staff between sessions. Teaching is a relationship before it is a curriculum, and a teacher who has to re-learn a student every week is starting from behind.
How does a family begin?
Take the free opening class. It is taught, not sold. A teacher gives the student real work, watches how they handle it, and then recommends a level honestly. If the recommendation is to wait, or to look elsewhere, you will hear it on that call rather than after a payment.
Taught, not sold
Tell us the grade and what has been tried already. A teacher runs a real opening class, finds the genuine starting point, and recommends a level. If we are not right for your child, that is what you will hear.
You can also use the contact page, or read about us first.