Here's a story about school districts in Texas offering online credit-recovery courses to any student who fails a class. These are self-paced makeup classes that high school students can take ?they're being offered by Texas districts with high dropout rates, like Houston Independent School District. The story says that in the spring and summer terms, 6,127 HISD students earned 9,774 credits in these courses, and 2500 more students are enrolled for fall term.
According to the piece, this reflects a trend both in Texas and nationally to bolster graduation rates in a cost-effective manner. The story concedes however, that questions remain over whether these online courses offers the same quality as traditional courses and whether students are learning. We'd probably agree with those concerns. Quality matters. Certainly there's a lot of potential with programs like this, but there's also potential for abuse, so we're a little skeptical. We're not the only ones either ? here's a recent piece by Erich Martel, a teacher in the District of Columbia Public Schools, that talks about credit recovery courses there.
Offering kids a second chance is of course wonderful, but we'd like to?be sure that they're actually mastering the material. The jury seems to be out on that.
?Amy Fagan