Speak Out: Credit Recovery Needs Help
More than 100 teachers in Columbus City Schools give high school students a second chance at graduating through their active involvement in the districtwide Credit Recovery program (CR).
The 5- year-old program allows students to earn high school credits by retaking previously failed core academic courses through mastery- based computer software.
While CR has helped to increase high school graduation rates across the district, serious questions have been raised and remain unanswered about the day-to-day operations of the program.
Faculty Representatives framed the concerns and questions of their fellow teachers at a recent discussion on CR.
Should students who cut class during the day be admitted to CR during or after school?
Is training available for teachers who want to increase their proficiency with the software?
What is the policy regarding students who cheat during CR?
Should a student stop attending a regular class in order to spend more time participating in CR?
What is the policy on removing disruptive students enrolled in CR?
Should students be allowed to take CR simply to get a higher letter grade?
Should a lead teacher be designated and paid to do the administrative work required to manage CR?
Should additional staff be provided for the afterschool program in order to better serve students enrolled in CR?
CEA calls on the administration of CCS to assist teachers in their efforts to increase the graduation rate through CR by solving these problems in partnership with CEA. Our teachers are stepping up and making it happen for students— it is only fair that the administration do the same.
What are your experiences with CR? Speak out below! Make sure you’re registered!
January 9th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Please remember not to include comments that would identify individual students, colleagues, administrators or schools. Any comments that could be construed as libel, slander or a breach of any kind of confidential information will not be published.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:34 am
It’s been a year or so since I’ve done CR, but those questions are spot on. Cheating was a big problem. One time during after school credit recovery, I kicked out a senior for cheating– they were a few weeks away from graduation. They were back at CR the next day.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I am so happy that there is some discussion about credit recovery. Regardless of how one feels about the program it is obviously here to stay. Disruptive behavior and cheating are huge problems , not to mention the amount of work involved in the program since administration doesnt see that it is necessary to pay anyone to do the many tasks involved in the program. At one time, there was an individual in buidings who got paid 4-5 hours (1 hour per day) to see that all the paperwork/grading/enrolling was being done. Now, all of a sudden this position has disappeared, yet as far as I can tell the workload is still here and increasing monumentally because so many kids are enrolled in it. Once again, teachers are assuming more and more of the work while dealing with kids who aren’t there to even try and earn a credit. I am interested in how a few teachers in every afterschool credit recovery program can possibly do all that is expected and insure that the students aren’t cheating. As far as I am concerned CR is a beast that needs some reigning in.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
As a parent, I have a totally different set of concerns. As long as I have had kids in the district–close to 2 decades–there has been very little concern at the building level for kids who fail classes. It was sort of viewed as being just their fault, and their parents were expected to put up $100 to retake the class in the summer or chauffer them up to North Adult (rumored to be “easier” than regular classes). My understanding was that they were not even allowed to retake the classes in their own building.
Now we have Credit Recovery.
My concerns have more to do with:
1) what we are doing to prevent grade failure in the first place; and
2) what do we know about what is really effective in getting kids back on track once they fall off.
I have asked these questions of teachers–who almost universally to operate somewhere far below the level of policy. I have asked administrators who have similar responses, but also cite additional problems such as budget, No Child Left Behind, or what teachers want.
It seems pretty predictable to me that the kids who weren’t making it in class (due to motivation, lack of subject matter understanding or background, or other problems) aren’t suddenly going to turn into different people because they are sitting in front of a computer (by the way–I have always been assured that there were highly qualified content teachers supervising students in Credit Recovery).
I think we need to ask some hard questions about Credit Recovery, such as what percentage of kids who fail classes complete CR, how their OGT scores compare to students who did not fail classes, what is the average time of completion for a student in CR. But even more important than these questions about CR, we need to look upstream to determine why we think we need it in the first place.